Yup, you are reading that right: Marvel Midnight Suns is my Game of The Year. And this is probably surprising to some of you since this is a cooperative board and card game blog! We love cooperative and solo games here at CO-OP Gestalt, but Marvel Midnight Suns just captivated us. Why are we talking about it a video game in a board and card game blog?

I realize I am late to the party calling Marvel Midnight Suns my Game of the Year: It came out in Dec. 2, 2022 for the Ps5. But I didn’t get it until mid March 2023.

Solo Game

Let’s justify this right away: we talk a lot about solo games here at CO-OP Gestalt! We have discussed many solo board games such as The Dark Knight Returns (see our review here), or Eila and Something Shiny (see our review here). We also frequently discuss Saunders’ Law, which addresses solo modes in board games (see more discussion here). And Marvel Midnight Suns is a solo game: it only plays 1-Player (see back of box above). And it’s an offline game: you can play the whole thing without being connected to the internet. But, strictly speaking, it is a video game (not a board game).

We have discussed solo video games here before: For example we discussed why Monkey Island has influenced my expectations of solo board and card games here: I think Marvel Mystery Suns will also influence my expectations for solo games for years to come.

It’s a Superhero Game!

Anyone who follows CO-OP Gestalt knows how much we like solo and cooperative Superhero games: See our Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Games list!

You get to play so many interesting characters in this game! Iron Man! Captain America! Wolverine! But what really sold me on the game, you get to play Illyana Rasputin, aka Magik! I loved the New Mutants growing up, and so this was a blast of nostalgia!

No mistaking it, this is a Superhero game. With a touch of magic.

Why

There are four things that really make this Game of the Year for me:

1. Deck-Building
2. Exploration
3. Story
4. Friendship

Deck-Building

This is a deck-building game. Wait, what? That’s what I thought when I first played it! We love our cooperative deck-building physical card games: See our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games! Normally, when I think of Deck-Building games, I think of card games. Yet, here we are, Marvel Midnight Suns uses deck-building as it’s main combat mechanic!

This means that combat is turn-based: it’s not a real-time free-for-all. You draw cards, play cards to do damage and “other things” (see above as we can hack a console), and redraw cards to try to get what you need. I mean, it’s a deck-builder!

One of the great things about this is that there are so many ways to upgrade your deck! There are about 12 heroes with 8 cards each in their deck. That doesn’t sound like a lot of cards, but there are so many ways to upgrade those 8 cards!

• If you have multiple copies of the same card, you can upgrade a card and add an additional ability
• You can get new cards as rewards for missions
• You can exchange resources for cards (at the forge)
• You can craft cards if you have the blueprint
• You can add abilities to cards with resources

And some I  am probably forgetting!  Tony Stark and Dr. Strange both help you get the upgrades you need.

I often wonder if this could be a physical card game … but I don’t think it would work well.  There are so many things that the game keeps track of for you, and I worry a physical version would be very fiddly.  So, it’s good that it’s a video game.

Exploration

The thing this game really nails is exploration. You are (mostly) playing the Hunter (more discussion below) interacting with many heroes in the Abbey. The Abbey is a world unto itself, with beautiful scenery and a beautiful architecture. I think this game is meant to be played in about 50 hours, maybe less. I think I played for 100 hours? But, I spent the first part of the game just exploring as much as I could!

This world is gorgeous and exploration is fun and relaxing! The gardens and forests of the Abbey are just beautiful! Sometimes, I would just explore to relax because it’s so gorgeous. And exploration is good: it helps you find and unlock things that are necessary to push the plot forward.

I haven’t enjoyed exploring a game so much since Psychonauts (another great solo video game).

Story

I think there is a better story here in Marvel Midnight Suns than most Marvel shows right now! This is a big, expansive story spanning many villains and heroes! I mentioned I played for 100 hours getting through the story, and it felt like there was an interesting story the entire way through! There were plot twists, there were highs and lows, and the story was emotional! I mean, I would pay money to see this story turned into a Marvel Movie.

Friendship

The characters were not two-dimensional in the story! You play the Hunter in this game, and one of your goals is to organize the heroes and befriend them. One of the great mechanics of the game is that you are trying to make friends with all the characters! As you did things together (played video games, played cards, watched a movie, did Yoga) you would up your friendship with each character individually! That’s right! Friendship was per character! And better friendship means you were better at fighting together! And the dialogue and reveals seemed very sincere and realistic. Seriously, the friendship mechanic of this game was fantastic: I want to see more of this mechanic in more games: both video and board/card games.

Problems

This wasn’t a perfect game, but it’s darn close. There were few things I would change:

1. I would add a compass so you would know which way Hunter is facing when he travels. Too many times, I went back and forth between the map/character view because it wasn’t clear which way he was facing: that was slightly annoying.
2. The game seemed to get “buggier” the longer I played. It was always still playable, but one time near my end, it just crashed! Sometimes, in the later game, the “people want to to talk icon” was visible but no one wanted to talk, sometimes you couldn’t talk to people who said they did. I would have “fixed” those bugs?

Expectations

This game raised the bar for what I want in a solo game!

I want better stories now! I want exploration that’s both relaxing and interesting and beautiful! I want better deck-builders! I want more ways to level-up my cards in a deck-building game! I want voice-acting and animated cut scenes!

Sigh. It’s hard to get a lot of those in a physical board/card game. But Marvel Midnight Suns has raised the bar anyway.

Conclusion

I bought a Ps5 just so I could play this game! There is apparently a version of Marvel Midnight Suns coming out for the Switch, but not until Dec 2023. Was it worth it to buy this?

Absolutely! I think I got about 100 hours of gameplay out of this. The game was about $60, the Ps5 was $500, so let’s call it $600 all-in. That’s $6 per hour of entertainment! You know what, it was totally worth it: I had fun and wanted to keep playing. I will play the game again in the future! I kind of want to keep playing it with new content (there’s some downloadable content).

If my teenage self had this game, he never would have left this house.

It’s not a card game per se, but Marvel Midnight Suns may be the best deck-builder game I have ever played.

It’s all Lon’s Fault! A few years ago, I used to go Lon’s office to say “hi” and he had the coolest metal dice in his office! Steel Dice! Aluminum Dice! Titanium Dice (maybe?)! Every time I see metal dice, I think of Lon. Hi Lon!

Well, when Tesseract (A cooperative dice-placement/cube manipulation game) came onto Kickstarter, I was enthralled! And it’s all Lon’s fault! The Metal Dice (see above) looked so cool! It was so cool looking that the #1 spot on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023!

This cooperative game, Tesseract (plays 1-4 players in 90 minutes) arrived at my house in mid-September, 2023. It was on Kickstarter back in November 2022, but unfortunately promised delivery in July 2023. Ah well, the streak of Kickstarters delivering early or on time has now been broken: Tesseract was about 3 months late (to me: I think other Kickstarter backers in the rest of the world got it earlier).

I got the base game and the metal dice upgrade: Again, it’s all Lon’s fault!  

Unboxing

This is a pretty standard sized box, with the oversized rulebook that fits flush with the box: see my can of Coke above for perspective.

There’s a number of punchouts for building the cube-holder.

There’s a sleeve that looks a little like a “Hot-Pocket” sleeve. (This maybe an American thing only? If you don’t know what “Hot Pockets” are, I encourage you to look them up: Jim Gaffagan you tube videos may be the funniest source of info). These sleeves will be used for guiding the dice (see more pictures/discussion below).

The base game comes with 64 plastic dice that are well-labelled and easy to read.

Maybe Lazy Susans are cool now? The game comes with a Lazy Susan for “spinning” the dice cube. (Planet Unknown was very popular last year and everyone raved about the Lazy Susan with that game). We’ll see more how this works in the gameplay.

There’s a number of giant Mats: breach, player sheets, and something else.

The game looks pretty snazzy! “But what about the metal dice, Rich???” Hold on! Hold On! We’ll get to those after a look/play with the base game. Look, as cool as the metal dice are, they are expensive, and they don’t come with the base game.

Rulebook

The rulebook seemed pretty good overall.  Unfortunately, it gets like a C+ on the Chair Test: it’s huge and flops all over the place:

Despite that, the rulebook does a pretty good job of showing set-up and taking you through the components, set-up and the core rules.

