RichieCon 2024 has come and gone! This year there were some twists and turns, but everything worked out in the end! For those of you who don’t know: RichieCon 2024 is the gathering of Richie and his friends … honestly, it’s just an excuse to play games every year! It’s not even really a Con, but we like to put a little pomp into it to make it sound more bombastic. This is actually the 10th year of RichieCon, but only the 9th actual convocation (as we skipped a year for CoVid).
This year’s RichieCon 2024 token is cool: it’s actually hollowed out and you can only see the year and RTS symbol if you hold it up to the light! See above! You need the Token to get into the Con, and it can only be obtained through “secret means!” (Find me or Max in the Hall). Thanks to Josh M. for designing it and Max M. for printing it!
The name RichieCon is a bit of a joke: I asked my friend Kurt many many years ago: “Hey, you wanna go this board game convention that’s far away?”
Kurt said, “Man! That’s like a $1000 plane ticket and then a $1000 hotel bill! Why don’t you host your own convention and call it RichieCon! It’ll be a lot cheaper!”
And thus, RichieCon was born.
PreCon
The week before RichieCon is a lot of putting boxes in boxes. To have some semblance of order, I try to put related games in bigger boxes and label what’s in there. See the “hot games” box above!
Sam and Teresa and Sara usually come over and help me put everything together. A big thanks to those three for all their help this year! See some of the boxes we put together above!
RichieCon Day 0: Secret RichieCon House
RichieCon has a lot of out of town guests that come into town a day early (Friday) and randomly show up with no place to go. I learned many years ago that it’s nice to have a “secret” RichieCon house for out-of-town guests to hang out on Friday before the Con.
The “secret” RichieCon house is modeled after the out-of-towners dinner you have for out-of-town guests for a wedding. It’s a way to say “thank you” for coming from so far away! This year, we had guests from Portland WA, Austin TX, Denver CO, Phoenix AZ, Las Cruces NM, Albuquerque NM, and from as far away as Madison WI!
RichieCon Day 1: Morning Pivot!
RichieCon Day 1 hit a scheduling SNAFU, so we had to pivot and hold RichieCon Day 1 partly at the “secret” RichieCon house! I guess it’s not so secret anymore!
Thanks to everyone who helped me move boxes and boxes and boxes of games to the “secret” RichieCon house! I couldn’t have done it without Sam, Charlie, Jeremy, Joe, Kurt, and a bunch of other people I didn’t see moving boxes because I was so busy! RichieCon is a community effort!
RichieCon Day 1: Part II! This Time, It’s Personal
Once we got into the Rec Center for the second half of the day, many games were played!
RichieCon Day 2: More Games!
Sound Mitigation
If you have ever been to a board game convention, you know there is a lot of background noise. We had some issues last year with the background noise being too much, so we tried some sound mitigation techniques. Basically, the Rec Center has very hard sonic surfaces, so sound bounces and echoes a little too much. Luckily, the Rec Center bought a fairly large carpet (see above) to help with some of that.
We also bought 5 CostCo rugs (for $18 each) to augment the sound mitigation of the hard sonically bright floors. See above and below.
I also have some friends who work in theater and they were able to hang up up some “quilts” on the wall:
These quilts (see above) were hanging and absorbed some of the sound.
The general consensus was that the rugs and quilts all helped, but not quite as much as we hoped. We will probably hang more quilts and get more rugs for next year! Thanks to Becca and Jeff for providing the hanging quilts!
Games of the Con
I think the game of the Con was Slay The Spire! I saw this game played more than any other game! I think I taught it 3 to 4 times over the course of 3 days and it was played more time than that! See above!
Flock Together was pretty popular! I saw this played a bunch of times! See above!
The Cat Box was a running joke: “Play Games from the Cat Box!” But, there were a lot of games played from here! Race To The Raft! Cat In The Box! Hissy Fit! Power Hungry Pets! I saw all of those games played at least once!
The Astro Knight games were popular: I saw both the base game and Astro Knights Eternity being played! I suspect that’s my fault … see below …
Casting Shadows was quite popular! I think that was played at least 3 times!
The weirdest game I played was the RPG Fiasco: It reminded me a lot of Spirit of 77! The point is to make each other laugh as you make up crazy stuff!
Forest Shuffle may have the other big game of the Con after Slay The Spire: Kurt taught this game many many times! See above!
SO many great games played! Set A Watch! See above!
Leviathan Wilds was also quite popular! I taught that at least three times, and I saw other people playing it!
Interesting Games
Every year, we stop the Con for a little bit to have a “meeting of the souls” where we all talk about our favorite board games! It’s a chance for everyone to give feedback on games they’ve enjoyed since last we met!! The real point of this is to try to recommend games that people might be interested in. What happens is that we recommend games, and then we end up teaching them the rest of the Con!
#6 What game from the last year surprised you the most? Good or bad surprise?
Rich:
Slay The Spire was a huge surprise to me! I almost didn’t back it on Kickstarter, but wow! My games groups loved it and it was probably the most played game at RichieCon!
Sam:
– Hissy Fit. It’s a light, fast, cute game about getting your cat into the carrier to go to the vet. It is also surprisingly fun to play.
#5 What game in the last year do you disagree with reviewers on?”
Rich:
Two weeks ago, Daybreak won the Spiel Des Jahres. Everybody seems to love this game except for me. I generally love Matt Leacock designs, but this one felt way too random for me.
Sam:
Tom Vasel didn’t like Race to the Raft. However, I really enjoyed the puzzley nature of creating the path and moving the cats to get them all off the island.
#4 What game (that you paid for) did you really dislike? It’s easy to dislike games other people paid for, but what did you pay for that you disliked?
Rich: The cooperative expansion for Valroc: The Legend of Aquiny. The base game of Valroc is a card-drafting, worker placement game that’s pretty good. The cooperative expansion looked cool with campaign envelopes, but the limited communication was too limited and the very very slow upgrade paths made this not fun. I would still recommend people try the base game Valroc.
Sam:
I picked up a copy of Call to Adventure (a story crafting game) and felt kind of meh about my plays of it. I’m hopeful that it may grow on me as I play more and actually get the rules all the way right.
#3 What game that came out in the last year that you liked but other’s didn’t?
Rich:
Gotham City Chronicles: Solo and Co-operative Expansion. This was so much work to get to the point where I could play solo (6 days of reading and printing and setting-up), but in the end I had fun. I don’t think most people like Gotham City Chronicles, especially Shut-Up & Sit-Down, because it’s so much work. But I still like it!
Sam:
Almost Innocent. I really enjoyed the logic puzzle aspect of it. Richie didn’t enjoy it but was also really tired that night and not necessarily sharp enough to do heavy logical deduction.
#2 What was your favorite expansion that came out in the last year?
Rich: Set A Watch: the new stand-alone expansion and the Set A Watch: Doomed Run! (Strictly speaking, they came from the same kickstarter)! I love this system because even if you roll badly, you can still place dice on powers to activate them!
Sam:
– +1 on Set a Watch: Doomed Run. I only played one of the missions but it was fun to play the characters that were assigned to me and use their powers and items. The two I had ended up chaining together pretty well.
To be different:: Astro Knights Eternity. It’s a good cooperative deck building game and the story parts surrounding the scenario were really good too.
#1 What was your favorite game that came out in the last year?
Rich:
A cooperative bag-building super hero game set in the unique world of Invincicble? Sign me up! This game was so much better than I expected, the upgrade paths makes this game engaging and keep you involved!
Sam:
+1 to Invincible (Richie) and World Wonders (Kurt)
To be different: Age of Civilization. It’s a really tight worker placement game where you draft your unique civilization powers which include number of workers and then use your workers to research technology, get money, build wonders, and go to war to get victory points. Bonus points: it’s a small box, has good solo modes, and takes 45 minutes to an hour.
Theme Song
During the “meeting of souls” and sharing of games, Joe shared with us his version of the theme Song for RichieCon! Sung to the tune of the Suffragette City by David Bowie! And yes, the entire room said said “Hey Man!” at the appropriate places!
