Month: June 2025

Wroth: Worth it or Throw it? A Review of the Competitive, Solo, and Cooperative Modes

Wroth first attracted my attention because of the gorgeous art!  Manny Trembley, the same fellow who did all the wonderful Dice Throne stuff (see here, here, and here) is the artist and designer for Wroth!

The next thing that attracted my attention was that this is an Area Control game (think of games like Risk), but it had a both a solo and cooperative mode?  That’s very interesting!  You never see Cooperative Area Control games!

So, when Wroth was up on Gamefound (a Kickstarter-like site) back in March 2024, I went ahead and backed it!  There were plenty of pledge levels, but I chose to stay with the lesser pledge of the All Gameplay Bundle (with two faction expansions: see below).   I’ve become more jaded over the years and don’t go all-in like I used to: I just wanted to see if the game even worked!  What’s the point of getting everything if you maybe don’t even like the game?

Did I like this? That turns out to be a real interesting question, and I went on a little bit of a journey as I played Wroth! Let’s take a look!

Unboxing/Gameplay

Wroth has a strange form factor; see above with a can of Coke for scale.

I will say that I think the cover for this game may be my favorite cover of the year.  I love this colorful yet minimalistic art of Manny Trembley.

I think this a weird sized boxed mostly so the area mat fits in there when rolled up: see above as it’s rolled up and below as it’s opened up.

This is an area control/area majority game where players get victory points for controlling one of the eight areas on the map above.  

Each player takes control of one of 5 factions (see above), each with special powers and special dice (elite troops, we’ll see below)

Be careful! There are actually two sides to each character! 

One side is the player side (see above): this is the side used by player characters.

The other side is the AI side (see above) that gets used when you play co-op or solo.  If you play co-op or solo, one of these factions will be the bad guy the player(s) fight against.  How do you tell the difference between the two sides?  It’s a little hard to tell until someone tells you “look for the AI marker above the All-Seeing Dice space”.  It’s white, and a little hard to see. See above.

Each faction has their own basic troops, color-coded to the faction of interest.  The basic troops form the foundation of the armies that go out on the mat; these are used for combat and to show area majority.

There’s a bunch of dice in the game, but THEY DON’T ALL GET ROLLED!  Many of them are used to mark elite troops for each faction.   The number on the die is how strong they are!  Again, all the elite troops are color-coded per faction.

See above as the Guild faction gets his six elite troops: 3 Stellen and 3 Cryen.  You’ll note each elite troop type has some special powers notated on the player mat.

There are some dice that actually get rolled!

The action dice are rolled at the start of the turn, and each player will draft one action die in turn (multiple times).  This is a dice-drafting game.  After the dice are drafted, players will take turns “executing” the dice, depending on what’s on the face.  Move troops, disperse troops, do damage, or gain Corra (money) are the main actions.

The All-Seeing Dice (next to the Horde) is a special die that’s rolled at the start of the turn: all players have a single All-Seeing Die. It’s a more powerful die that can be used anytime on your turn; it can augment your rolls, or give you more damage, or other things.  Every turn, you must play an Action die that you drafted, but the All-Seeing Die can be used (on your turn) when you want to, so you can choose when to use it.

Each player has special abilities on the Faction Feat cards: see the three for The Guild above.  Players get to choose one Feat for the game.

See three of the Ruinein feat cards above.  Each player gets to choose the power that matches their play style best!

We’ve said that this is a victory point game, so there is a victory point mat for tracking said VPs!  In all the modes, the victory usually has something to do with having the most victory points!  A common winning condition is the player who gets to 30 VP first wins.

There are some player reference cards; 4 total.  Enough for everyone, but we shared two per side of the table (since the front and back are different).

Finally, there are Solo/Cooperative scenario cards, 3 for each faction (see above).  As the name suggests, you only use them in the solo and co-op modes.

This is a game about getting troops (elite or basic) on the map and dominating regions!  If you dominate the region during the Victory Point round, you score the Victory Points for that region!  See above as green (Ruinen faction will dominate and get 1 VP for region 2.

This is an absolutely gorgeous game with beautiful components, graphic design, and art!  This is a game from Chip Theory games, which means that all of the components are water-proof!  The mats are all neoprene, the cards are all plastic, and the dice are plastic.  Of course, the box and rulebook are still cardboard/paper.   

Rulebook

The rulebook is pretty good, but has some issues.

First of all, this gets an A on the Chair Test!  

When opened on the chair next to me, the rulebook stays open flat, it has a nice big font, and doesn’t flop around over the edges.  It’s easy to consult this rulebook on the chair next to me!

The Component page was a little frustrating; they list all the components, but don’t correlate them well with pictures.  See above: there are a few pictures, but given how much white space on that page, they could have easily made a better components page.

The set-up is ok; it actually spans two pages (7 and a little bit of 8) and the set-up crosses a physical page boundary (i.e., you have to turn the page): Boo!!!  The best set-ups are when all of the set-up is across two pages across from each other.  They also didn’t define some terms during the set-up (what is a “side“?) that made it harder to set-up.  The set-up was just ok.  It really should have been better.

In general the rulebook was pretty good.  There was a lot of text!  There are were a number of pages where I think a bulleted list would have helped (esp. in the AI section for solo/co-o mode).

We’ll discuss more about the rulebook in the “When Is a House Rule Not a House Rule” section below, but basically there are a LOT of edge cases that aren’t well-specified.  In fact, there’s one rule for which the interpretation may make the difference between you liking and disliking the game!

But, I was able to learn the game and teach the game using the rulebook.  I also really liked the font and layout; it was easy to read physically the book.

A Strange Journey

I was very excited for this when it arrived!  A solo and cooperative area control game! So cool!

However, my bubble was burst a little when I read the Modes of Play (page 3 of the rulebook, see above).  In order to play the solo game, you MUST understand the Standard Mode!  In other words, you must play the competitive mode in order to push on to the solo mode!  That seems like a missed opportunity, because many people’s first play would probably WANT to be solo (so they can learn the basics) and then teach.  Nope.  You gotta learn competitive mode first!