Set-Up

The first part of set-up was building the Lazy Susan holder.  The Tesseract, the 4x4x4 cube of dice, lays atop the Lazy Susan. See above with a nice perspective on how the dice fit.

The little Lazy Susan has 5 ball-bearings so it can rotate easily.

You put on on these circular cardboard pieces atop the Lazy Susan.  When a column completes, each symbol activates a bad news in the game.

The Lazy Susan and bad new circle sit atop a little mechanism to keep it aloof.  The little dice sleeve (the “Hot Pocket” sleeve we saw earlier) opens up so it can guide the dice down during set-up.

Then you start pouring dice into the little stand!

It’s a little wonky to get the dice in there at first: see above.  You have to make sure the dice fill the 4x4x4 template perfectly.

Once you get all the dice in there … you slowly remove the sleeve … to reveal …

A stunning cube of dice!

The rest of the set-up is much less interesting, but the rulebook describes it pretty well.

All set-up: the game looks pretty cool!

Gameplay

Each player chooses a special role at the start of the game: each of these give special powers (both active and passive) for manipulating the cubes and other parts of the game. Players gets asymetric powers.

For example, the Transfer Engineer above has a passive special ability (Efficiency) which allows dice manipulation. The ACTION is a special action only the Transport Engineer can take on their turn. Every player gets three ACTIONs on their turn.

The Turn Sequence is noted on each players player sheet (each player gets one). This game is all about manipulating dice, so every player has a “lab” that contain 6 dice to manipulate.

How do you win? If you can get 24 of the dice into containment (4 rows with 1-6 on them), the players win! As the game flows, dice slowly come of the cube, both as good news and bad news.

If the cube is ever empty, players lose!

Every turn, one die will come off the cube during the Bad News phase: it gets re-rolled and placed in the appropriate space of the primed area. If there are ever three dice in a single zone, the breaches chart goes up 1! This feels slightly like a Pandemic element, as you have to keep the primed area under control (like the map in Pandemic).

If you ever get 7 breaches, players also lose!

The majority of the game is trying to keep the Primed Area under control, while slowly containing dice, and watching as the Tesseract gets smaller and smaller! The ACTIONS you perform all have some effect on that.

Solo Play

There is a nice sentence above step 6 describing solo play :”In a one-player game, set up two Labs, each with a Researcher.  You will alternate between both Researchers.”  Huzzah!  That’s all it takes!  Congratulations to giving us a simple solo game (and following Saunders’ Law)! No special exceptions! 

See above as I have a solo game getting ready to go! It was pretty easy alternating between the two Researchers. The Researchers are very consistent in specials: they both have a special Action and a special passive power. You are pretty sure those specials will be the difference between winning and losing, so it wasn’t too hard to switch between them and remembering to use the powers.

I was learn to play a solo game pretty easily. It was fun! There would be no problem teaching my friends, as the solo game scales perfectly well and up to 2-4 players.

Cooperative Play

I asked my friends which dice they liked better: metal or plastic. Overwhelmingly Metal Dice! So, that’s what we play with from now on.

Interestingly, people seemed to stand up around the table to play cooperatively! Part of that was to get a good perspective on the Tesseract!

The game seemed to scale well, and there were a lot of cooperative mechanisms and powers in the game. The sharing/trading aspect of dice was a real interesting dynamic! Sure, you can always take a die you need from the Tesseract, but if you do that too quickly, the Tesseract depletes and you lose! So, the players tend to share/trade dice more than I expected in the game. There was a good amount of cooperation and talk!

One of the things I really like about Tesseract is the game encourages players to share and talk as much as possible! There’s an entire paragraph in the rulebook (see above) to that end! Now, I like “limited communication” co-op games, but I get tired of the “limited communication”, because I want to sit down (or stand up in this case) with my friends and interact/talk/have fun! So, I think the cooperation works really well here.

Dexterity Game

The rulebook says clearly “this is not a dexterity game”, and yet, it felt like it, a little. You have to carefully pull the appropriate dice off the Tesseract without spilling it over. Now, we never did, but Andrew leaned on the table at one point and it almost caused a catastrophe of fallen cubes! So, it’s not a Dexterity game, but the cube tower is a little more precarious than it looks. Make sure you set-up on a stable, flat surface to avoid any issues! One bad lean will kind of ruin the whole game.

Metal vs Plastic Dice

The Plastic Dice that come with the game are perfectly serviceable and they look fine and work fine. In fact, we think the plastic dice are probably a little easier to read.

But it’s clear the metal dice were the favorite. They feel “more spacey” and more like what a Tesseract would be made of! But, they are an add-on, and they are expensive. Like significantly: the base game was $50 on the Kickstarter, and the metal dice + game was $130! So, an $80 difference (and the Kickstarter calls them a $128 value so maybe more in retail).

The game works fine with Plastic Dice. If you aren’t sold on the Metal Dice, try the base game with plain dice. You can probably buy the metal dice later if you really like the game.

Cube Games

Those of you paying attention might remember we reviewed another cooperative Cube Manipulation game last year: Minecraft: Portal Dash! (See our review here). And it surprised us how much we liked it! It made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022! It almost feels like this should be its own category of game now … Cube Manipulation? There are a surprising number of similarities between the games, as the Tesseract, err Cube, is both the good news and bad news of both games! They’re different games: I think Tesseract is tighter and more streamlined, but Portal Dash has a certain charm to it as well! If you like one, you may well like the other.

Toy Factor

There’s a large amount of toy factor in the game: the Lazy Susan, the aloft dice cube, the metal dice. And I think it works! It makes the game attractive and more interesting to play! However, there is a good game underneath as well. Unfortunately, the Lazy Susan wasn’t “quite as cool” as I hoped, as it seemed to be a little precarious. It sill worked overall, but it still felt “a little” like a Dexterity Game .. more than it should. I do think that’s a minor complaint, but just one to be aware off.

Game

There’s a good game here. There’s some mechanisms that don’t make sense at first (“Why would I want to reroll my dice to get cards?”) until you’ve gotten into the game. There are plenty of interesting ideas here to keep players engaged! Occasionally, it felt like there was maybe one too many rules (For example: You can destroy a dice in the primed area if you contained the same dice in the Containment area: we forgot this rule a number of times, but at least it’s notated on the Primed Area) and we have to remind ourselves of those, but that’s great in a cooperative game! That is one advantage of cooperative game: players can work together to remember those rules! Arguably, that contributes to the cooperation in the game.

Conclusion

Tesseract is a really great game.  Me and my game groups loved the toy factor, the metal dice, the gameplay, and the overall feel of this game!  The game underneath the toys is also quite good! It had a little bit of Pandemic vibe in a few places, but there were enough new and interesting mechanisms to note that this is not some kind of Pandemic clone. In fact, between Tesseract and Minecraft: Portal Dash, it may be we are seeing a new type of game: Cube Manipulation!

This will easily make my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023.  It was #1 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023 for a reason!  But, we all know it’s Lon’s Fault!!

(For the record: I bought this game and all extras with my own money.  We never accept free copies of any games nor take any money/incentives from any publisher or anyone.  This is and has always been our policy at CO-OP Gestalt, but we thought we needed to say it more often.  You may hate our opinions, but at least you are sure they are our own).

What am I going to do? Usually, my game groups are 3 or 4 players, but this week ended being 5 players!! Argh, it is sometimes harder to find “non-party” games that work well with 5 players!! Hmm, I am looking at recent arrivals and see something called Freelancers! It just came in the last week (early September 2023). Looking at the back of my Freelancers game (a cooperative Crossroads game), it says the player count is 3-7! See below ..

This seems like the perfect game for tonight! We have all played Forgotten Waters (another game in the Crossroads game system) and really liked it (see here): Freelancers is the newest game in that line. We’ll probably like that? It looks fun! It looks silly! (Spoiler: it is VERY fun and it is VERY silly)

Unboxing

Well, I gotta unbox this before my friends get here … they’ll be here in an hour!

This is a pretty standard sized box, it looks pretty easy to unbox.

The rulebook looks pretty short (it’s only 12 pages). And I love this art!

Oh, the pieces are well-labelled (but they don’t correlate the list of components with a picture, Boooooo!)

There’s a lot of cool stuff in this box!

That set-up looks pretty good: I think this will be easy to get to the table!

Well, there’s some cardboard to punch (3 sheets, not too bad).