RichieCon City: sung to the tune of Suffragette City by David Bowie (new lyrics by Junkerman)
Hey Man, you gotta play in the game Hey Man, custom pieces ain’t no shame! Hey Man, your kickstarter is drear. She said your package should be shipping by the end of the year
Hey Man, you really gotta choose Hey Man, which game you gonna lose Hey Man, you better learn all the rules She said you’re getting killed by Sauron or the Cult of Cthulu
[Chorus] Oh don’t lean on us man cuz you can’t defeat the wizard I’m back in RichieCon City! Well don’t lean on me man cuz you blew up all the kittens You know my RichieCon City! It’s outta sight, it’s alright!
Conclusion
As we bring all the games back to the house …
As we clean the Rec Center and put it back the way it was ..
And we lock the door .. heading home … we wonder …. was it all worth it?
Yes! It was! It so much fun to see everyone, despite the issues! We look forward to seeing everyone next year!
As we head into RichieCon soon, I wanted to highlight some games that I think a lot of people will want to play during RichieCon: Flock Together is one of them. Spoiler Alert! We liked this game! I think a lot of my friends will really enjoy this game!
This is game all about chickens with asymmetric powers! (There’s a sentence you never thought you’d hear!) It’s all about chickens leveling up and working together to fight off the invading predators! My friends and I joke that this is Coop: the co-op game as players cooperatively defend the chicken coop!
Flock Together plays 1-5 players, ages 10+ (but I think younger players could handle this), and lasts about 25 minutes per player. This is what the box says, and that feels fairly accurate.
This was on Kickstarter back in Sept 2023 and it promised deliver in June 2024. It arrived at my house in early July 2024, so it’s a few weeks late. In the grand scheme of Kickstarters, a few weeks late is on time!
Let’s take a look!
Unboxing And Gameplay
This is standard size board game box: see Coke can for perspective above.
The components are first class! There was only one level backing this Kickstarter, so I think everyone will be getting this amazing production when it comes to retail!
Each player plays a chicken! Bock! Each players chooses 1 of 11 chicken books! See two above!
Each chicken has kind of punny name: see General Tso above. My friends and I found these puns funny and not too annoying. It also sets the mood: this is a lightish, fun game.
Each player then takes a player board (see the dual-layered board above) …
I want to point this out because it’s really nice: the spine of the chicken book fits into an indent on the player board! See the indent above!
And that little book fits nicely into the board! See above!
As your chicken plays, she levels up the more she eats!
You start as a chick (level 1: see above) with only the power highlighted at the bottom.
If Annie eats 5 food (the little basket tells you how much food you need to eat), you turn the page to get to level 2: A Pullet! Now, Annie Yokley has two powers and 1 more hit point! See above!
And finally at 11 food, Annie is a Hen! With 6 full hit points and 3 full powers!
Each player takes a colored chicken (see above) to move around the board (see below)!
The board is a beautiful scene with the chicken coop in the middle (“inside”) and the world surrounding it (“outside”)! Chickens move around in this world to do stuff!
The actions that a player take on her turn are all listed at the bottom of the board! See above. Note that there are “outside” actions (little grass symbol) and “inside” actions (with a coop symbol).
The player has two action points on her turn and can do any two of these actions (and can repeat). It makes the game feel a little like worker placement, because you have to move your chicken either “inside” or “outside” to perform certain actions, but I can’t really call this worker placement (as players can share spaces).
Although this doesn’t look like it, this is really a boss-battler game! You have to fight 3 predators, and then you can fight the final boss to win! The predators use the same book system as the players: they can level up just like the players!
Basically, at the end of a “season” (see Spring, Summer, Fall above), the predators level up! Each season has its own set of “bad news” cards.
This is co-op game, so you have to have “bad news” season cards! These don’t come out every turn, they come out between the 1, 3, and 6th turn of the season. It’s fairly well notated on the board: see above. A season ends on the 7th space and a new one starts!
If you go through all 3 seasons without defeating all 4 bosses, you lose!
This is a game about needing resources: food (above) …
…and eggs. The food is used to power most actions in the game (attacking, levelling up), but they are slightly more volatile. The eggs can become food, if you choose to convert during them between rounds. The eggs are more resilient to weather (“bad news”) than the food, but they must be converted to food to be useful.
If the players can defeat the three easy predators (see two above) …
They uncover the big boss who is immediately revealed at level 3! If the players can defeat the big boss before the last season runs out, they win!
Oh, to gain confidence and a few special abilities, players can also fight grubs (yellow cards above) or get a power up card (brown).
Rulebook
This is a great rulebook. And I am not just saying that because it’s linen-finished and feels really nice.
This rulebook gets an A- on the Chair Test: it lays flat, doesn’t flop too much, and has a big readable font. It’s easy to consult on the chair next to me when I need to look up rules. This game has an excellent form factor.
The Components page (above) is well-notated and easy to consult. I always like to correlate components with their names: this components list even spans the same two opposite pages so it’s very easy to consult on the chair next to me.
The set-up has a great picture: it is well-notated, well-labelled, easy to read, and spans two opposite pages easily so you can correlate the picture with the directions! Fantastic! What an easy set-up!
The rest of the rulebook is the same caliber: it’s easy to read and get into. In general, it dos a great job of teaching the game.
It even ends with useful notes on the back.
This is one of the better rulebooks we have seen in a while. And the linen-finish just takes the cake.
There is one complaint, which I will discuss below. Otherwise, this is a fantastic rulebook.
Solo Play
This game has only one real note for how to do solo play: it’s in the set-up for describing solo play! See above! Fantastic! This game follows Saunders’ Law! And it’s a great solo game: all the rules stay the same except for one: you are your own teammate! There’s no long list of rules exceptions: this is such an easy game to get to the table solo.
For balance, the hit points of each of the bosses is a multiplier of the number of players! This is how the game scales the difficulty for the number of players! So, Professor Moltiarity (above) has 2 *1 + 3*1 = 5 hit points for a solo game (and would have 2*2 + 3*2=10 hit points for a 2-Player game, etc).
My first solo game was playing Annie Yokley (see above) and my final boss was Professor Moltiarity!
The game sets-up quickly and easily. See above as I have the rulebook open on the chair next to me and the game set-up (with Annie) on the table! It really pops!
The game is light and plays quickly: you take your two actions per turn, leveling up while you eat, attack grubs, attack predators, and forage for food! You can always go back to the coop to heal if you need to.
My first game ended in about 20 minutes with a win! I don’t feel like I got any rules wrong (I tend to get a few rules wrong in many of my first plays), as the rules are easy and well-described in the rulebook!
At the end of my game, I felt confident I could teach my friends this game; it was fun and breezy. I enjoyed the puns and flavor text on the cards. It was only a 20 minute game and I had fun. I could see Flock Together getting slightly repetitive if the game lasted any longer, but the solo game felt just the right length! And there was always something interesting to do on your turn, even if you only had two actions! The game moved quickly and I had a good time.
I am not sure how often I would get the game out just to play solo though. But the solo game teaches the game well.
Cooperative Play
My first cooperative play went pretty well. My friend Teresa loved this world! She loved the art, the cute game, the flavor text, and she loved the chickens! And of course, we made tons of chicken jokes as we played: we were poultry in motion!
The game doesn’t take itself too seriously and that flavor (chicken flavor) seems to come out as you play! It really kind of elevates our spirits!
Early in the game, turns are a little more “multiplayer solitaire”, and each player needs to level up. Your actions will be just trying to get your chick into something that can fight!
But to win, you will almost certainaly have to cooperate in the end game! See above as Teresa and I fight the Big Bad together.