So, my first game was a Me vs. Me competitive game (Ruinein vs The Guild) in the Standard Mode!  I really wish the solo game had been the first game to play!  I guess, strictly speaking, Me vs. Me is a solo mode (as I play both factions myself), but it’s not normally how we define “solo play”.

Over the next few weeks, I ended up playing four different ways!!
(1) Me vs. Me Standard Mode (competitive)
(2) 3-Player Standard Mode (competitive)
(3) Solo Mode (cooperative)
(4) 2, 3-Player Cooperative Mode

Me vs. Me

The Me. vs Me solo game (competitive) actually worked very well to teach the game.  I had to get over a bunch of rulebook issues (and I did), but I came to appreciate the competitive game! Look, this is a solo and cooperative games blog, but the competitive mode is quite elegant! It’s very simple to learn, it moves quickly, and it is very punchy!  My Me vs. Me game only lasted 45 minutes, and it never felt like it bogged down!  The turns were quick, the mechanisms were easy to get a handle on (mostly), and it was very punchy! (Pun intended!)

I was kind of shocked how much I liked the competitive game in the Me vs. Me mode; after all, this is a solo and cooperative blog!  I can’t like the competitive mode, can I?

Solo Mode (first game)

Remember, you can’t play the solo game until you learned the Standard Mode! So, after the Me vs Me game, I played solo mode.  (Thank you Wroth for following Saunders’ Law!).  These rules are described in six pages at the end of the rulebook.  Yes, that’s right, the solo/cooperative modes need six pages to describe the rules!!!  This is NOT an easy extension of the base rules!

This solo mode is true solo mode, as you take control of one faction and then fight another AI-controlled faction.  I stayed with The Guild (see above), since I felt comfortable with that faction from my  Me Vs Me game.  Set-up was the same for my character in solo mode (modulo how many basic troops I get).

For the solo game, you fight one opponent; another faction!  To do that, you flip to the AI side (see above) and choose one of the three Scenario cards for that faction!  See above, I chose Priorities.  

In the solo game, the opponent uses the flip side of the Scenario card; it gives bad news, depending on the turn number!

You always know what the bad news will be, as the Chaos Dice (8-sided die above) indicates which bad news will erupt! It’s even worse, as more bad news happens as the game proceeds! On turn 2, you will have 2 bad news events (in order from the card), 3 bad news events on turn 3 and so on!  The only good news here is that you know EXACTLY what the bad news will be, (as it just increments by 1 per turn) so you can plan for it.

The set-up is also described on the card (see above).

It’s still a dice drafting game, as you choose dice and the opponent gets the left over die.  You know what your three actions will be, and you know the opponent’s first action.

In the solo/co-op mode, however, the dice mean something different!  In general, the AI actions for the dice are about 2x as powerful! 

(1) the Mine action gives the AI twice the Corra
(2) the Extend action moves 4 troops to the mat (instead of just 2 for human players)
(3) the Maneuver action really allows the AI to spread out faster than a plain move
(4) The Battle action does twice the damage as a human battle

See (page 17) the descriptions of the dice for the AI faction above.  I think the idea is that, because the solo plauyer can see what’s coming (since the solo player drafts the action die for the AI), the action dice are “twice as powerful” for balance.  The solo player gets to choose the action dice (at least the first one), and so he has an advantage.  On  later turns, the AI simply rolls the die, so it’s not clear what’s coming.   So, for balance purposes, I think the action dice are more powerful for the AI.

My first game ended in a win, as I beat the AI like 40 VPs to 16 VPs, but I look back now and realize that I played a lot of rules wrong.  Was it too easy?  Before I make any pronouncements on the solo game, I need to play solo a few more times.   But, playing the first solo game gave me to confidence to teach the cooperative game.

Competitive Mode (3-Player)

In order to teach my friends the cooperative game, they first had to learn the competitive game.  See us setting up above.

Just like the Me vs Me solo game, the competitive game was easy to teach!  Easy to learn! And it was punchy!  It was over in about an hour (just like the box says)!  I recommend teaching the competitive game first in just about all situations!

Sara absorbed the rules quickly and actually beat my one Victory point!   It was so easy to get the competitive game to the table!

After my Me vs Me game and my 3-Player competitive game, I can honestly say I am very impressed with the competitive game of Wroth!  I don’t like competitive games that much, and I really liked Wroth! The best word I can use to describe it (with pun intended as well) is punchy!

It just moves quickly and is easy to to get into! It really does take 60 minutes as the box says!  If someone ever wants to play a competitive Risk or some other competitive Area Control/Area Majority game, I’ll say “Can we play Wroth instead?“

Cooperative Mode

If you thought this was going to be a rave review of Wroth, well, you’d be wrong.  After having a nice time playing the 3-Player competitive game of Wroth, we headed into a 3-Player cooperative version … and got decimated.

In the cooperative game, the players fight one AI faction, just like in the solo game.  Just like the solo game, the players choose a Scenario card “Death and Taxes” (see below) … We played against Ruinein (see above). 

For balance, the AI player gets the same number of turns as the human players, but only after the  human players have gone.    Thus, after each human player activates on action die, the AI player gets that many unanswered turns in a row!  This is for balance; in a 3-Player game, the players do three things, then the AI gets three turns to answer!

We lost our game like 3 to 43.  Yes, you read that right.  We had no good turns, and the AI kept us off the board so we couldn’t score any Victory Points.  It was literally the worst cooperative game I played in some time.   It felt so random and unbalanced as the AI opponent turns were twice as powerful!  And we couldn’t see what the AI would do because in his turn, he just rolled the dice, so we had no way of knowing!

After this cooperative game, I put my game of Wroth on BoardGameGeek to sell it. I hated this play so much!   I am pretty sure we played it right, but there was so much randomness in the game, it wasn’t fun.  

Randomness

First, you don’t get to choose what you do on your turn, you can only draft the dice that get rolled into the pool.  I have phrased this: “You have to do what the dice say”.   In the competitive mode, this doesn’t feel like a big deal, because all players are equally stuck with this decision and you can see what everyone will be doing … so, you can feel more prepared.  In the cooperative mode, you have very little idea what the AI will do because he gets to roll the dice!  And you may not know what it is! (In the solo mode there is much less ambiguity).  And it’s even worse if there are more people playing!