Oh my, there’s a lot of tokens! BUT!

BUT, there’s a lot of plastic bags that come with the game too! That’s great!

There’s a lot of cards: treasure, story, first stuff: this is all very readable and fairly well-notated.

The Location book looks really cool too!

The components looks pretty great! I love this art style and this game screams quality! I am super excited to get this to the table!

Solo Play! Oh No!

Oh no!  My friends will be here soon! I don’t have time to play this solo!  Gah!  I always like to play it solo so I can teach it first!!!  And it’s not even clear if I CAN play this solo!  (It turns out you can, but you have go hunting OUTSIDE the box: There are no solo rules included in the physical game, but the web site has rules for solo and 2-Players in the Variants section at https://www.freelancersgame.com/ ..  unfortunately, by the time I saw this, it was too late!  But Freelancers does follow Saunders’ Law!  There is a viable solo mode!)

Set-Up

This is a storybook game: see our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook/Storytelling Games for more examples of this type of game! 

In our case, this is yet another storybook game like Forgotten Waters where the story is all in the app! (No storybook required)! There is a giant amount of story being read by the app at http://www.freelancersgame.com!

Each player chooses one of the figures/characters to play (these are the Species in the game)! See above! There are an interesting assortment of characters! The Imp! The Hound! The Troll! The Mouser! .. and other stuff! This game can play up to 7! We are just playing at 5 right now …

Each player gets a Species sheet (above) corresponding to the chosen character: see one such Species Sheet above (say that 5 times fast). You’ll be filling in some silly information on this sheet: this game has a Mad Libs element where you will be using this information to “define” your character!

The second sheet you get is the Job: See the Warrior job above.  The most important thing on the Job sheet is the skill matrix: you will be using that to make skill checks (and mark up when you get better as you play).

See some other jobs above. You’ll note that Divorcee is a job. Yes, yes, Divorcee. If you had any idea that this was a serious game, you now know for sure this is a silly game.

Putting a Species and Job together, you get your fleshed-out character!

Each player also gets a starting item (see above.

There are also 7 roles/responsibilities that need to be assigned to the players: Since there were only 5 of us, some of us took two roles! This really makes the game very cooperative! Every player will be doing some role which is essential to the gameplay! (The Influencer board reminds of the the Sidekick of Interest (SOI) Track: see our post here about Resolving Ambiguity is Board Games).

After everyone fills out their sheets, they read aloud the story on the other side!

And we are ready to play!

Recommendation: Print The Job and Species Sheets

The game does come with a pad of a bunch of Species and Jobs, but there aren’t very many!  Before you play, you should go the web site (https://ww.freelancersgame.com) and print copies of everything! See the Friar job above in the app!

For example, there’s only 1 copy of the Divorcee sheet, so I had to print a copy for Teresa! I suspect EVERYONE will want to play the Divorcee, so you probably will want to print out copies rather than use the pads that come with the game.

There’s three copies of the Species (3 Hounds, 3 Mousers, etc), but only 1 of (most of) the Jobs! I strongly recommend proceeding to http://freelancersgame.com and printing out some Species/Job sheets before you play! Otherwise, you will use the included pads VERY quickly! (Each quest uses a new set of characters, so yes, you will go through them quickly!)

Tutorial

I was worried about learning the game as we played: it was NOT a problem!! The tutorial system that comes in the web site was fantastic! We DID NOT need to read a lot of rules! We just jumped right in! And the app guided us through the game easily! Granted, this is a relatively simple game, but this just worked.

Gameplay

The main mechanic in this game (besides the story in the Storybook/app) is that this is a worker placement game. The Location book opens to your current Location (see above) and sets the stage with a cool picture on the left, and the worker placement board to the right.

In a timed fashion (there is a little 45 second timer in the app), players have to place their markers in Influencer order on the current work page! The little graphics give you a sense of what you will get when you go there, but you are not supposed to have a lot of time to figure stuff out!

Once all players have placed their marker, the right side of the page gives more detail about what the Location does: you resolve the actions top to bottom. See above.

Most actions involve skill checks: you roll a 20-sided die for the base skill, but as you get “better”, you get a better and better bonus die to help you! First a d4, then a d6, d8, d10, and finally a d12! Usually, you get an upgrade to the skill you are going to attempt before you attempt it. Most skill checks want a 15 or higher to “do well”.

Of course, success or failure consults the app!  And you get some silliness or story advancement or further choices!  

There are a number of quest included in the game: each quest has a unique ending and twist! Our was to fight a dragon and beat it up!

Generally, the game game is run by the app, and all the players man their positions as they play: Game Master (runs the app), Bookkeeper (actions from Location book), Cartographer (handles map), Medic (keeps track of wounds), Scout (tracks Risk), Lookout (updates dials), Influencer (mans SOI chart).

As we play, we alternate between the Location book (with the Worker Placement Locations) and the Map (for exploration) Again, the app lets you know when you need to do stuff.

The App

The app (really, a web site you go to: https://www.freelancersgame.com, but it feels like an app) is quite good. The voice acting is really good! Surprisingly so! The story is pretty fun, if a little goofy. Actually, it’s very goofy. But it’s still really fun! We really enjoyed listening to the story as it unfurled. We miss reading to each other “a little”, but the 7 roles/responsibilities keep us engaged as we listen to the story!

We played online (meaning we were connected to the web-site the whole time), but you can download the content and play the game off-line: see https://www.plaidhatgames.com/freelancers-crossroads-game-downloads/

Silly

This is a silly game: between the Mad Libs on your character sheets, the silly (but great) art, the story, and the choices, this is a silly game! I think it’s even sillier than Forgotten Waters! This would absolutely make our Top 10 Cooperative Games With a Sense of Humor! (Note that Forgotten Waters is #4: Freelancers would probably make the #3 position!)

Just so you know what you are getting into: this game seems like it might be a “serious post-apocalyptic game” from the description on the back, but it really isn’t. This is super silly.

Cooperation

There’s quite a bit of cooperation as players each have a job to do! See the Lookout and Scout jobs above! Players almost feel like they are members of a crew keeping the party afloat … in fact, that’s exactly what players were in Forgotten Waters: a Pirate Crew! So, that analogy works better in the previous game, but the same idea still applies here: players work together as a party of adventurers trying to “keep the party going”. Each player has a particular duty and must do their duty to keep going!

That idea of giving each player a role(s) is a great way to keep everyone involved! This collaboration really contributes to everyone feeling important to the mission! It’s a really great mechanism: it’s hard to have an Alpha Player because there is so much to do, shared among the players!

Refinements upon Forgotten Waters

The general consensus was that this was a better version of Forgotten Waters: the system had evolved just a little to be a touch simpler and more interesting.

For example, consider that the level-up system is simpler in Freelancers.  In Forgotten Waters, there was a more complex system with marking up a constellation of stars.  That constellation system (where you mark out a constellation on your way to level-up points) is gone from Freelancers!

On the back of the Freelancer character sheet is a simple linear level upgrade (see sheets above).  Rather than having a complex system with the constellation of Forgotten Waters, Freelancers has a much simpler system!  My players enjoyed this: the simplicity helped moved the game forward (rather than getting stuck in the constellation).

The map and exploration system is also much simpler in Freelancers.  Forgotten Waters had a big hex map which players explore.

In Freelancers, the exploration is a little more “contained” on a given map: see above.  Generally, the exploration feels a little more on rails in Freelancers, but it is definitely simpler.

The skill upgrade system is very similar in both games.  The difference here is that the upgrades are simpler in Forgotten Waters: pluses just add to your skill rolls.

In Freelancers, you actually add a different die to your rolls as you upgrade (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12)!  This adds an element of randomness, but there’s something very cool about getting bigger and bigger dice to help your skill rolls!  See the skill sheet above.

In general, my players liked Freelancers better than Forgotten Waters: they liked the evolutionary changes to the game.  I think I like the changes/evolutions better, but I personally still like the pirate theme and more “open” exploration of Forgotten Waters.

In the end, both are great games.  Freelancers is slightly simpler and has slightly better/evolved mechanisms.  It’s the theme that’ll probably decide for you.  Silly Pirates or Silly Post-Apocalypse?