The amount of cooperation kind of depends on the chickens you choose and the powers (and one-shots) you get: cooperation isn’t baked-in to the main actions (pun not intended … well, maybe it was intended)! You can’t share resources or actions or do anything necessarily cooperative with your base actions: it seemed like most cooperative endeavors were from specials. It worked fine for us, but it’s possible your game won’t be particularly cooperative if you don’t get the cards/powers that enable that cooperation. It’s not a dig against the game: it’s just not quite as cooperative as you might hope, especially early on. We do have a suggestion that would make it more cooperative (see below).
Teresa and I had fun playing cooperatively. Teresa says she really wants to play this with her sister! A good sign!
My second cooperative game wasn’t quite as successful: Sam and I ran out of time and couldn’t defeat the final boss.
Honestly, it was the weather cards that destroyed us: the weather had us doing 1 less damage to a predator. We did look back on the game and realized we made a few strategic mistakes, but the bad news weather cards screwed us more than we cared to admit.
Sam didn’t love Flock Together.
Play Order
The first player token in this game is a gorgeous metal token! See above! It indicates who the first player is!
And the rules specify that the game proceeds clockwise (see above, from page 9).
The first question was: does the play order token move or does the first player always the first player? The rules, as great as they are, do not specify this! Most “modern” board games have the player order token move clockwise so that each player gets a chance to go first. So, do we do that? Or does it always stay at the same player? Not clear?
As we played, we actually got annoyed at this first player marker: we kept passing the player token back and forth, but since none of the rules say anything about when to do this, we forget a few times and lost track of who the first player was!
In the end, we just reverted to Player Selected Turn Order (coarse-grained). We would decide cooperatively, per turn, who would go first (if it made a difference)! Then we’d just take our turns in that order that we chose. In fact, since we didn’t even have turn order, we could take our turns simultaneously sometimes (if we didn’t interfere with each other) … and the game would move along that much quicker!
This is totally a house rule: it’s not in the rulebook. However, I recommend Player Selected Turn Order in your game of Flock Together: it will make the game move faster and the game will be more cooperative. I love that first player marker, but it wasn’t working for us (especially since the rules seems silent on it).
What I Liked
This production is magnificent.
The cards are beautiful and linen-finished with Andrew Bosley art! Just so nice!
Even the rulebook is linen-finished! And it’s a very good rulebook (modulo the First Player issue).
I didn’t mention the Power cards too much in the overview, but if you ever have a turn where you might have a “wasted” action (“I need to move to the coop, but what else can I do?“), you can always use an action to get a Power card: see above. You never feel like you have a wasted action (which you could sometimes get in other games with Action Points, like Pandemic), as you can always take a Power card!
The comedy in this game, although silly, seemed to land for us. See Cleopoultra (oof, what a pun) above!!
What I Didn’t Like
All the eggs (above) and food (below) are different colors … and that difference means nothing.
I thought different colored eggs would have different powers or something! Nope! All eggs are the same! I actually found that distracting and thought “Oh did I miss a rule? Why are they all different?” Maybe an expansion down the road will make that mean something? Sure, it’s pretty, but I actually think it’s distracting.
This one is related to the different colors: how are you supposed to sort the eggs and food? We have 6 (really cool) trays to hold the resources, but because there are 6 kinds of food and 6 different kinds of eggs, which ones do you put in trays? This sounds dumb, but the instructions don’t tell you how to use the trays (well, they sorta do on page 6, bullet 8, but it doesn’t tell you how to distribute them). I mean this sounds like a dumb complaint, especially since the trays are so nice, but it does make you pause during the (otherwise great) set-up instructions.
The Player Turn Order rules don’t work great: this games needs a house rule: use Player Selected Turn Order. It makes the game more cooperative, more fun, and even moves it along quicker!
The Weather cards can be a little random and really mess with the dynamic of the game. It can be frustrating. But since the game is short, it’s not too big a deal.
Although you have all your actions on your player board, a turn summary/outline would have been nice: if we had one of these, we could have addressed the first player issue! It also would have reminded us of our actions at the end of each turn. It seems silly, given that this game is pretty easy, but a little turn order card would have been useful.
Reactions
Teresa gives this a 7 or 8 out of 10. “I want to play this with my sister! It’s on a list of games I want to play at RichieCon again!”
Richie gives it the same? It’s very light (7/10), but it trends up (7.5? 8? /10) because the game is so uplifting with its amazing art, breath-taking components, silly puns, and light gameplay! The only real complaint “might be” that it can get random, but since the game is so short, that really hasn’t been too big of a deal.
Sam didn’t like it quite as much as us: “Flock 6.5/10: I liked the silliness of the theme but felt like we didn’t have enough actions and the turns were too short to keep track of the round upkeep tasks“
Conclusion
Me and (most of) my friends recommend Flock Together! The components and art are just stunning, the game has a silly vibe which puts you in a good mood, and the gameplay moves quickly!
If you find yourself interested in this game, we recommend playing with the house rule of Player Selected Turn Order to make the game feel a little more cooperative and engaging. The game is cooperative, but it may feel less so, depending on the power cards that emerge or characters you choose; The Player Selected Turn Order helps elevate the game’s cooperation factor.
Averaging me and my friends scores, this is probably something like a 7/10 or 7.5/10. The cuteness and simplicity of the game may elevate that score for you.
Come along with me on my journey as I learn (from complete scratch) how to play Batman: Gotham City Chronicles in its newly released solo and cooperative modes! It’s a bit of a rough trip, but that experience has many moments along the way that will help inform whether this expansion is for you!
Batman: Gotham City Chronicles has been on Kickstarter multiple times. Season 1 (see here) and Season 2 (see here) offered a ton of content and a ton of miniatures! The only problem for me was that the base game is a 1 vs. many game … neither cooperative nor solo. Since this blog (CO-OP Gestalt) is all about solo and cooperative games, it didn’t make sense to pick it up! As much as I love Batman and my Superheroes (see our Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Games), I had to pass on these first two Kickstarters…
The Season 3 Kickstarter (see here), however, offered an expansion for the game that makes it both solo and cooperative! See the expansion box above!! (It also offered an RPG, but that wasn’t what I was interested in). I mean, that art also helps me like it! That’s a great cover!
This box (see back of box above) transforms Batman: Gotham City Chronicles from 1 vs. many into solo and cooperative! That’s something I might enjoy playing!
So, this means I have to get quite a bit of stuff: the base game (see below) as well as the expansion!
Wait … is this what I want to do this?
Trepidation
There was definitely some trepidation in getting this, because this meant that I had to get the base game … and it’s not cheap!
I also freely admit that some of my trepidation came from the Shut-Up & Sit-Down review of the original Gotham City Chronicles! (See link above) This is one of my favorite videos from those guys, but they pretty much trashed it. If you haven’t seen the video, there’s a link above! They do a good job of discussing gameplay and ideas … as well as destroying the game!
I love the Shut-up & Sit-Down videos, but over time, I realize that I am anti-correlated to their opinions! They loved Arkham Horror the Card game and hated Marvel Champions! I was completely the other way around! So, maybe I would love Batman: Gotham City Chronicles with the solo and co-operative expansion?
So, with some trepidation, I took the plunge and ordered the base game, some expansions … and the new solo/co-op expansion!
Day 0: Ummm
I got two big boxes from Monolith in late June. Ummm … I don’t have time to deal with this right now! But I know exactly what this is! I just don’t have time!
There’s a lot of stuff here. I knew I’d have to “deal” with it. Not now. It’s very daunting … as excited as I was, I knew this would eat up a few days. I wasn’t wrong.
Day 1: Unboxing
I got a lot of stuff, but the first thing I opened was the solo/co-op box.
Two things stood out about the box: it’s surprisingly small and surprisingly sturdy! It’s a hefty box! See the picture above with a Coke can for perspective.
The solo/co-op box comes with both the English Directions/Cards and the French Directions/Cards. There’s also a few language independent punch outs and a die. Half of what I paid for was the French content, which I would never use. That made me a bit grumpy.
The cards will be used to direct the AI in the solo/co-op games. These are very readable: see above.