Second, in the cooperative game, where the AI starts can have big difference! You have to roll!  If the AI starts in section 5 or 6, they are adjacent to SO MANY more regions, and can keep you off the map because they can attack you more!  In our first game, the AI started on section 5 (see above), and because of that one position, the AI was able to decimate our troops off the map because he could reach almost all of us quickly! Remember when I said the AI’s action are about “twice as powerful”?  If the AI fights you in the first few rounds, he can easily knock you off the board.  

The solo game mitigates this randomness because you can see what the AI is going to do on his turn.   In the cooperative mode, the AI will roll dice and you have no idea what will happen! It’s even worse for more players!

I think the idea of the AI’s actions being “twice as powerful” is for balance; probably half of the time, the AI may roll an action which DOES NOTHING, so when the AI does roll something useful, it needs to compensate by making the useful actions twice as powerful!  The idea is that the AI gets, on average, as much efficacy as the human players (as the “do nothing” rolls get averaged out with useful rolls).

The only problem with this is that, if the AI rolls well for a good number of its rolls, it will simply decimate you. And that’s what we saw in our first cooperative game.  A  post-analysis of the game had us thinking we lost in round 1 as the AI rolled exactly what it needed to get us off the map, and we couldn’t get a foothold after that.

Solo Game Revisited

After such a horrible cooperative experience, I wanted to played the same horrible scenario solo.  Was this a fluke?  Was it something else?

I ended up playing a very balanced game and was able to beat the same Scenario that crushed us in the 3-Player cooperative game.  Part of the reason was because I could see more what the AI was going to do, so I could try to be smart and work around it.   The randomness wasn’t nearly as pronounced because I could see what what the AI would do most and plan for it (but see below).  It’s only in the cooperative game that the randomness can run away, because the AI starts getting random, unanswered turns (in the 3-Player game, the AI gets three unanswered turns in a row).

I really liked my solo game.  Now that I knew all the rules better, I could be smart.  I could outthink the AI.  The solo game is a puzzle. And I love that!

I had put my copy of Wroth up for sale on BGG after such a horrible cooperative game.  I would be okay if it didn’t sell, because I had like the competitive game so much.  I wasn’t sure about the solo game until I got a few more under my belt.  I like the solo game; it’s a puzzle.  I took my copy of Wroth down from BGG and have decided to keep it.

And after a few more solo games, I realized I made the right choice to keep Wroth.  This is a neat solo game.

When Is a House Rule Not a House Rule?

I have at least three or pages of questions about edge rule cases after playing numerous times: see my little stickies above.   Although the rulebook is pretty good, it really doesn’t address a lot of edge cases.  

In particular, the Solo/Co-OP Scenario cards have limited real estate (they are just cards), and all the rules have to be on the back!  There are no FAQs (yet: see this thread here on BGG), and each Scenario is very different and will need questions answered.   I love the plastic cards that Chip Theory uses, but this is a case where I think having a separate Scenario book would have been a better choice.  There are much fewer real estate issues (a page will have much more space than a single card) and further elaborations/FAQs could be placed in there.  

When is a House Rule not a House rule?  When we have to make a determination based only the information you have!   If the rules aren’t clear, we have to interpret the rules so we can move forward!  Maybe we interpreted it wrong, maybe we didn’t.  But we can’t call it a House Rule because a House Rule is usually when you choose a different direction when knowing the rules.  

Most of the rules made sense after I have played about 5 or 6 times.  There is one rule that’s very important, and may determine how much I like this.  I don’t consider this a House Rule because the text is unclear.

When the AI rolls an action die after he takes a turn, when does that roll happen?  On page 17, the text says:  “The drafted die is then rolled to determine the action taken by the AI faction’s subsequent turns”.   When is it rolled?  If it’s rolled at the START of the AI’s turn, then you don’t know what the AI will do!  If it’s rolled AFTER the AI has taken his action, then the players will know what the AI will do!  I think, by the phrasing above, that the AI die is rolled AFTER the the AI has taken his action.  This minor difference might be the difference between me liking the solo game or not! If I can be smart and see what the AI is up to, then I can plan ahead! Even if the AI turns are twice as powerful, I can still plan around them.

It’s not a House Rule if the interpretation is unclear.  I am going with the interpretation that makes me like the game more; AFTER.

Cooperative Play (revisited)

All right, I SOMEHOW convinced my friends to try to play cooperatively again. Well, at least one of them.

This time, we played a 2-Player game.  And it went a little better.

I think that when the opponent faction gets too many “unanswered turns” in a row, the game spiral out of control.  In our 2-Player game, there’s fewer of those unanswered turns (only 1 per).  I think we found that the 2-Player game is barely in the cusp of spinning out of control.  

For the AI faction we played, we have to keep the opponent from CONTROL of the middle, and guess where the opponent “randomly” started?  We pretty much lost the game instantly, as we realized we couldn’t do enough movement to get us to the middle!  So, basically, we re-rolled the intro dice until we had a combo that we could “not lose” right away.   

This is the kind of randomness that kills us.  

I think 2-Player cooperatively can work (barely); it feels like it’s just about to spin out of control so many times.

One of the reasons I think I hate the “unanswered turns” is that it reminds me of the problems with Variable Turn Order where the nemesis can get 3 to 4 unanswered turns in a row: see  our post here on that.  I think watching the nemesis do something without being able to do something makes me feel impotent.  I think the 3-Player and 4-Player cooperative game has this problem.   If you have a friend you can really work together well with, the 2-Player cooperative game might be okay for you.  Even at that count, the randomness can still trash your game.

Conclusion

In a crazy turn of fate, I am going to recommend Wroth as a competitive game but not as a cooperative game! I know! That’s so weird for a solo/cooperative blog!

The competitive mode is punchy and quick!  It’s easy to teach! And it’s over quickly! You feel powerful and smart on your turn!  Objectively, the competitive game is probably like an 8.5/10.  Subjectively, since I don’t tend to like competitive games, I’d probably give it a 7/10.  I’d still play it!  I think I might give it a higher score if it didn’t have “the dice tell you what to do” mechanism.  I’ve never loved that.