NSFW

So, the game can be NSFW.  At some point, a “choice” is made, and this makes the game have a section or two that is NSFW.  It’ll be clear when you make this choice: just be aware this is coming.  If you don’t mind some cursing and innuendo (and directness), then you are probably safe.   If you are playing with kids or worried about offending anyone, make sure you choose the “safer” and more “family-friendly” path. 

Conclusion

Freelancers went over like Gang-busters! Everyone had a fantastic time playing! The silliness, the story, the roles, were just so much fun! Everyone just loved this game! 8 and 8.5/10 all around. This will easily make the Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023, the Top 10 Cooperative Games With a Sense of Humor, and the Top 10 Cooperative Storybook/Storytelling games!

Oh ya! And it worked fantastically as a 5-Player Games! Sometimes it’s so hard to find a good 5-Player cooperative game!

This game was so much fun!

Pandemic Iberia is a cooperative “secret train” game: This is all the description I needed to entice my friend Robert in! He’s a huge fan of maps and trains! He’s also a huge fan of Pandemic (probably because of the map on the board). So, I was surprised that he had never encountered Pandemic Iberia! It has all of his favorite things: maps, trains, and Pandemic!

Even though Pandemic Iberia was released in 2016 (some 6 years ago), it’s still a great game! That’s why we occasionally do these Retro Reviews: to shine a light on some really great older games. Our last Retro Review was Now Boarding! See that review here.

And this review is also for Greg: Greg told me he likes train games, so I wanted him to see what Pandemic Iberia looked like.

Play Twice (Back-to-Back)

 When I used to play more with my friend Jeremy, he had instituted the rule that “we must play every new game twice: back-to-back!”  The rationale is that the first game is a learning game (where everyone is learning the rules, the mechanisms, and the flow of the game), but it’s the second game is when it all comes together.  While the game is still fresh in everyone’s mind, we can dive into the second play!

And that’s what we did for Pandemic Iberia!  Although we had all played Pandemic before, Pandemic Iberia is just different enough that it took a little more thought to get into it.  So, the first game was a learning game (and we lost horribly).  The second game was much more focused and directed, because we learned from our mistakes in the first game!

So many Pandemics…

Pandemic Iberia was the “first” Pandemic variant! Since then, we have seen so many different variants: Wrath of the Lich King (A World of Warcraft Pandemic), Star Wars: Clone Wars, Pandemic Legacy Seasons 0, 1, 2, Fall of Rome, The Dice Game, and I am sure there are some that I am forgetting!  (Becca would argue that Flashpoint: Fire Rescue is her favorite Pandemic game, even though it’s not even in the Pandemic universe!  Its gameplay is just similar to Pandemic, but with a firefighting theme).

Unlike the later games like Star Wars: Clone Wars (which we reviwed here) and Wrath of the Lich King (which we reviewed here), Pandemic Iberia is still very much Pandemic! You are still curing diseases, you are still roaming a map, you are still dealing with outbreaks! It still feels like Pandemic.

Don’t get me wrong! I loved the Star Wars: Clone Wars (A Pandemic system) game: It made my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022, but you had to really squint to the see the Pandemic underneath. Pandemic Iberia is much closer to the source material.

What’s Different?

In Pandemic Iberia, you still move around the map trying to quell the diseases. You still have to discard 5 cards of the same color at a Hospital (rather than a research station, but it’s the same thing) to research a disease. You still have to research 4 diseases to win. You still have to worry about outbreaks infecting adjacent cities, You still have to be leery of cities with 3 disease cubes!

One very interesting new idea in Pandemic Iberia is the “region” idea. Regions are areas on the board enclosed by brown lines: see the region above surrounded by Ourense, Leon, Gijon, A Corona, and Santiago De Compostela. There are a number of places in the game that utilize this new idea. The most obvious is the “Purify Water” action, which is a new type of action. At the cost of an action and a card, you can “Purify Water” and place some Purification Tokens (the water drop above) in a region! Each purification token prevents the addition of one disease cube into a city adjacent to the region that contains it (the token is discarded after it prevents a disease).

This is really interesting, because it allows players a mechanism to prevent future infections without having to be in the region! Some of the characters (like the Nurse) also have special abilities based on regions.

One other major change is how big movement is handled. Gone are the ideas of direct flights: you must either take the train, or travel from port city to port city.

The “secret train” idea is that you can build a network of train tracks on the board. When the game starts, there are no tracks! You must build out the infrastructure! See above as we have quite a nice train infrastructure on the board. So, when you take the train, you can move to any city in the connected network for just one action! But, that means someone else had to help build the train network on previous turns!

Of course Robert chose the special power that makes it so he can build two train tracks for one action: that’s partly how we got our network up so quickly!

The port city to port city travel requires you to discard a card, but then you can move from a port city to any port city (with the color of the card you discarded). All port cities are marked with Anchors (see above).

You still have to deal with Epidemics like in Pandemic. Unfortunately, once you research a disease you don’t “cure it” or “eradicate it” like you did in base Pandemic. This is a thematic twist: this is a game set in 1848, so you don’t quite have the technology to cure! All you can do is research. You still need to research all 4 disease to win!

What We Liked

We really liked the theme! With the real-world pandemic making us weary of the world-wide Pandemic, there was something charming about casting back to a previous era (1848) on the Iberian peninsula. The map of Iberia, the art on the backs of cards, the style of the game really transported us to a simpler time. Somehow, harkening back to an older era with a smaller map made this “whole Pandemic thing” feel more palatable, and dare I say, fun?

We really liked how the new ideas: the regions, the railroads, the ports, the purify waters! The railroads in particular were such a nice touch: they make the game feel even more strategic. A lot of Pandemic is keeping the diseases under control, but spending actions early in the game to set-up a train network (with the topology of our choosing) made the game feel harder, but more interesting! We had to figure out when it made sense to spend actions for building tracks!

And the purify waters action/region ideas was just a new and really cool way to “prevent” outbreaks even if you weren’t there! Again, it made the game that much more strategic.

The game is absolutely harder. We lost our first game. But it made us want to try again! By pulling together and playing better as a group, the game absolutely encouraged that much more cooperation. It was clear: we had to cooperate well or we die.

A minor thing, but a thing nonetheless: I enjoyed that there was always something interesting you could do with all of your actions! Even if you had an action left over, you could choose to either “purify water” in a adjacent region, or build a train track. I have had games of Pandemic where I threw away actions (to end up in the right space to trade), so it was nice to feel like you could always do something!

Intensity

Strictly speaking, Pandemic Iberia is harder than Pandemic.  It requires a lot of thought, planning, and cooperation to win.  Pandemic Iberia is a very intense game: you may love that, or you may hate that.  Jeff and Becca like the original Pandemic better  because it has a little more laid-back feel: they feel like you can sit back and enjoy your turns a little more in Pandemic.  They still enjoyed Pandemic Iberia, but thought it was much more manic that base Pandemic.

Robert adores the trains and strategy and I believe Pandemic Iberia is now his favorite Pandemic.  I think I am with Robert: I love the new systems and the strategy they introduce. 

Conclusion

Pandemic Iberia was a hit with my group! It’s like a 9/10! It’s a very hard, very strategic version of Pandemic. If you are looking for the next step-up in strategy from Pandemic, consider checking out the very first variant: Pandemic Iberia. It’s charming setting but manic gameplay might be just what you are looking for in a difficult, but strategic cooperative game.

Greg, I really do think you’d like Pandemic Iberia.

Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom is a game I got from a recent GameNerdz order. I believe it just came out in the USA (as of Sept. 1st, 2023): this is a Kosmos game, which typically has more of a European presence. This is a cooperative game in the Lord of the Rings universe. It’s a little surprising, given that we saw the Lord of The Rings Adventure Book Game just a few months ago! We loved that game: see our review of it here!

Even though the Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game was a lighter cooperative game, this one seems even lighter!

This Adventure to Mount Doom has only 50 minutes play time, with 10+ ages … the same age group, but this game promises a “full” Lord of the Rings Experience in 50 minutes!

Components

This is a pretty standard sized box.

The rulebook is very readable, if the font is a little small. It does a nice job showing and labelling all components and getting a good picture of set-up. The rulebook is only 8 pages! But it does a good job.

The box is probably too big for all its components.  Just some cards, standees, and dice.

The components are nice, despite the cards not being linen-finished. Everything is very readable.