Unfortunately, there are production issues. The rulebook contains the solo/co-op changes for the set-ups for the Scenarios from the game. Although most of the English Scenarios are in English, both rule books had the last 10 or so Adventures in French!! See above as I have the English rulebook and French rulebooks next to each other … and they are BOTH in French!!!
If I ever want to play these Scenarios, I will have to use Google Translate to translate them to English. That seems less than ideal. I hope Monolith recognizes the problem and sends out another copy? Or at least some kind of fix? Monolith: please publish these scenarios in English on your web site so I can print them!!
Given how long I have been waiting for this, the solo/co-op box was a little disappointing: there’s not much here, it has a small but thick rulebook, it has some French content I will never use, and some scenarios are in French only.
Still Day 1: Rulebook
The solo/co-op rulebook basically gets an F on the Chair Test.
The binding makes it so it can’t stay open on the chair next to me! And the book is tiny. And the font is tiny (because the book is small), so it’s harder to read. I can’t put this on the chair next to me at all. (There is an okay workaround, see below).
Compare this to the original Rulebook and Scenario Book for the base Batman: Gotham City Chronicles! These two (above) both get about an A- on the Chair Test, as they stay open, are large, and can sit on the seat next to me so I can consult them easily! It’s very frustrating that the solo/co-op book is so hard to consult.
After playing around a little, I realized I could use the solo/co-op expansion box to “hold open” the rulebook! See above as I carefully set the rulebook in the box, and it “kinda” stays open. This is a workaround for The Chair Test: it wasn’t perfect, but it’s a hack that might help you too. At least now I can “kinda” hold the book open and keep it flattish to consult it …
But then came the moment I was dreading, but I was pretty sure I’d have to deal with eventually. In the first paragraph of the solo/co-op rulebook were these words:
“Therefore, you must know how to play the regular multiplayer game before learning the Solo/Coop mode”
At this point, it was time to stop reading here and start learning the base game. That took the wind out of my sails, so I stopped for the day.
Day 2: Base Game and Essential Stuff/Printing
So, it’s day 2: time to learn the base game!
I was hyper-aware that the rulebook for this game was supposedly problematic, so I was very nervous heading into Day 2.
Apparently, I have Rulebook version 2.0: see above!! Have they fixed a lot of stuff up? I think so … this rulebook worked for me.
I was able to (start to) learn the rules straight from the rulebook. I had read a LOT of rulebooks, and this wasn’t that bad. I think Monolith has really fixed it up since the original version. There’s a decent set-up, table of Contents, no Index (booo!), but at least it has a Glossary (yaaay!). It was actually pretty good.
However, I encountered my NEXT roadblock: “Where’s the Skills and Traits Booklet?” The Components page (above) references that, the Map Board References, and Skill Sheets. I did not have any of those????? It turns out, you had to order the Batcomputer Files expansion box (or get it from the Kickstarter). See this link on BoardGameGeek for the discussion. I happened to miss that you needed that when I ordered my stuff.
Hope is not completely lost: you can print many of the things yourself! The Monolith website has most of the content listed so you can print it.
So I couldn’t get the exact Skills and Traits rulebook, but I was able to print the two sheets above! They were good enough.
Unfortunately, much like the Scenarios in the solo/co-op rulebook, some of the content was still in French (even though the downloads were in the English section)! See below.
See above as the content is still in French (even though it’s in the English downloads area).
However, I printed most of what I needed. The most important things seem to be:
The Map Reference Sheets
The Character Sheets
The Skill Sheets (Villain and Hero)
The Map Reference Sheets: The board above above looks super cool and thematic! But you have no idea how to traverse it! What’s on different levels? Where are the walls? Where does Line of Sight work?
The Map Reference Sheets have a much much more useful description of the topography! See above. Honestly, I can’t imagine playing without these! I found it easier to print each map separately on its own sheet of paper (you can save some space by printing double-sided, but my printer isn’t great for double-sided).
The Character Sheets are just as important, as they take the icon-rich sheet like above …
… and condense it down to a readable sheet of abilities! Again, I think having these is critical! For my printer, it made sense to have each one on its own sheet (also, since you never know which heroes you will use, it makes sense to have each character sheet separate).
Finally, you should print the Villain Skills and Traits. I wouldn’t go two-sided: you want both sides up. You can’t play the Villains without this: period. This information is in no rulebook that I have.
So, when I am playing the Heroes: the Hero sheet is right there! See above! So much easier to play!
And the Map Reference Sheet and Villain Traits are right there next to the Villain! So much easier to see and play!
I think Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is probably nigh unplayable without these extras. Make sure you get the Batcomputer Expansion Box (which has these sheets) or print them yourself from the Monolith website. These sheets DO NOT come with the base game.
To be clear: this game is unplayable without these.
Day 3: Set-Up and Reading
After getting everything I needed, the next day was all about reading all the rules and setting-up the game. These actually kind of went hand-in-hand, as I learned rules, I set-up the game and I set-up the game, I learned the rules. See above as I get ready to play!
This rulebook is 60 pages. Yep, it’s longer than Gloomhaven’s rulebook (I remember that the original Gloomhaven rulebook is 56 pages)! And this is just the base game! I methodically went through all the rules to understand the base game. And before you say, “Why didn’t you just watch the video?” (which there is one), I find that videos don’t work for me: I like to be able to go back and look at rules in written form.
And don’t forget, I still have to read and synthesize the solo rules! So this was a full day.
There’s been a lot bad press about how bad the Gotham City Chronicles rulebook is: I didn’t think it was that bad, but I also had version 2.0.
Day 4: Solo and An Icy Welcome
In the Missions Book is a list of all the Scenarios (see above) and how many characters come into play! I chose, for my first solo play, a true solo experience with one hero: “An Icy Welcome!” You can absolutely play solo with multiple characters, but especially after last month’s solo experience with Weirdwood Manor, I prefer true solo to learn the rules for complex games!
I finally got everything set-up to play Batman vs Mr. Freeze!“An Icy Welcome!” See above!! The board is all set-up with cool minis, the Map Reference is next to it, Batman is below with his reference sheet, the co-op scenario changes are to my right, the Villain’s board and set-up are to my leftish, while the rulebook is on a chair next to me, and finally the Villain sheet is on the table … within reading distance if I need it! Whew! It’s a bit much to get everything set-up!
The full Scenario is described in the “Missions Booklet” that comes in the main game (see above).
The changes to the co-op/solo mode Scenario are described in the solo/co-op book. See above.
In this Scenario, Batman has to collapse an abandoned subway line to stop Mr. Freeze from getting access to the Bank! To do this, he has to traverse the map, fight Thugs and Brutes (and maybe Mr. Freeze), and prime 3 bombs to stop the plans of Mr. Freeze!
To prime the explosives, he has to roll 3 successes! See above as Batman primes one of the three bombs with 3 successes!
And then, heartbreakingly, Batman fails to prime the last bomb on the last turn! Batman loses! This is an especially frustrating roll (no successes at all), because you need at least 2 rerolls to fix it! Batman loses in the last turn! Arguably, this was incredibly thematic and tense, but it still kinda sucked to lose.
Here’s the thing: I had fun playing this, but operating the solo/co-op AI is a lot of work. I mean, a lot of work.
The AI is pretty straight forward to operate, (basically the AI does one of three things: attack, protect, or advance), but it still is a lot of work. On Batman’s turn: I do a few things and I am done. On the AI’s turn, I have to activate every mini of interest! For example: the AI above activates the Villain group in position 1 in the river; it happens to be the Thugs: so, we have to activate all three Thugs! Each Thug mini activation requires thought: “Can I actually complete this operation?” Basically, if you can’t “complete” the action (you can’t attack, you can’t move, or you can’t advance), you have to fall through the next action (which is why all three actions are listed on the card). So, for every Thug on the board, you can have to make a determination of what to do! Which is work. And then, they may attack! Or advance! Which means further work … for each mini!
And then you have to do that AGAIN for the next column on the card.
Every AI activation card is a lot of work. You get used to it, but then you still have to consult the Scenario to see what the special rules are for the villain. And remember, these rules for the AI are ON TOP of all the rules in the base game! Remember that 60 pages of rules for the base game?