Unfortunately, we found the cooperative mode too random.  We even gave it several chances, but it wasn’t fun.  There was too much unanswered randomness as the AI player slaughters you with actions that are twice as powerful.  I don’t want to play this again cooperatively: 4/10.  Maybe, maybe, the 2-Player co-op would work for you, but definitely not 3 or 4-Player cooperatively.

But the solo game was fun!  I liked the puzzle it presented! The untethered randomness we saw in the cooperative mode wasn’t there because the AI never got those unanswered random rolls.  I had a great time; maybe 8 or 8.5/10 for the solo game? Again, this might be higher if it didn’t have the “the dice tell you what to do” mechanism.

It’s weird, I almost sold my copy of Wroth  (it was up on BGG for 3 days) because I had one of the worst cooperative plays ever: I can’t recommend Wroth as a cooperative game.   But the solo and competitive games were both really good and saved the game for me; it’s staying in my collection.  

Super Squad High: A Solo and Cooperative Superhero-ish Game

Super Squad High is a cooperative and solo Superhero game that was on Kickstarter in April 2024.  It promised delivery in March 2023, and it was just a month or two late (which is pretty good in Kickstarter terms).

I went ahead and backed the high-end version and got the Arylic pins and Art Book: See above.

The Arylic pins are completely superfluous and you don’t need them, but we had fun picking our characters using the pins (and then wearing the pins): see above.

Let’s take a look!

The Rulebook

The rulebook was just okay.  

The rulebook ventured into low C territory for The Chair Test. It does kinda fit on the chair next to me, and it does stay open, but it does droop a little too much for my liking.

There tended to be a LOT of text without too many pictures.  Luckily, it seems like most of the rules are there (modulo one solo rule for Crime cards).  Also, the font was a little small.

There also seemed to be a lot of “space” around the edges that was just “flavor”, when I would have preferred more pictures and a larger font.

The components page was pretty good.

The Set-Up worked pretty well, especially since the directions were on one side, and a picture on the other.

I got through the rulebook, and most of the rules were in there in a logical place.  I think the rulebook could have been made better in a lot of ways, but the fact that it did seem to have all the rules goes a long way.  In the end of the day, it was fine, but it could have been better.

Unboxing, Components, and Gameplay

This is a pretty standard sized game box: see Coke Can above for scale.

1-4 Players each take the role of a SuperHero in a High School!

Each hero gets a Student ID and Power card: see above.  These two cards form your character!  My character was the “Swole Tank” and he has Super Strength!  See above!! Players get to choose from one of two Student IDs and one of two Powers at the start of the game, so there is some choice about who/what you get!

Players gets “Costumes” (cards above) throughout the game.  These cards are basically used to fight crime!

Generally, the Costume cards are used to the stop the elements of crime … that appears from the Danger Dice!  See  the Danger Dice above, and that the Costume cards correspond to some of the symbols.  Basically, if you can’t “block” all Danger Dice with your Costume Cards, then something takes damage (either the city, you, or an innocent bystander)!

See above as the Tachyon Field, Hockey Mask, and Tungsten Jack block all bad effects from the crime!  And even though the Tungsten Jack doesn’t match exactly to block, this was a “grey” or Tools-related crime, so all Tools cards are wild and can stop anything!

Crimes come out as the Heroes play!  See above as the Rampage hits the Science Center!  In order to take out that crime, you have take care of Minions AND Disable the Weapons!  If you fail, then some damage happens to the city!

At the top of the board are “damage tokens”: if there is ever too much damage (usually from letting crimes go), then the players lose!  The heroes MUST keep the crime at bay!

Although keeping crime at bay is important, it’s not how you win the game!  You have to talk to your schoolmates to try to deduce WHO is the big bad villain, what their scheme, and what is their motive! See schoolmates above!  

The more students you befriend and have successful “meetups”, the further you get!  To win the game, you must uncover all three: Villain, Scheme, and Motive (see above).  You must do this before the clock runs out!  (The clock is the Crime deck running out of cards).  Even after you unmask the Villain, you STILL have to have a final fight!

Students are befriended by finding out about them (their Flirty, Sad, and Funny interests).  In order to truly befriend someone, you must discover their interests and what makes them tick!

You move your tokens on the board to “talk” to people: see above as one token talks to some Edgy student (to uncover one of their traits).

Crazy enough, with all this going on, you still have to keep up with your homework!  Doing your homework won’t win the game, but if ANYONE is ever failing, all players lose the game!

If you can keep crime at bay, keep your homework under control, speak to your classmates, and do your laundry, maybe you can uncover the Villain, Motive, and Scheme!  After such a reveal, you have to win one final battle with the SuperVillain to win!

Worker Placement

This is nominally a Worker Placement game, as you have to put out your tokens out to do stuff.  Each player gets two tokens in the Morning, two in the afternoon, and two at Night.

These tokens go on the board to do stuff! Notice above as a token goes on “Geeky” to talk to a Geeky schoolmate!  Also notice that the Locations can ONLY be visited at certain times of day.  In the morning and afternoon, you can usually only do things at school (like Homework or talk to schoolmates) or sometimes upgrade your Costume Deck!

Usually, things are the city can only be activated at night!  See above as the Stadium can only be activated at night!

From a cooperative point of view, the rulebook was never “clear” on how to place your tokens.  The only rule seems to be “Starting with the Leader, players take turns taking actions”.  I think that probably means clockwise … but given the lack of clarity, we chose to simply use Player Selected Turn Order!  As a group, we can decide when to place our tokens.  Since this is a fully cooperative game, it doesn’t matter “too much” the order they are placed, as long as everyone agrees with basically where they go!  (This was probably a House Rule: we’d recommend it to you).

“I really need to do my Chemistry homework, or I fail and we lose!  You need to let me go there!”
“I really need to talk to that Geeky girl, is that okay, or do you need to talk the other Geeky guy?”
“We really need to deal with this crime!  I can do the punchy part, can someone else do the gadgety part? Or can you back me up nearby?”

These (above) are typical phrases that got uttered during our gameplay!