Gameplay

This a cooperative game. Um, this is roll-and-move. Wait, wait, wait! Don’t run away just wait! It’s more interesting than you think.

Players do NOT play any individual Lord of the Rings character, they play the fellowship, trying to move the fellowship (piecemeal) from Rivendell to Mount Doom! See above as the fellowship starts with 5 groups on Rivendell!

Note that there is a die for each group (Frodo&Sam, Merry&Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli). Each turn, the current player will be rolling some dice and moving forward some members of the fellowship! Incidentally, the game does a great job, in both the rulebook and components, of making it clear which color applies to which group!

If you can get the ring-bearer (Frodo&Sam) to Mount Doom at the board, the players win!

On the left side of the track is a courage track for the Ring-Bearer: if it ever goes to the bottom, players lose!

Or, if all the Nazgul make it onto the board players lose!

Here’s the roll-and-move part … every turn, the current player rolls 4 dice: 2 colored (which allow the corresponding fellowship to move) and 2 black encounter dice (usually bad news). They choose one colored die for fellowship movement, then one black die for an encounter.

There are 6 encounter spaces at the bottom of the board: some are good (3 is green: Arwen is a friend makes it so you can avoid one bad space on the move) and some are bad (2 is Saruman: he amasses the Uruk-hai) and some are unknown until you flip them (1 and 6).

If the encounter card leaves the board, the symbol underneath is “usually” good: above, you can choose to move Gimli up to 2 spaces (after we take Arwen).

After you roll for the first choice, then you still roll the black dice and two more colored dice: you have no option on the second black die: you must take it.

At point, you execute your turn: Have the black encounter, move the fellowship character, have the second black encounter, then move the second fellowship character.

Every time the ring-bearer enters a new area, you have to clear the encounter cards and get the encounter cards for the next section of the board. As you expect, the encounters get less and less friendly as you get closer to Mount Doom.

There are other rules (how you can heal, how you fight, how you can get Gandalf cards, how you accidentally get Nazguls, etc), but at it’s core: this is a roll-and-move game: Per turn, you basically get to roll 7 dice total and get to choose 3 of them (1 black and 2 colored) and get stuck with 2 of them (1 black and 1 colored) (2 go unchosen or re-rolled). Note that you do get to choose which of the colored dice you roll, so that helps.

Once the ring-bearer gets to Mount Doom, the game changes a little: only the ring-bearer moves, and only 1 black die gets rolled: you just have to suffer the consequences and hope you get to Mount Doom!

Roll and Move

Are you still reading? Yes, this is a roll-and-move game. But there is some choice. You still get stuck with 1 completely random encounter each time (the second one), but at least you can choose the first. And you get to roll at least 4 colored dice and choose two of them. So, this isn’t quite like a roll-and-move like Life or Monopoly: you do get some choice..

And sometimes you will roll bad: see above as I barely get my fellowship moving with 1 and 2!

And sometimes you will cruise! See above with a 5 and 6!

There are reasons to choose lesser numbers sometimes: see above! If any of the three land on the space 2 spaces away, you lose courage! So, maybe you’ll take a 1 over a 2 to avoid the courage loss! There are choices along the way.

Solo Game

Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law and having a viable solo mode!  In this case, since no one plays any particular character (you just move parts of the fellowship depending on your dice rolls), it doesn’t really matter how many people: the Gandalf and friend cards can be used by anyone.  

In my first game, I lost horribly near Mount Doom as too many Nazgul came out: When all 7 come out, I immediately lost! It was frustrating, as my Nazgul came out because I rolled poorly on my second encounter rolls! I had no way to mitigate that! So, I just lost.

I had actually lost earlier, but I kept playing because I wanted to see the endgame. It turns out the Sauron’s Eye (see above) totally screwed me out of my courage, and my courage fell below 0 way before I lost to the Nazgul.

My first game was a learning game. Lessons: keep the courage up and stay away from the Nazguls!

My second game went a lot better: I almost lost, but Faramir made all the difference in the end game:

I used Faramir to move the last 4 spaces of Mount Doom: this avoided all the bad stuff along the way! I am pretty sure I would have lost had I not played this card at the end!

Both solo games were (correctly notated) at about 50 minutes. I lost my first game and won my second game.

Randomness

I had to have to have a long think about this game after playing it. Yes, it is perhaps a little too random. The second encounter roll can almost never be mitigated, and if you roll poorly, the Nazgul will eat your lunch and you will just lose.

But, you have some choices along the way. So, is this too random?

I am reminded of Ranier Knizia’s original cooperative Lord of the Rings game. We joke that it should be called “Getting Killed by Sauron” because it’s so hard … but you know why it’s so hard? It’s so random! The randomness there comes from the event tiles. You have no idea what event tiles you will get as you play, and so few ways to mitigate those event tile flips! Yet, we still seem to like the original Lord of the Rings game. Honestly, there is some nostalgia there, as the original Lord of the Rings game was one of the first cooperative games out there!

So, Adventure To Mount Doom maybe has a little more “bad news” mitigation or maybe the same? But it’s only 50 minutes! So, maybe my brain thinks “Lord of the Rings needs to be an Epic game, so 50 minutes is too short!” … but maybe it isn’t. I think the amount of randomness here is probably less than the original Lord of the Rings game by Knizia. So, am I a hypocrite if I like the Ranier Knizia game but not this one?

Cooperative Play

I couldn’t get my group to play this cooperatively. 

“Wait, this is roll-and-move?”

“Well, yes. “

“Is it kind of random?”

“Well, yes. But it’s better than you think!”

“You aren’t really selling it.”

So, they heard roll-and-move,  they figured it was too random, and they were done.  I think this prejudice might be widespread.

Conclusion

So, this game was better than I expected, but it’s still a roll-and-move. The solo game was okay, but I don’t see myself playing it again solo. And I couldn’t get my game group to play it.

But I encourage you to look into your soul and remember how random the Ranier Knizia’s Lord of the Rings game was and ask yourself to reconsider randomness. Adventure to Mount Doom is only 50 minutes, and there are interesting decisions along the way, even if it is maybe too random. At least it’s short!

In the end, I am keeping the game because I think this can be a good introductory cooperative game for people who have only seen older roll-and-move games like Life and Monopoly. I can see someone new to the hobby enjoying the Lord of the Rings theme and still getting into Adventure to Mount Doom. I also can see families with kids (at the bottom end of the age range: 10-11) enjoying this.

Hard-core gamers will probably hate this, or at least they think they will. It’s better than they think.

Midnight Murder Mysteries is a cooperative detective/deduction game that was on Kickstarter back in June 2022. Ir promised delivery in January 2023, but it only arrived at my house sometime in April 2023 … a few months late for a Kickstarter isn’t bad.

This is the 2nd Edition of the original game. I have no knowledge of the original edition, but I do love mystery/detective games: See our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games! That’s why I backed this game. Let’s take a look! (There is also a competitive mode, but we don’t review that here).

What Is This?

This is a detective/mystery game. Players work solo or cooperatively to uncover a murder! (There is also a competitive mode, but we don’t review that here).  There are about 9*3 or 27 cases here in 3 case books (the Kickstarter version has an extra casebook bringing it to 36 cases).  

Each case in the case book is described on two pages: the premise (left above) and the paths (right above).  As you investigate, you can investigate a location or talk to a suspect (if you are in the same space as that entity).  You can ask each suspect about their alibi, what they may have witnessed, and possible motives: each of those questions is a separate action.  Each investigate has a number next to it which leads you to an entry in the same book.

Each entry (see above) gives some information which you can mark off on your clue sheet (see below).

You can only get the information from a suspect if you are in the same location, so you will be having to walk around a ship to find them!

There is a built-in timer: you must solve the murder before the ship gets back to port!

The timer (above) gives you “about” 10 turns to solve the murder!

Once you are forced to (or choose to) solve the murder, you flip over your clue sheet and fill in CULPRIT, MOTIVE, and MODUS OPERANDI … and a backup, just in case you are wrong. You read the solution and score your investigation with a 100 being perfect and 0 being, well, terrible.

This game is all about trying to optimize your actions to get the most info before you run out of time!

Components

The components are pretty good. The case books are readable (if a little small). The board is well-labelled and easy to navigate.

One major complaint about the components is that the bases DO NOT fit well into the standees.

The stands are way too tight. I ripped the first Suspect standee. See above and below.