There’s a lot of work to set-up (it took me a few days to get there, but once you get it, it’s not quite as bad), there’s a lot of work to run the AI, and there’s a lot of work to tear down the game after you win/lose. The solo player has an inordinate amount of work to keep the game going.
And yet, in spite of all the maintenance needed to operate the solo mode, I still had fun. I was Batman, counter-attacking, using Parkour to move around the city, using Martial Arts, throwing Batarangs, and just being Batman! “I’m Batman!”
My biggest complaint was just everything is decided by dice. In the final round I lost, not because of something I did wrong, but because I rolled badly. There are lot of places where rerolls are built-in, and you can always choose to use your action cubes for rerolls, so it’s not pure chance. But it was still frustrating.
Day 5: Solo and Deadly Riddles
With one solo game under my belt, I wanted to try another solo game and see how things went. This time I have to save the civilians (the orange minis)!
This time, I chose “Deadly Riddles”! In this one, Batman has to save 4 Citizens and/or solve riddles that the Riddler has put forth!
With some practice from the previous scenario, operating the AI was a little less work.
I still had to consult the solo/co-op book quite a bit, because each scenario has differences that need explaining! See above!! What I really want is for the solo/co-op book to be two separate books! One for the Scenarios (which I can keep open with a decent binding), and one for the actual rules (which I can consult when I have questions)!
Set-up was better, as I knew what I was doing. See above!!! I moved the Missions Book to a chair next to the Rulebook chair (see my left), I kept the solo/co-op book in the box (see my right), but I moved the Villain Traits and Hero’s Traits to the table so they were easier to consult! In general, the set-up was easier, as I knew where everything was. The set-up doesn’t quite as daunting this time.
The maintenance on the AI turn was still a bit much. I think I fudged it a few times. It almost feels as is the AI needs a flowchart: there are a lot of rules to operating the AI that can get lost in the sea of rules of Batman: Gotham City Chronicles.
The second game actually was a loss as well! On the last turn, Batman failed to roll 3 successes on three dice … just like the first game!
This was heartbreaking, as Batman moved through the Drones to solve the final riddle of the Riddler, spent most of his points, but could NOT roll three successes, even with a reroll! It was very frustrating. Again.
Things went better for the second game: set-up was quicker, the AI was a little easier to run, and tear-down was quicker. Still, the AI was a chore to run.
Cooperative Play: Two Weeks Later
Because of the nature of game groups, it took about 2 weeks (after my solo game plays) to get some cooperative play in.
I did forget some rules and had to look some stuff up in realtime, but my friends were patient with me. Over about 2 hours, we were able to get the game set-up and played!
Now, we did miss a few rules as we played (mostly Villains traits), but the game moved fairly smoothly once we got going.
The solo burden I had setting up the game was now shared: Sara looked for the character sheets and displays, Sara helped set-up the board with Teresa, and I unpacked all the Villain cards. It certainly helped that I set-up the game by myself a few times; I was able to direct my friends in shared set-up. This “set-up burden shared” actually kind of made the game feel more cooperative! That’s a crazy thing to say, but we were all so “invested” in the game because we all spent so much time setting up. I guess you could call that the equivalent of “Stockholm Syndrome” for board games! Nevertheless, we all felt involved in the game because we were all invested in the game because we all set it up!
The game itself seemed to have its own cadence based on the Scenario we chose: Batman was the fighter, Catwoman took out the Bombs (the real goal of the scenario), and Orphan was there to “lure” the Villains away from Catwoman. It’s not quite what we planned, or maybe even wanted, but based on our powers, that’s how we won.
Just like there was the “shared burden” for setting up, there was the “shared burden” of maintenance per turn. Teresa and Sara helped execute the maintenance (moving/attacking/protecting) while I tracked down rules. I became the default rules-guy (since the game is so rules heavy), and Sara and Teresa helped keep the game moving.
One of things that we enjoyed was there was no turn order: players can spend energy however they want, in whatever order they want, to execute their actions! I’ve said it many times: Player Selected Turn Order makes a game feel that much more cooperative! We can decide (as a group) the order in which we want to play, engaging the group in cooperative strategy. “Let me set-up Catwoman so she can get to the bomb: I’ll clear the way! “
So, I liked this cooperatively: me and my friends had a good experience. The girls liked the game, but they just noticed “there are a lot of rules here“! I had to explain to them that our enjoyable two-hour session was the evolution of many days and reading and printing and set-up! I had gotten to the point where I could shepherd the cooperative experience fairly well. And that made a potentially horrendous experience into something fun and palatable. We had fun.
The game was better cooperatively, but I think it’s only better cooperatively if the solo player has gone though all the pain to get through a couple of games. Said another way, this is good cooperatively, but only if there’s a good shepherd. A good shepherd can help guide the players through the rules, help distribute the “shared burden” of set-up, help distribute the per-turn “shared burden” of maintenance, and keep the game flowing. I think this can only happen if the shepherd is experienced enough in the solo game.
This game would have been a disaster if we tried to learn everything “as a group”. My friends would have bailed, and I would have been left with an expensive toy. Learn the game solo: if you like it enough, keep playing a few more games until you become a good shepherd. Only then should you bring this out cooperatively! At that point, the shepherd will run the game smoothly with the “shared burdens” of set-up, maintenance, and tear-down making the game an enjoyable cooperative experience.
Reflections
Now that I have played enough, here’s some things to keep in mind.
Since this is solo/co-op: you can rewind the game if you want. In my second game, I chose to pursue solving an “elaborate riddle”, so I started down that route … but after I got to the room of interest, I forgot about hindrance rules! With the Riddler in the room when I tried to solve the riddle, I realized I needed one more success: WHICH I COULDN’T GET on the dice I had?? So, I backed everything up and took a different tact. In the 1 vs. many game, you could never do that because that’s basically cheating! But, since the alternative is to start over, the solo/co-op mode can just “rewind time” and try again with minimal effort. This “rewind” helps take some of the sting out of the incredibly long set-up and tear-down of the game. In that way, the solo/co-op makes the game better.
I also think this is a lifestyle game: this is a game with so many rules, especially with the new solo/co-op rules, that unless you play this frequently, you are likely to forget the rules. Case in point: See the previous section on Cooperative Play! After only 2 weeks, I started to forget some rules! If this is only a game you pull out from time to time, I think it’s much harder to get back into it.
I have a group of friends who play FrostHaven once a week: they all love Fantasy and don’t mind the complexity of that world. I could see me and a group of friends playing Batman: Gotham City Chronicles once a week … but I don’t have any friends who love the Batman world as much as myself.
Counterpoint To Shut-Up & Sit-Down
I previously mentioned the Shut-up & Sit-Down video where they trashed the game. I want to reflect on a major point they made during their video, now that I have some experience with the game:
0) “We like hitting each other”. One of SU&SD’s complaints is that the game requires players to be judicious about how they use their energy, rather than just beating each other up! I actually like the thinky aspect of the game! It makes it a puzzle! And this thinky-ness is incredibly thematic, especially for a Batman game! Batman is all about being smart: knowing when to rest, knowing when to attack, and knowing when NOT to attack! I think the way this works is quite clever, so I completely disagree with SU&SD‘s point on this.
Conclusion
I don’t think I can, in good conscience, recommend the solo/co-op expansion unless you adore Batman. The solo/co-op mode had so many production issues (French/English issues, rulebook form factor issues, needing separation of Scenarios and Rules issues, small book factor, binding issues), and there is so much maintenance per turn to operate the AI, I can’t objectively give this more than a 5.5/10. The solo/co-op mode works, but there are a lot of issues.
And then the randomness of the game with the dice can also be very frustrating, especially after spending so much time in set-up, AI operations, and tear-down.