The Worker Placement as a mechanism to fight crime, do homework, talk to schoolmates, and upgrade our decks seemed to work pretty well.  It was intuitive and the icons worked pretty well.
It was also interesting to note that you could only use certain spaces at certain times of the day.  This made planning ahead more critical!

Deduction

This is nominally a deduction game … ish?  You have to uncover the Villain, Scheme, and Motive in order to win the game!

You can only move forward by talking to your class mates and befriending them!  Once you have truly befriended a classmate, you can get closer to revealing one of the Villain/Motive/Scheme cards!

This mechanism worked pretty well, but it wasn’t really “that” deductive. I was hoping for more deduction, but the mechanism worked.  It was just simpler and easier than I expected.  That’s not a bad thing, but this doesn’t “really” have that much deduction.

The Summary cards show what all the trait tokens can be, but unless you have uncovered “most” of them, guessing is a real shot in the dark.  You can try to befriend someone without knowing all their traits, but you have to guess the unknown traits! It might be easier to just talk to them ahead of time directly rather than wasting a turn and “maybe” befriending them.   I was hoping for a little more deduction … this just felt like you just had to spend your turns judiciously to make sure you talked to the person enough.  Befriending someone was more about proper use of time rather than deduction.

Crime

The Crime fighting part of the game seemed to work pretty well.  I was worried because so much of the Crime fighting is dice based, but since certain cards are wild when you fight crime (yellow cards are wild when fighting minions, and blue cards are wild when Disbabling Weapons: see above), you actually have a pretty good idea of if you will succeed or not.   If you engage the crime, YOU WILL DEFEAT IT, … but can you pay the cost?  Can you afford to damage to the city? Yourself? Innocent Bystanders?  I was really worried that the dice mechanism would be too random for me, but it really wasn’t.

Superhero?

Is this a Superhero game?  Yes … mostly.  The High School part makes this feel more like the movie Sky High than Avengers or Thunderbolts! Don’t get me wrong, I actually really liked the movie Sky High, but not everyone will love this “let’s be superheroes in High School” theme!   The Superhero theme does come through, but it is a little silly.   There’s a certain … silliness (?) to the game.   It’s more that this game doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s still pretty good.

I think the art style and sillyish costume cards contribute to that lighter feeling.  See some above.

If you even know what the movie Sky High is and you like said movie, I think you will like this game!  Even if you don’t, you may still like this game.  The theme may turn you off, but there’s still some fun to be had.  But, if that theme would just turn you off completely … I’d say “give it a try”. 

I don’t think this would make my Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Games, but that’s not because it’s bad or anything; it’s just that the high school theme detracts a little from the Superhero part.

Roleplay

There is an element of this game that will make you love or hate this game.  When you are doing the “deduction” for the traits of your classmates, one player is reading the questions and seeing if you can answer correctly for the traits.  See above and below for examples of some questions!!!  For some people, this will be the funnest thing in the world as you answer questions for the traits to show you know them!  For some people, this will be the dumbest thing in the world and they will hate it.

You probably know which one you are.  If you hate this, the solution is simple: don’t play with it: just guess and ignore the question cards.   If you love this, the solution is simple: play with it.  The game will work both ways.

This one element may repel or attract you completely; don’t let it define the game for you, as you can play with it or without it easily.  And it won’t affect the gameplay.  I say this because there is a pretty good game here, and I’d hate for this one thing be the reason that you don’t play it.  

You know yourself and what you think of this question/answer roleplay. Take appropriate action if you play.

Solo Play

Luckily, this game does support solo play (congratulations for following Saunders’ Law)!  

This is true solo play, as the solo  player takes control of one hero!  See above as the solo player becomes Gadget Cat!

It’s unfortunate that the rules for solo play are later in the rulebook after everything else.  I get that, but the set-up portion for solo rules could have EASILY been in the set-up section of the rulebook, and I was frustrated that I had to page back and forth between this section and the solo section, especially since solo play was my first few plays!

Even worse, one of the solo play rules was not well specified: how many Crime cards do you use?  I figured out the hard way (by just trying and seeing it it felt balanced) that the solo player uses the same number of cards as the 2-Player game.  This was mostly the only rule that wasn’t well-specified, I was able to figure everything else out.  

The solo game proceeds pretty much like the cooperative game, with only a few exceptions: there’s no teamwork, the Villain is easier to defeat, and the Crimes can be defeated with only one defeat (instead of both on the card).  

The question/answer roleplay rules we mentioned earlier (that you will love or hate) can be approximated in the solo game with writing stuff out: see a page above.  Meh, this felt like work and not fun, so I chose to bypass this part.  

The solo game worked pretty well: it was hard and I realized near the endgame that I had to concentrate on questioning students to figure out who did it!  The game could have gone either way at the end, but after I buckled-down … I was able to reveal the Villain, Scheme, and Motive just before the endgame!  That was exciting!

The final battle went pretty well as I was able to take down the final Villain! (In the solo game, you only have to fight the final as if it were a crime: you have to fight more in the cooperative game). See above.

I played a couple of solo games, and the game was pretty good: it was challenging and there were interesting decisions to make, but it wasn’t super hard.  I liked it, but I didn’t love it.  I think I didn’t love it because it felt like the game arc would be mostly the same every time. It didn’t feel like it would be that different between games.

The solo game (despite the Crimes deck rules flaw) taught the same pretty well.  I just don’t know if I’ll play it again solo, but I had fun.

Cooperative Game

I think this game shines better as a cooperative game.  

The fact that TEAMWORK was now a mechanic really helped push the game forward: if another player is in the same city neighborhood as other heroes, they can contribute cards towards fighting crime!  This leads to another level of strategy over the solo game, as players now can help each other!   See above as the three heroes work together to take out the CyberAttack!

“Man! I need some help taking out this CyberAttack!  Can you guys help me over by coming to my neighborhood?”

It felt very cooperative as we constantly consulted each other where to do, what to do, when to fight crime, when to help each other, when to do homework, and when to talk to classmates!

I think the best part of this game is the cooperation: you probably can’t win unless you really work together well.    The game arc feels less “samey” in the cooperative mode as play will vary a lot more as everyone tries to figure out the “smartest” way to do everything! Some turns will have you do all the fighting!  Some turns will have you talking!  Some turns will have you supporting!  It just depends on what’s best for the group, and that can change quite a bit more in the cooperative game.