See the tear at the bottom? After that, I used a plastic knife to hold the base open so none of the other standees would rip. See above. I do wish they had included a few more bases because I am never taking these out again!

However, assembly is a one-time thing. Just be very careful putting your standees together.

I think the most impressive component is the HUGE clue pad: there are so many clue sheets! See above.

Solo Game

There is a solo mode (see rules above): You are trying to solve the murder before Simon the Purser. Simon is running around the ship (as are you), and you are both trying to solve the mystery before the other.

The solo mode is okay: it kind of gives you a sense of how the game works. If Simon is in an area with you, you can’t investigate unless you use an action point to move him away. His movement is controlled by the event deck, but he can essentially teleport to any location on the ship. This is frustrating since movement is so much more expensive for the solo player.

There is also a notion of publicly and privately investigating, but it really is just a counting exercise: public investigating is only one action point, but Simon gets to cross off a path. When Simon has 30 PATHS crossed off, you trigger the end of game! … and you see if you have solved it, getting some points based on where Simon was.

The solo mode was okay: I found it to just be “optimizing actions” to avoid Simon getting to 30, so it didn’t really feel like he was investigating. My own investigations were fun enough, but there was a lot of Simon upkeep.

Solo mode taught the basics of the game. It was good enough for that, but I wasn’t compelled to play it solo again.

Cooperative Play

Cooperative play was good…ish. It’s weird that players don’t share information (mostly) until the very end of the game. Each player conducts their own investigation, but there is no real sharing of information as the game plays! Each player is conducting their own private investigation, reading from the book independently. As they play, the can share whether a location is “good, bad, or meh” information AND THAT’S all the information can be shared!! So that game proceeds in a lot of silence as players read (silently to themselves) from the case book.

But, the end of the game was explosive! People could barely contain themselves when they could finally talk to each other. “Do you know what I found?? I couldn’t tell anyone! Oh my gosh!!” No one could communicate (much) for most of the game and it was like a dam burst at the endgame!! It was like everyone just exploded!! It was exciting and furious, as information about the murder flew around the table. The end of the game was absolutely the best part of the game, as players shared and postulated together, trying to come up with the murderer, means, and motive. It was boisterous and exciting.

Strategy

There is strategy to the game, even though the Suspects come out very randomly. Movement is precious in this game, so players have to come up with some strategy to get the fewest moves and most investigations. There’s some rules that seems “throwaway” when you first see them: At the end of your turn, you can move a SUSPECT up to two zones. Okay? Turns out it’s critical to use this to move the SUSPECTS to you rather than wasting your own actions. So, there will be a lot of discussion about who to move to help the others. My first game, I didn’t get why that was important, until I saw how much moving wasted my actions. There is some strategy to optimizing your investigations.

The Alpha Player Lurks

One of the things we don’t touch on a lot here in Co-op Gestalt is the threat of the Alpha Player (see our discussion here for more elaboration of the Alpha Player Problem). A lot of people have had cooperative experiences ruined by an Alpha Player, including myself. I, generally, have been fairly lucky that my game groups get along well and cooperate well: the Alpha Player is (almost) never a problem for my groups. However, it’s important to remember that the shadow of the Alpha Player is always lurking nearby, waiting to ruin a cooperative game … so, it’s good when games feel like they have explicit mechanisms to safeguard against the Alpha Player.

Recall from our review of King of Monster Island that we liked the game, but the turns felt pretty independent without much interaction. Although this generated a negative reaction at first, we realized that this might actually be a positive: this game guards against the Alpha Player! If you are in a situation where you might be playing with an Alpha Player (your brother, you-know-the-guy-in-your-game-group, maybe even yourself), this would be a good entry: the fiercely independent dice rolls keep the Alpha Player at bay as each player enjoys their own turn!

And Midnight Murder Mysteries also seems to keep the Alpha Player at bay! Each player fills out their suspect sheet independently , makes their way around the board independently, and pursues their own investigation … independently! The only time the players really cooperate is at the very end when they share all the info they have. So, as the players play, there really is no chance for the Alpha Player to tell you what to do!

There is a cost, though for warding off the Alpha Player: there’s really no interaction as you play. I tended to role-play an annoying kid, and we all sort of did stuff to be silly just to engage a little. So, again, that could be a positive or a negative: you can use the time to talk as friends about whatever you want, but you aren’t engaging in the game proper.

Downtime: The Main Problem and a Potential Fix

The main problem with Midnight Murder Mysteries is that there is a lot of downtime while you wait for the other players to “read silently” their chosen path from the casebook. Now, there are a few places when investigators can share, but we found that the bulk of the time was just waiting for the previous player to finish reading silently. This downtime kind of took a toll on us as we played.

But the downtime can be alleviated! Although I got two copies of the game for gifting (one for myself, one for a friend), I think that was a happy accident! We think the way to play best cooperatively is play simultaneously! Each player reads of out their own independent casebook and pursues their own independent path each turn from their own independent book! Players will need to figure out who to move before the round begins, but during the round, the “reading of the book” can take place simultaneously. This can pretty much remove all downtime and the game can go much faster.

The only way this can work is if you have multiple copies of the case book. It turns out that some of the cases are online in the Print and Play. So, if you have multiple devices, you can access the case books online so that each player will have their own case book! Or if you have multiple copies of the game (like me), you can physically share multiple physical copies.

Granted, there are some issues that need to be resolved: how do you handle things that are supposed to happen in order? Generally, the only things that seemed to matter were either the sharing of information or the moving of suspects. If the players decide, as as group, which suspects should be moving before the turn begins (rather than piecemeal), then that can work. It might take some tweaking, but since this is a cooperative game, the players can decide together how to deal with this!

In general, this simultaneous play house rule takes this cooperative game from something we liked okay to something that is fun and quick to play we liked a lot more! With simultaneous investigations, that 75 minute play reduces substantially (depending on how many case books you have)! Some of the casebooks are online for the Print and Play version: that’s probably your best bet to have multiple copies of the case books.

Conclusion

Midnight Murder Mysteries is a curious beast. The solo game isn’t great, but it’s good enough to teach the game. The cooperative mode isn’t very interactive until the very end, but this can be both boon and bane. The Alpha Player will never take over this game because each player in the cooperative mode will have their own investigation which won’t be influenced by the Alpha Player, but this comes at the cost of some interaction. Luckily, the endgame is explosive and highly interactive and really makes up for the earlier lack of interaction.

The worst part of the cooperative game is the downtime between turns, as you wait for each player to read silently from the case book. With a simple house rule, by just using multiple copies of the case book and investigating simultaneously, you can get rid of a lot of waiting and make the game that much more punchier! Without the house rule, the game is probably a 5.5/10 or 6/10. With the house rule, the game really speeds up and becomes a 7/10 or 7.5/10.

But, it depends on how you want to play! Do you want to play a game where you and your friends can hang out just shoot the breeze while you play? Then play Midnight Murder Mysteries cooperatively as-is: no Alpha Player will come and ruin your game. If you want your game punchier and more intense, consider playing simultaneously with multiple case books. The thing is, you can choose what’s best for your group!

Prelude

Bedlam in Neverwinter is an Escape Room room game in the Dungeons and Dragons universe of Icewind Dale. This is a game is three Acts: Each Act lasts 90 minutes as players work together to solve puzzles and try to solve an ever growing mystery. Act I, Act II, and Act III are all connected: the story all culminates to a final solution in Act III after playing through each act.

After each Act, you can save your game for another session (which is what we did), or continue straight to the next act. We played the three Acts over three sessions in June and July of 2023.

The time on the box seemed apropos: each act was about 90 minutes. The box also says 2-6 players. We ended up playing with three people. If you were stranded on a desert island with this box, you probably could play solo as two characters and still enjoy it, but like all Escape Room games, usually more brains are better to progress the game.

This Escape Room style will very familiar to those of you who played the Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion game from earlier this year: see our review here. There are differences, though, which we’ll see below.

As the prelude closes, we get ready to play.  You’ll notice we can’t do anything at all until the players arrive! As soon as you open the box, it tells you to STOP!

Act I: Mystery at Ten Towns

Charlie and Allison are my Escape Room buddies: we’ve played quite a number over the years (including many Murder Mysteries: they were part of Red Carpet in Ruins from a weeks ago). This seemed the ideal game for us: we have played many sessions of Dungeons and Dragons together as well as many Escape Room board games! This game was made for us!