Despite all these issues, I subjectively am going to give this expansion a 7.0/10.0. Why? Because I did really feel like Batman moving around, trying to be “smart” about how to use my energy, fighting only when I needed to (like Batman does), and trying to figure out the puzzle of trying to stop the bad guys! I can finally play Batman! I enjoyed the set-up with the minis, I enjoyed putting the board together, I enjoyed the experience, even as much work as it was. But, realize this is a me-rating: if this were a fantasy game, a space game, a Smurfs game, an Aliens game, I would probably hate this game. But the Batman theme makes me like this game: I like living in this world with these Heroes and Villains!
At the end of the day, can I recommend getting Batman: Gotham City Chronicles if you just want the solo/co-op mode? You’ve seen my journey: from knowing nothing, to set-up, to reading rules, to printing augments, to reading expansion rules to finally playing solo and co-op!! It was quite a rough road to get there! But, you know yourself better than me! Maybe all you needed was this solo/co-op expansion to finally dive into Batman: Gotham City Chronicles! Decide for yourself based on everything you’ve seen here!
If you do pick this up and want to play cooperatively, I think it’s imperative that someone plays the game solo to become a shepherd for the game. Without a good shepherd, I think the cooperative game will end in disaster. With a good shepherd, the cooperative game will be a fun experience! But it’s a very thin line!
This is a super light cooperative card game for 1-5 Players, taking 10 minutes to play, for ages 10+.
Unboxing
This … is pretty small. It’s a deck of 48 colorful cards, 5 Player Aids, and a pamphlet (sigh) of instructions. See the box above and below (with a Can of Coke for perspective).
The cards are very colorfully labelled numbers 1-8 in six colors: 6 * 8 = 48 cards. See above.
The pamphlet isn’t great, but it does teach the game. See above and below.
Probably the most important part of the instructions are how to make a match … see the nice graphic on the back of the rule sheet.
This same match information is replicated on the Player Aid cards. Once you have the game down, it moves real quickly, but this Player Aid is quite nice to have.
There’s not much else to it!
Gameplay
Players make a pyramid of cards and try to make matches (on revealed cards) to slowly eat away those cards, until all the cards in the pyramid are gone! If you matched ALL the cards in the pyramid, you win! If you run out of cards (in your hand) on the way, you lose! See above at the starting game!
As the game progresses, you remove cards from the pyramid: you can only match and remove the revealed cards. Once you match a card, you take it away. If you ever take away both cards covering the level above, you flip the new card! Think 7 Wonders Duel! See above as we have uncovered the leftmost card …we can now flip it so it can take part in matches!
To get rid of cards out of the pyramid, you must make matches. You can match in one card: either the color or the number. In the example above, the player hand is at the bottom: the green 6 can either match the Green 2 (color) at the bottom or the red 6 (number)! Sometimes, you need two cards to match: in which case you can do math and add/subtract!
For example, Yellow 7 – Blue 5 is Green 2 … so that’s a match!
It turns out you can also combine colors (additively) to match! So the match above: BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN would also match!
Ultimatch
The reason this game is called Ultimatch: if you match BOTH color AND Number, then you get a special match called The Ultimatch! You strive for The Ultimatches! Why? Because you start the game with a limited number of cards, and the Ultimatch is the ONLY WAY to get more cards! When you make the Ultimatch, you discard both cards (and the card from the pyramid), but you get 2 cards back!
Your life is about to change. All you do is look for is the Ultimatches once you start playing this game.
Solo Play
Kudos to Ultimatch for having a solo mode (and following Saunders’ Law)!
The solo player is given 13 cards (see the bottom) and told to get going! The only new cards the solo player can ever get is from making Ultimatches, so the solo player tries to find all the Ultimatches he can!
I played 5-6 solo games in a row: it was so easy! Ultimatch really is about 10 minutes long per game. But, I made mistakes, I forgot rules, but after about 5 games, I was starting to see some of the strategies: primary colors tend to be more valuable than composite colors because you can combine primaries to make composites, but not the other way around! And it’s better to match with 1 card if possible! And there’s all sorts of little things you learn.
Part of the fun of Ultimatch is playing a bunch of games quickly to discover some of the strategies.
I could easily see playing this solo while waiting for some friends to come over … it’s just so quick!
Cooperative Play
But I think this game shines in cooperative mode. It’s also a little harder:
There’s a trade phase you have to think carefully about
You can’t share information about what’s in your hand
You CAN share the Alta-hand and talk about how you might use the Alta-hand
The Alta-hand is a shared group of 3-5 cards (see photo above, the Alta-Hand is below the pyramid). The players share the cards in the Alta-Hand: they can use those cards (as well as the unshared cards in their hands) to make matches. Managing this resource (Alta-Hand) is key to winning.
We found, after losing quite a bit, that the trade action (action 1, “Trade A Card“: see above) is quite important! It allows people, who may not have an Ultimatch, to offer cards that may help. It does double duty: a trade may give you an Ultimatch, but it may just be sharing information about the cards available.
Just like the solo game, we had to play multiple times to start figuring out a winning strategy. But since the game is SO QUICK, it’s easy to try a bunch of hands and start developing strategies. One strategy that worked for us was trying to get primary colors in the Alta-Hand!
Bandersnatch, Cumberpatch, Smoochy-Pants
The funniest thing happened: my friend, while looking at the scene above asked me:
“What’s the big matchee thingee called again? Ulti-smash?” “Um, it says on the back of the cards. It’s the name of the game.”
From that moment on, the name of the game changed and morphed into Bandersnatch, Cumberpatch, Smoochy-Pants and many other variants!
The game is so light and fluffy that it’s easy to have some conversation going while you are playing! So, the name of the game devolved into the funniest variants of the word Ultimatch we could think of! We joked as we played.
I think this is a real feature of the game: it’s offers a challenge, but it’s still light enough you can have fun conversation going around the table. And it’s cooperative, so you don’t hate each other like you do after a game of Uno.
Reactions
Generally, everyone liked the game! But not everyone.
CC: “It was elegant, simple, easy to learn, challenging but not impossible to win, quick to set up and put away. Solid nine. Only thing missing is a theme or some kind and a way to vary play for some more replayability. I plan to pick it up.”
Joe: “Game 8/10, Name 10/10”
Kurt: “It was cute but not something I’d gravitate to. Maybe a 6? I’d play it but I wasn’t wowed by it.”
Rich: “Good times. Solo game was pretty good: 7/10. The cooperation really shone through in the multiplayer game: 8.5/10”
Conclusion
If you want to replace Uno with a light card game that’s cooperative, Ultimatch might be what you are looking for. It’s easy to learn, easy to teach, and is quick to play. We found ourselves wanting to play over and over to hone our strategies in the game.
Ultimatch is light enough to have fun conversation going on while you play: we ended up trying to come up with funny variations of the name: Bandersnatch, Cumberpatch, Smoochy-Pants! That was suprisingly fun. Ultimatch is fun: you’ll find yourself playing multiple times to try to win!
Weirdwood Manor was #7 on our Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024! This is a bit of a weird entry into the cooperative games space: it’s a cooperative boss-battler worker placement euro game with elements of Pandemic! Whew!
I backed Weirdwood Manor when it was on Kickstarter in April 2023, and it promised delivery in April 2024. My copy of the game arrived in June 2024, so it’s about 2 months late … which is actually quite good in Kickstarter terms.
This is a cooperative game for 1-5 Players, Ages 13+. I think the 90-120 minutes (as reported by the box above) is too short: It’s been more like 2 hours + 20 minutes per player in my plays. All of my 4-Player games have been 3.5 hours or more!
Let’s take a look!
Unboxing
This is a pretty big boy, but it still seems about standard box sizes: see above with Can of Coke for reference.
This is gorgeous production! See above!
Rulebook
The rulebook is pretty good overall, but has two major flaws.
First problem: Weirdwood Manor makes the fatal mistake of making the rulebook the same width and height as the box! It’s a giant square! It gets like a C+ on The Chair Test, as I can’t really lay it on the chair next to me! It flops over the edges and is harder to read.