My friends all liked this game and had fun.  They also liked the roleplay elements in meetups, which probably upped their score a little (most of my friends are also avoid RPGers).

We are looking at pretty much 7s across the board.

Campaign Modes

There is a campaign mode (Yearbook mode) for this game which … we didn’t play.  It sounds like it might be funnish, but I think this game feels more like a lighter game.  We all had fun and such, but the vibes from the game make this feel like a fun, light one-off game.  It doesn’t quite feel like a campaign game?  It just doesn’t look like the yearbook mode changes the game that much from game to game?

I think I am less likely to do Yearbook mode because I would do it solo, and I didn’t love solo mode.   

I don’t know, maybe the yearbook mode is great.  I just don’t think that’s the way my friends and I will play this.  We will probably play it again, but in one-off mode.

Conclusion

If you like the Superhero movie Sky High, with Superheroes in High School, there’s a good chance you will like this game.  Even if you don’t love that theme, there’s still a fun light game here that you might still enjoy. 

Be aware, if you do play Super Squad High, that you may or may not want the roleplay aspects of the game: make sure you figure this out beforehand, because if you hate the roleplaying/asking questions part of this game, you will hate this game!  But if you know you will hate this, you can completely ignore that part and still enjoy this game.

I didn’t love this game solo, mostly because it felt like it could be a bit samey from game to game.  It was still fun, and it taught the game well enough for me to teach my friends:  Solo game: 6/10.

The cooperative version of this game is probably the best version: the Teamwork and strategies and discussions that emerge as you play really bring out the cooperation: I think the emergent cooperation is the funnest part of this game.  All around, we gave this a 7/10 for cooperative play.

This is a pretty fun game that’s light and easy to bring to the table to have a light superhero experience. There’s a yearbook/campaign mode in the game (if you want it), but my group just liked this as an easy one-shot cooperative game.

Magic And Murder Mysteries! A Review of Murders at Karlov Manor: The Case of the Three Blade Knife

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So, this is a murder mystery in the world of Magic: The Gathering?  Yup, that’s what this is!  Although its official title is Murders At Karlov Manor: The Case of the Three Blade Knife! See the BoardGameGeek listing here.

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My friends and I really enjoy our murder mysteries (see our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games), so we were excited to try this out!

Let’s Take a Look!

Unboxing

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Part of the problem with reviewing Murder Mysteries is that part of the fun of the game is exploring the system!  What’s new in the box?  How do things work?  How does this do stuff differently?  

To that end, we’ll give some very generic thoughts up front which shouldn’t reveal too much of the mystery.   Feel free to stop reading after that if you want to just try it yourself!  After that, we’ll have some minor spoilers, followed by possibly some major spoilers.  Read as far as you want!

High-Level Thoughts: No Spoilers!

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This was a mystery set in the world of Magic: The Gathering.  I know nothing of this world, and my friends know just a little.  Not knowing the world didn’t affect whether or not we could play the murder mystery.  I am sure there there were plenty of “A-HA!” moments for Magic: The Gathering players, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying the game.

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There are a LOT of materials to get through: our game took place in one night for 2.5 hours.  We were able to get to the end of the crime and solve it in one night.  This is a little bit of a slog to get through: there are a lot of materials to read out loud and share!

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In the end, we didn’t love this. 

Rich: Has specific complaints, which he will address in the spoilers section below.
Teresa: Liked it the best, as she got to “perform” and she really enjoys reading stuff out loud. 
Andrew: thought it was a little bit of a slog, as there was so much paperwork to get through!  He still thought it was better than Detective (the Portal Games).  It kinda felt like work.
Sara: It was pretty good.

The general consensus was that it was okay.  Rich liked it the least (probably with a 4/10) and Teresa liked it the most (with a 7/10).   The biggest complaint from everybody was that, even though this was set on the world of magic, specifically Magic: The Gathering, it felt like it could have been in any world: Noir, Cthulu, Voodoo Pirate, something else?   We still dusted for fingerprints, but it felt like someone searched and replaced “dusted for fingerprints” with “used fingerprint ooze“.   Sara pointed out (I think correctly) that this would have been a better mystery set in the 1920s world of Cthulu.

Overall, it was ok.  There were some nice highlights in the experience, but it was a lot of paperwork to slog through, and the mystery itself had its issues.   The 4/10 from Rich was because he really disagreed with how the mystery was handled, Andrew was probably a 5/10, Sara a 6/10, and Teresa a 7/10. 

Maybe you just like living in this world, and just like doing the paperwork of a mystery, and reading the materials: then you, like Teresa may really enjoy this.   The story presented overall was interesting.

If you want to read more specific complaints, read on. 

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Minor Spoilers: Some Issues

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The game comes with a very cool metal pendant!  It serves as your RAMI badge for the game!

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You download an app, and put your phone above it to get “some augmented reality options!”  See above!

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One complaint is that The Case of the Three Blade Knife looked like it would be a cool immersive augmented reality adventure! Look at the cool app above!  But it really wasn’t!!

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We loved The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City (see review here) and it even made the #1 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023!  We were blown away by the augmented reality here!

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This wasn’t really much of an augmented reality experience. We used the phone just a few times? We could have replaced the phone with a piece of red acetate for some of it.  The best part of the phone app was in the finale, where THE GAME WAS ON RAILS!  At the end of the game, the phone was cool in that it presented the finale really well (cool voice acting), but during the adventure when it mattered, we used it like once.

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How much money was spent on the metal RAMI badge?  How much money was spent on making the app?  If we used the phone more during the adventure, this would have been cooler.  But we didn’t.  The ending was cool, but by that point, the adventure was over and this was just a “presentation”, not an interactive murder mystery with cool augmented reality.

I am not sure it was worth the extra money for the metal RAMI badge and the money to make the app.

I will say that the finale was very cool.

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Major Spoilers: Mystery Progression

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There was a lot of reading: This was work. The materials were well-organized, but getting through them was almost like homework. Still, the materials were very cool: see some above and below.