Continue reading “A Review of Bedlam in Neverwinter: A Dungeons & Dragons Escape Room in Three Acts” →

Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Waves is a cooperative pirate-themed game that was on Kickstarter back in August 2022: It promised delivery in July 2023, and I received my backer copy in Early August 2023. That’s maybe just a few weeks late, which is great by Kickstarter standards! Seriously, the last five Kickstarters we have received have been either early or on-time! Let’s hope this trend continues!

Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Wakes is a cooperative pirate game (if you couldn’t figure that out from the name or pictures).

This is a game for 1-5 Players, Ages 14+. The game box (above) says 30 minutes per player, but that is not at all what we experienced! It felt much longer! A solo game took about 2.5 hours, a 2 Player games took about 3 hours. A better metric might be: 2 hours + 30 minutes/player?

Interestingly, the game “base rules” all seem to apply to games of 2-4 players. The solo rules and the 5-Player rules are exceptions. This bothered my friend Sam so much that he chose to back-out of a 5-player game we had planned because he was worried about the time/extra rules overhead. Be aware: the game does seem tuned for 2-4 players, but just happens to have rules for solo and 5 players.

Let’s take a look at this cool pirate game!  Will this make  our Top 10 Cooperative Swashbuckling Games?     If ye wants to be a mutinous pirate and see, jump to ahrrrrrrr Conclusion!

Unboxing

This is fairly normal sized box: see the Coke Can above and below for scale.

Note that the game seems to not all quite fit in the box: this is a very tightly packed box! Unfortunately, it’s still a little overpacked after you rebox it as well. It’s not a big deal, but it was a bit noticeable.

See above as we unbox!

The rulebook has a great cover, and fits to the shape of the box.

This game (other than sightly overpacking) has really thought about how to fit just about everything in the box! It has great directions for putting cards and tokens into the bottom of the box: see the insert above. And on the other side of the insert…

There are also GameTrayz (sp?) for ease of storing many pieces. You do have to unbox a lot of things to get them in there, but it really does make set-up and tear-down easier. See above and below.

The dice all fit into one of the GameTrayz pretty well: the 4-sided (used for marking Tentacle Hit Points) and 8-sided dice (used for notating hull and direction) felt like they fit, but sorta weirdly. It worked well enough. The 6-sided wood dice were fantastic and very thematic, with little pirate symbols on them! The gold coins were real metal and very cool as well.

The tentacles and ships fit nicely in the other GameTrayz.

Underneath all the GameTrayz are a bunch of stuff ..

As you pull everything out of the box, you get a little worried … “Is this all going to fit?”  

There were a ton of punchouts (see above) which all seemed to fit nicely into the insert at the bottom of the box.

And you know what, it does fit all nicely in the box (modulo being just a touch too tall): see above.

Oh yes, and the player boards and nice and dual-layered: see above.

The cards are all linen-finished and look very piratey. The art is nice, if weirdly a little inconsistent: some card backs have really nice, almost painting-quality art, but some have more pencily art, and some art looks like just old prints. Despite the inconsistency in style, the art still works in this pirate game.

Overall, the components are very nicely done and the game looks like a cool pirate game.

Rulebook

I struggled with this rulebook. It’s not a bad rulebook, but it could been better. I mean, I do love that cover!

Part of my struggle may have just been the length: this rulebook is LONG: it’s 36 pages!  Sometimes that extra length is used for flavor or scenario text. Nope: Not here!  This rulebook is pretty much all rules!  It’s a heavier game than I expected.

The game gets a B- or C+ on the Chair Test: It has a big font which you can read (good), it stays open when you place it down (good), but it kinda flops down on the edges when you put it on the chair next to you (bad). I think it worked just well enough to use the chair next to me.

I think I was a little grumpy with the rulebook right away because it started with a Table of Contents (listing the major headings in order) … but called it an Index instead.  I’ve seen this in other games and it’s a pet peeve: A Table of Contents lists major sections in order, and an Index notates important keywords and where to find them in the text.   This is a pet peeve because it belies not understanding standard book nomenclature … and it has me worried they’ll get other stuff wrong.

The Game Components were well-labelled across two pages.

I appreciate the extra space they took to list and label all the components. Sometimes, when the rules refer to a component, it’s nice to be able to look stuff up.

There’s a nice overview of the map as we start into the rules. See above and below.

It did have me wonder if maybe the board should have been LABELLED with the annotations rather than having to look them up? That’s a tough one, because the board does look nice, and adding annotations would make it busier and less thematic. I think they made the right choice from a theme perspective, but I always think that it’s better when the components and spaces are well-labelled so you don’t HAVE to look up stuff in the rulebook.

The set-up pages were pretty well done.

It’s just .. I started out with a solo game (which I strongly suspect most people will) because I wanted to learn the game before I taught my friends, and the solo rule were an “exceptional” case relegated to the back of the book. Look closely at the set-up:

The set-up ONLY discuss 2, 3, and 4 Player set-ups! If you want solo play, you have to go out of your way to find those rules in the back of the book. Again, I suspect many people will play this solo first so they can teach their friends, and the rulebook doesn’t make that flow easily. Gameplay is optimized for 2, 3, and 4 players. Solo and 5-Player games are the exceptional cases.

There’s a lot of text in the rulebook, and there could be more figures. And even so, there still were times when I thought the game was underspecified (Example: when a whirlpool moves you, how do you move? Along the current? When you get pushed out by the whirlpool, is that an extra move? Where do you get moved to? Frequently there are multiple choices…)

Look, this game has a lot of rules, and occasionally under-specifies a few of these rules. BUT, the rulebook is very readable, and it has a big font., and even though there are problems with the rulebook, it makes a good faith effort of putting forth a good pirate game and mostly succeeds. Let’s just move on: I was able to learn the game from the rules, so that’s a win.

Gameplay: Overview

This game proceeds over two Acts. In Act I, players work together to try to upgrade their ships to make them “sea-worthy” : players are exploring and doing all they can to get their ship shipshape. In Act II, players use their upgraded ships to fight the Kraken: if they can take out the Kraken, they win! You’ll note that the player board (above) has two sides: Side I is the map where players explore and upgrade (Act I) and Side 2 is the whirlpool where player fight the Kraken (Act II)!

At the start of the game, each player selects one of 5 ships to man.

Each ship has 5 main stats notated on 4 different tracks and 1 8-sided die.

• sail (green) is how many movement points you have.  Normal sea costs 1 movement point, other “rougher” seas cost more 
• cannons (brown) are how many dice you get to roll when you attack.  
• hull (purple) are how many dice you roll when you defend
• repair (red) is how many spaces you can repair other attributes (including repair) if they get lowered. 
• integrity (8-sided die) is your “hit points” for the ship: how much damage your ship can take until it sinks

You can’t repair your ships attributes above the default unless you get a special card that ups that stat … the slots underneath the ship are for those special upgrade cards.

Every ship has a special ability, or rather a choice (one of two): See above: You get to to choose one. That ability changes in the second Act: it flips to the other side (so pay attention to both sides).

During the Act, players will be upgrading their ship (upgrading stats and getting upgrade cards) and getting gold: gold in Act I is how you buy upgrades, but gold will be used for re-rolls in Act II. See above for an upgraded ship!

Get the best upgrades you can in Act I to fight the Kraken in Act II!

Gameplay: Act I

Act I is all about the upgrades.  Pirates do “piratey” things (plunder, explore, fight) to get gold so they can buy upgrades to their ships!

In Act I, players deal with an Event every turn, then get three Actions each.  See above for the very good player summary cards! (Seriously, these were very helpful).

Events (see above) in Act I are generally good things: they set the stage for some “piratey” things to happen, which nudge the players in certain directions.  For example, the Exotic Goods card puts the Merchant Ships into play, encouraging platers to “pirate” them to get good stuff. The Events can also be bad, but generally are helpful.

Once the Event is resolved, each player get three actions.  The most common actions (at least among me and my friends) were the Explore, Plunder, or Visit Market actions: These are generally the most reliable way to get upgrades.  These actions must  happen at a port.

The four corners of the board have different ports with different types of upgrades. The color of each port is significant: note that the colors correspond to the four attributes of each ship! For example, Siren’s Grotto (the green port) is all about sailing upgrades (green attribute).