The second major problem: there is no index. In many games, that’s not a huge deal, but Weirdwood Manor is a very complicated game with many, many, many, many rules: it is in dire need of an Index!
Other than those two flaws, this rulebook is pretty good.
The Components page is great, even differentiating between the deluxe and retail versions!
The Set-Up was mostly really good.
In general, this rulebook is pretty good: it’s just long! This is a very very very very complicated game with lots of moving parts (both literally and figuratively)! The rulebook does a pretty job of explaining most of the pieces and showing nice pictures/examples! See above!
I always feel like the rulebook is doing something right if the back cover contains a summary of rules/flow/icons, which Weirdwood Manor does. See above.
This rulebook is pretty good, besides the square form factor and lack of index. It taught the game pretty well. Just be aware: it’s a long rulebook because it’s a pretty complicated game.
Good Guys and Bad Guys
Each player takes the role of one of 6 characters (see above) in the game: these characters are all magically oriented. These are the good guys! They have magic powers and spells! Note how nice those dual-layer boards are!
Each player takes the corresponding standee: I have the deluxe version which has the acrylic standees (they are just cardboard standees in the normal version of the game). See above.
Each player gets their own very specific deck of cards. Every turn, each player must play exactly one of their cards to “do something”! See the decks above!
As a cooperative boss-battler game, players choose one of three bosses (see above) to fight. Each one is very different!
As a cooperative boss battler, there will be a lot of dice rolled when attacks and defenses happen! See above!
The monsters (and Lady Weirdwood, off to the left above) are also acrylic standees!
The good guys characters and the bad guy monsters are all very different! The good guys each have a different deck of cards with different emphases! See some above!
Each character also has a different experience track! When you “do stuff” in the game, you get experience which you can immediately spend to upgrade your character! With experience points, you choose which track to advance, and each character has different annotations (see above) on their three experience tracks!
Other things make the characters asymmetric:
when the character rolls a STAR, a special ability (for that character) only activates
each players has different start resources
each character has VERY different spells they can activate
each character has a different progression to get dice
In general, these characters are VERY different and will play very differently!
The Manor: Worker Placement Rooms!
The core play of the game is in the Manor (mansion) above. It’s a bit of chore to build!
You place tiles in concentric rings: the outer ring (above)…
The middle ring … (see above) …
And the inner ring! See above!
Players place their standees on the entrance to begin: see above.
This game almost has a worker placement feel as well: when you end your turn in a room (see above), you activate the special ability of the room. See above for two rooms! The top one will allow you to get resources and the bottom one will allow you to rewind time! Each room has a very different ability to activate in the game!
When the Manor is all built (see above), it has a very daunting table presence! See above!
Resources
There are a number of different resources in the game you get (usually from activating a room): Power (pink), Scarabs (yellow), flame (blue), or books (green). See above! These resources are spent for many different things in the game: activating spells, buying dice, buying Companions, and many more things!
The small twist here is that the Scarabs, even though they are resources you need (yellow, see above) are also the “Bad News” tokens and they spread “kind of like” the disease cubes of Pandemic!
Scarabs in a room make it so you CANNOT activate the special ability there! You would have to go into the room and specifically fight them to get rid of them … and if you kill all the Scarabs on your room, you may still activate that room at the end of your turn.
Scarabs advance from the inner rings to the outer rings when “The Scarab Phase” happens. It reminds me of Pandemic for two reasons: 1) the Scarabs will “blight” a room if there are ever two or more in them (not unlike losing a city in Pandemic Legacy). This blight causes you to lose the room as a worker placement spot! (Don’t despair, you can always repair a blighted room) 2) The progression as Scarabs are always coming out and spreading … just like the disease cubes in Pandemic are always coming out and spreading!
Generally, flames and books are easy to get from rooms, Scarabs have to be obtained from fighting, but power is harder to get!
There are limited rooms with power tokens, but most power tokens comes from advancing the Power track on your character (the pink track above).
There’s a reason we call this a cooperative boss-battler worker placement euro (with elements of Pandemic)! The worker placement and resource management aspects feel very euro.
Time
Many cooperative games have some flavor of timer on it: you must win in so many turns, you must win before the Bad News deck runs out, and so on. Time is handled very interestingly in this game! In between the concentric circles of the rooms are two rotating rings that tell time! The first ring (above) is like the hour clock: as you play, time advances from sunrise to morning, to afternoon, to night, and back around! See above!
The outer ring is like a day clock: it has numbers from 1-12 on it (see above)! Every time the inner ring advances from night to sunrise, the outer ring spins! If the outer ring ever moves from 12 to 1, players lose! They have run out of time!
How does time advance? In two ways! First, the Monster “bad news” card moves the inner hour circle; see above as the monster card will cause hour time to advance 4 spaces!
The second way is that a player’s card is to be placed in one of the 4 positions above his character sheet: see above. Each position is labelled with a time of day: The Lore Master Meditation card (above, far right) has been played above the Night symbol, which means the player MUST SPIN the inner circle to the next night phase symbol! Every turn, the player MUST play a card to one of the spaces above. Part of the choices are trying to advance time as little as possible.
This time advancement mechanism must be balanced against matching symbols on the top of the card: see above as Prepare Defenses shield matches the Touch the Fae card! (Wild) If these symbols match, the player gets that symbol’s effect (a shield gives one more defense in combat). Sometimes you may choose to waste more time to get a better symbol match!
This is just one of the many choices players make when playing a card: Which card? How does time advance? How do symbols match?
Doors and Connectivity
These spinning concentric circles of time also controls the connectivity between rooms! See above as the characters in the room with the Chaos Ogre can’t get out to the middle rings! There’s NO DOOR between the middle ring and outer ring! When the day counter spins, the doors will spin and an exit will emerge!
These “moving” doors take a few turns for players to get: “Wait, playing my card will move the rings before I move my character?” Most of the time, we would “pretend” to advance the ring to see what connections would open up and then if the connections looked right, … then we would commit. I do admit, this is very daunting the first few times until you get a handle on it.
Spells
Each player has three spells on their character board: see above (Upper right of the board). These spells vary tremendously between characters! Some characters are more help-focused, some are more defense-focused, some are more combat-focused Each character’s spells are very different.
The spells are activated by spending resources … with Power usually being one component. See above! This is why Power is such an important resource in the game component! The spells are incredibly powerful, many times making the difference between a winning and losing combat!
Companions
Players can also recruit Companions to help them! Companions cost resources (of course), but give two main abilities! First, they usually give a nice little power you can use once (before you recharge).
Possibly more important, the Companions give another position to play cards, so you reset time less often! (Every reset causes a Scarab phase!) See above as Oliver has two companions, so he can play two cards without resetting!
Solo Game: True Solo With One Character
The game has rules for a solo variant (congratulations on following Saunders’ Law)! Basically, you can play as many characters as you want! The game recommends playing two characters, to get some synergies between characters going!
You might notice, I spent quite a bit of time describing the components and mechanisms of this game! I don’t know about you, but playing two characters seemed a little much for my first solo game! I ended up choosing to play my first solo game as a true solo game: one character. See above.
The game really needs no changes to play solo with one character: the main balancing mechanism of the game is advancing time for each play, so the total number of plays of the characters remains about the same. Very approximately, a game is “about” 2 * 12 = 24 turns total. Each character moves up the hour wheel by 1 or 2 spaces per turn, but the monster moves the hour wheel by 2-5 spaces per turn. On average, it takes about 2 player turns to advance one day, so at 12 days, the games lasts about 24 turns. So a true solo player will have about 24 turns, a 2-Player game would have each player take 12 turns, and so on.
The point of all that is — Sure! You can play this game true solo without any real rule changes! I always love it when the solo game follows the main rules: it’s usually so much work to apply solo rule exceptions to a game!
After playing a true solo game, let me say three things:
This is a pretty fun game solo.
It is a bit long. I think it took about 2 hours 30 minutes?