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There were two major problems with the mystery: 

1) Ignore motive.  The game literally said something like “don’t worry about the motive, just choose someone“.  So, we are looking for means and opportunity only?

2) What are The rules of Magic?  We live in a world of magic, literally Magic: The Gathering!!  What the rules of magic?   Magic can make means and opportunity that much more opaque (teleportation, scrying, Bigby’s giant hands!).   We have NO IDEA what the rules of magic are going into this adventure, so that completely obscures means and opportunity.

I feel like, unless the rules of Magic are somehow explained in some way, it makes it too easy to make a murder mystery unsolvable.  “The murder weapon could have been handled remotely, the murdered could have teleported in and away, the murdered could stop time to leave no trace, etc.., etc., etc., etc.”. 

So, hints, evidence, don’t seem to matter as much.  Because magic can do anything.  This really soured some of us on the mystery after it was revealed:  we had spent 2.5 hours combing through evidence only to have a Deus Ex Machina explanation. I hated it.

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Giant Spoiler!! Read At Your Own Peril!!

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In the end, the only major use of magic was to possess someone and frame them for the murders.  We had no clue this was happening, we had no books to read, we had no idea.  We just “guessed” the murderer based on location, and then went to the endgame.  By the time you are in endgame, the game is on rails and it’s easy to solve.

This game pissed me off because it didn’t feel like a mystery.  You just guessed at someone based on  location, but all the while “magic” (whose rules were unexplained) was the driving cause.  

This was more of a “explore this world, make some guesses, and enjoy the story”.  If I had known that going in, I may have enjoyed it more.  But I was so busy trying to put a good solid well-crafted mystery story on top, I was pissed off when I learned what actually happened.

My friends, who enjoyed the story for what it was, had more fun that I did. 

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Conclusion

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If you look at Murder At Karlov Manor: The Case of the Three Bladed Knife as a story that unwraps, then maybe you’ll enjoy it for what it us.  Given how much work there is to go through all the paperwork, I was very frustrated with the lack of clues,  lack of evidence, lack of explanations of rules of Magic, and the Deux Ex Machina final solution.

But I was definitely the outlier here: my friends enjoyed the story and had fun.  I didn’t.

The Dark Quarter: Into the Muck

It arrived!  No, not the physical copy of The Dark Quarter!  That arrived like early 2025!  

But the APP finally arrived at the iOS store!  See above! Late May 2025!  This game is completely unplayable without the app, so my physical copy of The Dark Quarter sat silently in the corner for months, waiting for the APP to be available!  And it finally arrived!  I think I downloaded it May 25, 2025.  I have been really looking forward to this, as it was my #4 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023 … it’s years late at this point!

So, in any other year, this might be considered weird to get the physical game before the APP is ready, but with the Tariff situation changing daily, I think Lucky Duck/Van Ryder games did the right thing getting to us ASAP!  

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

This is a pretty standard sized box; see Coke can above for persepective.

The game comes with a lot of cardboard tokens (see above),  but I had gone all-in on the Kickstarter and got the nice plastic tokens as well.

I also got the metal coins (see above).

Even though I got the miniatures expansion as well, you will still need some of the little hexes with people on them.

You could play this game just fine with the cardboard, but the upgraded components make you feel…. like you’ve spent more money. 🙂  No, they are nice.

The little plastic cubes denote your ability scores.

And each player will get their own dice (see above, as the dice as color-coded for the 4 players).

There’s some nice Location  cards that will come out (see above) as you explore.

And there’s both objects (see above) and story cards (see below).

What’s that?  Yes!  A QR code!  These cards will be scanned when you play!

The minis are pretty good, but not great.

But the minis are notated with a number on the bottom so you can put them back where they belong (see above and below).

I mean, this game looks pretty good, ya? 

Rulebook

The rulebook is fine.

It fits pretty well on the chair next to me open flat, and the font is pretty big.  This is venturing into A territory (although it maybe could have used a few more pictures) for The Chair Test.

The Components page is well-labelled.

The set-up is pretty good, although there is always confusion in an APP based game: usually the APP sets you up, so do you need this?  You kind of need both the rulebook and the APP for set-up.

The last page has an ICON summary, which is great! … but I don’t think I ever used it once in all my solo or cooperative gameplays.

The rulebook is pretty good, but you don’t spend a lot of time there; you are always in the APP.

Warning! 18+!

You may miss it, even though it is clearly on the box (see above) but this is clearly an 18+ game!  Between language, grisly murders, some sexual references, and just dark imagery, you probably don’t want to play this unless you are ready for a dark, grimy, and morally ambiguous world.

Teresa, who started out censoring the bad language from the APP, was swearing like a sailor by the time we finished our first session!  She really embraced this world! Be aware, this game will corrupt … something?

Gamplay

Each player takes the role of an “investigator/consultant” for the Beaumont Detective Agency.  Each character is flawed in some way, but they are generally seeking redemption (but that’s your choice to make).  

Players use the APP to guide the game.  The APP shows how to set up places of interest (see above):

And you reflect that on your game board.

The boss lady tells you what to do in the APP, and you explore a 1980s New Orleans investigating a murder!

Each characters gets some items they can use, and has some level in 4 different skills/abilities (see above).  These abilities are rolled against, and however many you surpass is how many successes you get.

This is absolutely a dice game!  Almost every turn, you will roll the dice to do “some skill check”.  You always get your two base dice (color coded for the characters: see above), and some extra effort dice.

These effort dice are enabled as you play.  You always get one effort die at the start of your turn, but sometimes you will get more through other actions.

Players explore the city, trying to investigate a murder!  The APP controls the narrative, with the players making choices, and the dice determining success or failure.

You’ll notice a lot of items have a QR code (see above): you will be scanning your items to interact with them.  This may remind you of Chronicles of Crime (that made our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games), and it should!  Lucky Duck (who teamed up with Van Ryder Games to make The Dark Quarter) also made Chronicles of Crime!

Honestly, playing this game reminds me of playing out a Detective series on HBO or Apple+ mini-series.  Story happens, characters develop (or regress!), and a lot of swearing and adult situations occur.   

Solo Play

So, you can play solo (thank you for following Saunders’ Law).  