I absolutely would suggest your first game be a true solo game! This game has SO MANY RULES! And SO MANY INTERACTIONS! Your first game will struggle with rules, discrepancies, and just getting the game. The last thing you want to do is to context switch between two characters! Remember, every character is very different and plays very differently! Context Switching between two characters (as we’ll see below) is rough.
The true solo game works, and it works pretty well.
Solo Play: Alternating Between Two Characters
So, because the rulebook “suggests” that two character solo is the preferred way to play, I ended up playing a two character game that way by myself. At this point, I had at least one true solo game under my belt, so I at least felt ready with a decent understanding of the rules.
You can see above as the game table became even busier! And I remember this solo mode working, but I felt like I just had to “get through” it. There was so much work context switching between characters that it was overwhelming. I’ve emphasized this point quite a bit: the characters in this game are very distinct and very complicated to play! Each character requires a lot of focus to play it well.
Maybe this is your favorite game of all time! Maybe you want to explore all the characters and how they work together! I remember in Set A Watch (a cooperative dice placement game we reviewed most recently here), the 4-Character solo seemed daunting! Over time, I came to love that 4-Character solo mode after I had totally absorbed the game! Maybe the same thing will happen here?
But, I think focusing on a single character is a lot more fun. The 2-character solo play felt a little like a slog; don’t get me wrong, it worked, but I just felt like I was going through the motions. But, maybe after I absorbed this game some more, maybe I will come back to the 2 character solo mode? Maybe?
Right now, I can only recommend the true solo game, especially if it’s your first game!
Cooperative Play
I was able to get two big cooperative games together: both of 4 players.
These game groups are very different, but two things seemed to remain the same between the groups.
One: This game is very long: both 4-Player games took more than 3.5 hours. Some of this time will go away since it’s a learning game, but all my friends are seasoned gamers and jumped right in (with my help: I taught the games knowing the rules pretty well by this point). It feels like Weirdwood Manor is going to last at least 3 hours no matter what. See above as we all go away to dinner, leaving the game set-up to finish later!!!
Two: All the games I have played had the players “multi-player solo” in the beginning of the game, but engendered cooperation more in the later game. Well, we strictly speaking, didn’t have to cooperate, but we would have lost if we hadn’t! Many times, we had to figure out cooperatively how to engage the boss, but someone would have correct the topology (remember the rotating rings?), or defeat Scarabs protecting the boss, or any other issues … someone had to “blaze a path” for the next player! Or the next player had no chance!
Early in my first 4-Player game, I had to “clean-up”the Scarabs in the middle of the board (to protect Lady Weirdwood), but it meant I had to “take one for the team” to do this! It meant I had to lose a lot of resources and be behind the ball for leveling up my character! But we ABSOLUTELY had to do this, or we would have lost! (If Lady Weirdwood dies, we lose!) So, I took one for the team … enabling my compatriots to continue!
Generally, the game starts out very “multi-player solo” because everyone is in dire need of resources! To get anything going in this game, players have to concentrate on themselves … then, as the game gets further along, it’s clear players HAVE to cooperate, or they will lose!
Some characters had more abilities or spells that enticed cooperation, so the choice of characters also can affect how much cooperation there is!
What I saw in my game groups was that the Alpha Player was kept at bay because (as we saw in the solo section) there’s just too much to keep track for a single character! It’s much much harder to Alpha Player when you are busy concentrating on running your own complex character. The cooperation happened more organically by people asking for help!
“Hey, can you get rid of those Scarabs? I need to attack the boss!”
“Hey can you make sure time doesn’t advance too far? I need to make sure the boss isn’t angry yet!”
In general, there was a decent amount of cooperation, it just happened more in the later game.
Things I Liked
The production is amazing. The game pops on the table!
The Bad News cards (the Monster cards) are labelled on the back with a “hint” of the basic operation of the card! The Monster Card (see above) tells us that the Monster will “move somehow”! You flip the card and find the monster moves! This is a fantastic mechanism! It allows players to try to play cards with some general knowledge of what the bad guy will do! I remember seeing a variant of this mechanism in the cooperative game Paleo (see our review here) where the back of the wilderness cards was labelled with a generic icon as to what was coming! (We think a mechanism like this could have helped my friends like Hacktivity, from a few weeks ago, more).
I adore the acrylic standees. These alone made the Deluxe version worth getting! They are beautiful, well-labelled, and just pop on the table. They even emphasize the color on the bottom!
Playing cards into a slot to control the time advancement is really neat and interesting.
The rotating rings being used for both TIME and TOPOLOGY is very different and interesting! It took a little getting used, but it was cool.
The experience point tracks work really well: you get to make choices and advance your character at the same time! I think this one mechanism engages players more than might have expected: you become attached to your character as you care how he levels up! And your character just gets better and better as the game goes on, so you feel like you are doing something!
What I Didn’t Like
Probably the biggest detriment is the length of the game: several of my friends complained how long the game was. There’s that table (above) left set-up while we went to dinner because the game was so long …
As cool as the rotating rings are, sometimes we struggled to rotate them: this is a physical issue! We had to readjust the board on the table to avoid the crack in the middle! Even when it lay flat on another table, sometimes it didn’t advance great? It usually worked, but it just needs a slight tweak to make it easier to rotate the rings.
Speaking of the rings, why does time advance COUNTER-CLOCKWISE in the game???? When time advances in the game, you spin the rings COUNTER-CLOCKWISE!! In real life, when a clock advances forwards, it’s CLOCKWISE … thus the name CLOCKWISE! The rulebook even used the terms clockwise and counter-clockwise in descriptions! It knows the terms! This seems very counterintuitive to me!! It really seems like time moving forward should have been CLOCKWISE (like clocks). I dealt with it, but this little thing really bothered me!!
Complexity: this is a very complicated game with lots of moving parts and a long rulebook. It will take a while to absorb this, and some people may bounce off of it hard because of the complexity.
Even though this game has a lot of euro elements (worker placement, resource acquisition) and a lot of predictable elements, there’s still enough randomness to that it might just frustrate you. The game is, at its core, a boss-battler with lots of dice! You will be rolling dice and you might roll great and you might roll poorly! My friend CC got completely screwed early in one game, and had trouble recovering: he got completely smashed by the boss, and spent the rest of the game trying to recover … meanwhile watching while the rest of us were doing really well!
That element of randomness … might make one of your friends have a bad game.
Reactions
The reactions to this game from my friends was generally positive, well, except for CC who got trounced. CC’s reaction was probably the most nuanced:
I think I might have liked Weirdwood Manor more if I had gotten to play to the end. Sounds like my character got to be useful later on, which was a feeling the game had lacked for me in the turns I got to play. I liked the theme of that one and some of the mechanics were fun, but I got pretty frustrated when I kept getting shut down while watching other players advance. Nice table presence, though, and it felt like it was telling a story in a cool environment which I liked.
Kurt: He started at a 7.5, but upped his bid to 8 or 8.5/10. He really liked it! Joe: 7.5/10 Teresa: 7/10 Sara: 6-7/10, but want to play it again for more precision Andrew: 6 -7/10, but wants to play it again for more precision Me: Solo (true solo), 7.5/10, Solo (two character) 6.5/10, (Cooperative) 8.5/10
Conclusion
Weirdwood Manor is a beautiful cooperative game with a beautiful production! But you have to know what you are getting into! This is a very long and complicated game with euro worker placement elements. The game always seems to start “multiplayer-solo”, but evolves into more cooperation as the gameplay advances … if you don’t cooperate in the endgame, you will lose!
I could easily see Weirdwood Manor being someone’s favorite game of 2024! It has so many unique and quirky mechanisms, satisfying advancement, and engaging play! Just be aware how complicated this game is! The extra complexity does have the advantage of keeping the Alpha Player at bay!
I recommend staying with true solo (take control of one character) to learn the game, and only tackle solo with multiple characters if you want more challenge.
My groups all like the game, with ratings between 6 and 8.5, with most people giving it at least a 7.
Hopefully this review helps you decide if Weirdwood Manor is for you!
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