However, solo play has you take control of two characters: there is no true solo play. See above as I chose to operate both Constance Moreau and Winter Mullins.  

The rules do cover the case where the solo player has to play two characters (see above), and justifies needing at least two characters as “the stories are intertwined; you need at least two characters to get the best out of this!”  And that makes sense; these characters destinies are all tightly coupled!

So, I started a game.  And went back and forth between the two characters.  And I didn’t enjoy it.

The back and forth between the two characters as a solo gamer just didn’t work for me.  It felt like I couldn’t get any thing done, as just as I did one thing at a Location, I’d have to immediately go to the next character.  I remember loving Detective: City of Angels (A Van Ryder game also in our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games) because you had four precious actions on your turn and how you spent those actions mattered! It felt like you could concentrate on a Location and get stuff done!  In The Dark Quarter, I frequently felt like I got to do just “one” thing, and then it was the next character’s turn.  

I played out the first two sessions as a solo player, but … I kinda stopped caring.  I felt like I couldn’t get anything done as a solo player, I was so busy “advancing the story”, I felt like I wasn’t playing the characters or solving the mystery.  I felt like the game was playing me.  

The story was interesting, but I felt like I couldn’t focus.  Some of that  lack of focus was the context switching between two characters, and some of that was going back and forth between the game and the APP, some of that was all the dice-rolling, and part of it was just how “little” I felt like I could do on my turn.  I just had to swap between too many things, and it took me out of the game.

I hoped a lot of these issues would go away when I played cooperatively.  I was expecting to love and adore this game straight out of the box.   I didn’t, and my solo experience wasn’t great.

Cooperative Play

Whew. Luckily, the cooperative experience was much better!  The fact that the focus moves around quickly between characters is actually good in the cooperative game, as most people feel like they get their chance to play; quickly and regularly.

You can see as the board and locations expand out!  The world definitely envelops you as you play!

This game feels “tuned” to work best as a cooperative experience.  The 3-Player game we played was fun!  We ended up playing about 3 hours and still didn’t finish the first play!  But, we still wanted to play more, so we kept playing …

The game, in the rulebook, does a really good job of emphasizing “READ EVERYTHING OUT LOUD!”  See excerpt above.  This really encourages everyone to stay involved with the story and all the decisions in the game.  Even if some decisions are only character-based, everyone stays involved.  I am glad to see that emphasis in the rulebook (see above), and I think that is the best way to play the game.

Good times.  The cooperative play has been a success.  Currently, we have played two weeks in a row, having invested about 6 hours into the game … and wanting to play more!

Solo Vs. Cooperative

It’s really interesting to me that the solo experience fell flat for me, and the cooperative experience worked so well!  It makes sense; the game seems “tuned” to keep stories and plot points coming out, as to keep the players all involved! 

Like a car “tuned” for Sports mode instead Eco mode, The Dark Quarter seems “tuned” to cooperative mode.  The solo mode will work, but the game operates (in my opinion) at a lesser gait.  At least, that was my experience.   (And you have to understand, I love mystery games!)

Length of Game

The game is long. Longer than you might expect.  We played for three hours straight the first session! And three hours the second session!  And we still had a lot to see!  And we still have more to go!

Luckily, the APP can help you save the game between sessions.  There are several points where you can save the game; these intermissions happen about every 45 minutes or so.  So, if you really wanted to, you could just take up about 45 minutes. But given how much set-up and tear-down there is, you probably want to play at least two sessions.  We ended up playing three on our first playthrough.

The App

The APP is pretty good.  We didn’t encounter any real glitches or problems in solo or cooperative play.  Although it took them a while, the publishers did get the APP out and stable.

One problem: the font is probably too small.  We had trouble reading all that text (to be clear; the players read the text out, not the APP), and we wished we had a control to resize the font.  

Another gripe about the APP; there was no UNDO!  This is one of my biggest pet peeves in cooperative APPS; the lack of UNDO makes me me grumpy!  If this were a completely physical board game, UNDOs are easy:  “Oops!  I meant to go to the Graveyard!  Back me up!”.  Nope.  There is no UNDO in this app.   I think this actually slows down gameplay a little: “Are you SURE you want to do that?  We can’t back up!”

In general, the APP seemed to work fine for us in both solo or cooperative play.  It was pretty good.  Be aware, the players still have to read all the text out loud!! The APP does NOT read the text for you!

Dice and Murder

I said this earlier, almost everything in this game is a skill check with dice.  The game seems pretty balanced.   For instance, if you fail, the game typically gives you an “extra” effort die for your next die roll (which I appreciated).

But in the end, The Dark Quarter is still kind of a dice game.  Which I don’t love!  I feel like a detective game should be about following the evidence, making best use of your resources, and generally trying to be smart/clever.

Detective: City of Angels, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, are detective games where you have to be smart.    Although The Dark Quarter is a nominally a detective game, it has more drama in it than I expected.   The dice contribute to that drama, because they make the game more random and unexpected!

When I play Detective: City of Angels or Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, I feel like I am playing a detective show like Death in Paradise, or Midsomer Murders where the mystery is front and center.  When I play The Dark Quarter, I feel more like I am playing a police drama where the mystery is less pronounced.  It’s not bad, it’s just not quite what I was expecting.  

If you want to jump into a police drama in New Orleans in the 1980s with lots of magic and character development and story, this is the right game for you!  If you want more of a mystery, well this isn’t quite that.  But there’s still more than enough mystery to keep you going!

Conclusion

The Dark Quarter is a really interesting game, but you have to know where it fits best.  I don’t think it works great solo, it’s more random than most mystery games, it’s very dependent on the APP, and the 18+ age requirements are pretty stringent.

But, if you find a group that wants to jump in to a 1980’s drama/mystery with lots of adult twists and turns, The Dark Quarter is the game for you!  It’s got great story, interesting interactions, and plenty of character development/regression!   Instead of watching an adult mystery/drama on HBO or Apple+ tonight, consider playing The Dark Quarter instead!

Solo play: 6/10. Cooperative Play: 8/10.  I think most people would probably give this a 9/10, but I think I wanted just a little more mystery and a little less dice-rolling. It’s still really good though.