There are lots of ways to upgrade your ship: You can also Hunt or Explore A Shipwreck, which you almost only want to do with someone else: failure at those actions can really damage your ship.

Gold is very important in Act I: you can usually get some really great upgrades at the Markets if you have enough gold. Unfortunately, you don’t have a lot of gold to start of the game, so a lot of the actions in the game have you “take a chance” to try and get some gold.

Most of the actions in Act I have you rolling the Fortune Dice (the wooden dice, see above) to attempt things: you have to get a certain number of successes to succeed: each Skull is a success. (The Combat also uses these dice). Note the distribution: 2 empties (failures), 2 single successes, and 2 double-successes.

For example, when Teresa and I went after the Silver Sun (A Treasure Galleon from a Hunt action), we had to roll  8+ successes in a combined Sail and Repair roll (where the stat indicates how many dice you get to roll).  A failure was not good, but a success would get us some good booty!

Most of the time, the result of success is Gold or a minor stat boost, but you can also get Treasure! Treasures in the game can be amazing and really help you in the final combat. The Chain Shot Treasure (above) was critical to one of our wins!

As you explore and plunder and go to different ports, you will have to sail out on the Open Seas: that has its own risks and rewards! You have to draw an Open Seas card everytime you are out at sea:

Generally, the Open Seas cards are challenges for the pirates (which may result in some gold), but as the game progresses, you may accidentally draw a Kraken Advances card from the Open Seas deck:

If you ever draw 3 Kraken Advances cards from the Open Sea deck, you immediately begin Act II! Most of the time, though, Act II starts after all 6 Events have come out.

Either way, you hope you and your fellow pirates have upgraded your ships enough! Act II is starting!

Act II Set-Up

Before you can get to Act II, you actually have quite a bit of set-up:

Before Act II officially starts, players have to turn over the Black Spot cards (see above) and discover how many Kraken Modifiers are used to augment the Kraken!

Each card will potentially up the Kraken’s starting hit points or add a new Kraken Modifier.  Basically, these cards are a balancing factor: if you did really well in Act I, well, the Kraken gets that much harder!

In my first solo game, I did “ok” in the upgrade phase, and got 5 Kraken Modifiers and a few extra hit points.

The Kraken has a number of tentacles and hit point based on the number of players.  See the board above: a solo game has 4 tentacles, and my starting hit points were 24!  Note that they did a great job of notating a lot of things on the board: the tentacles attack, defense, range, and move!  The 4-sided dice notate the tentacle hit points (0-3).

Gameplay: Act II

Act II is all about trying to take down the Kraken and his tentacles!

A Whirlpool starts the turn: this pushes the ships around the whirlpool and has some “bad stuff” happen.

Next, the tentacles move and attack! You’ll notice each tentacle is numbered (and distinct).

After the tentacles move and attack, the Kraken’s head attacks (now there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day)!

There’s no dice rolling for the Kraken attack: the Kraken just attacks every ship on the board at once and does either 5, 6, 7, or 9 damaage, depending on how close you are to the head! See the octant board above. (You still get to roll hull for defense)

After all that, if the players still survived, they get 3 actions to move and attack the tentacles and the head! To win, players must take out the head with a direct attack! Killing tentacles is useful too, as each killed tentacle does 1 damage to the Kraken and the Kraken head defense is the number of tentacles in play + 2.

If this sounds too easy, it’s not. Tentacles regenerate once the Kraken gets lower and lower on hit points. Note the 18 and 26 above: they little tentacles on them! Teresa equated this to a video game: as you kill more and more tentacles, they respawn!

If , at any point, your ship sinks, you are not out of the game! The other player can still rescue your deckhands and you can hep augment the remaining ships! Players win if they take out the Kraken or lose if ships are sunk!

Solo Play

So, there are solo rules: (congratulations on Saunders’ Law). Unfortunately, they are relegated to their own page after you have “absorbed” the rest of the rules. I think this is disservice to the game: given how many rules there are in the game, I think it would behoove the rulebook to have a better face for the solo gamer. I am absolutely glad I learned the game before I brought it out to my friends, so I was very glad for a solo mode. I can’t imagine crunching through this game, learning as you go in a 4-Player game!

Act I moved pretty well: I had fun exploring and looking around the board. It wasn’t too much work. I will say that the special rules for Hunting and Shipwrecks slowed the game to a crawl because those rules have to change more substantially for the solo player: I had to apply the changes for the solo rules (which are not trivial) to the original rules (which are not trivial): this was quite a bit of work.

Act II feels like video game fight!  Take out the Kraken!  It was a little bit of a slog, until I realized I missed one very important rule: gold can be used for re-rolls! That’s very helpful!  But even with that, I was very worried (and I still am, a little), that there is too much randomness in this game.

In Act I, gold is used to buy stuff. In Act II, your remaining gold is used for re-rolls: And this was absolutely essentially to realize! Without this one rule, this game is a completely random slog and I don’t want to play it again. BUT, with the gold letting you re-roll when you want, it really feels a lot better. I was about ready to chuck the game in the garbage during Act II, until I realized I had some choice when to re-roll! Gold is gooood! Ahhhhrrrrr!

The solo game is long: if you believe the box, it’s only 30 minutes. Nope, nope, nope: more like 2.5 hours. Granted, I put some of set-up and tear-down in there (there is a lot of stuff), but you have to: getting ready from Act I to Act II is quite a bit of work just right there! You’ll notice I had to write a section called Set-Up: Act II to cover it!

I liked the solo game, but boy was it a lot of work! There is a lot of set-up and tear-down at the start and End of Acts! Once you are playing, it’s not too much work, and it’s pretty fun but boy does it take a lot of work to get there. It’s a good solo game, I just wish it weren’t so much work between exceptional solo rules application, set-up for Act I and Act II, and teardown at the end of Act I and Act II.

Cooperative Play

I think this is better as a cooperative game than a solo game. The work that I alluded to in the solo section can be shared between players and that relieves some of that burden, and frankly makes it more fun.

The game is a lot longer at 4-Player vs. 2-Player.  The standard that we seem to see is that there is a 2 hour base, and 30 minutes per player.  So, yes, it took about 4 hours for a 4-player game!  In the 4-Player game, there’s not quite as much to do on your turn as you are waiting for your compatriots to play, although occasionally you do get to join them on (cooperative) Treasure Hunts!  

My friend Teresa and I had a grand time playing! We were barely able to take-down the Kraken, but we did win. There was a lot more cooperation in Act II, as we had to strategize about who/when to attack. Act I was more like two solo players buffing their ships at the same time, but I will say the Treasure Hunts were “encouraged” by Event cards, and both Treasure Hunts and Shipwrecks felt more cooperative, so even then there was some cooperation.

The 4-Player game didn’t go nearly as well: partly because there was a lot of downtime between turns, and partly because the randomness overwhelmed some of us: see more details below.

Too Many Rules

Let me say firstly: I like this game! But there are too many rules. Between the two Acts, and all the execeptions for solo mode and 5-player mode, and the deckhands and sunk ship rules, it felt very overwhelming. Some of that will go away as you play more, but I think if any nontrivial amount of time passes between plays, you will have to relearn a lot of stuff.

Having said that, in general the game did a pretty good job of helping out with Player Summaries (these were quite good, see above) and having rules on the boards (especially the Kraken board).

The Deckhand rules are probably the most work in the game: I understand why the game has these rules, as it’s too easy for a player to just die at the hands (or tentacles) of the Kraken and remove him from the game (not fun!)

I like the idea of the Rescued Deckhands, but it adds so many rules to a game already swimming (no pun intended) in rules. I didn’t even need them in the first few games I played, but I find myself dreading when I have to apply them. I will say, when all of us except Andrew sank in a 4-Player game, having the Deckhand rules still kinda kept us involved. It was frustrating having yet another set of rules, but it kept us involved. So, maybe it was a wash?

I like this game, but be very aware that there are a lot of rules (36 pages) and you will have to spend some time to get through them.

Theme

The theme really does drip from this game.  The encounters in Act I feel very piratey, the art leans into the pirate theme, the cards seem to have just enough text to make the game feel piratey (but not too much text to be distracting), and the Kraken fight feels like the end of a pirate movie!  If you want a thematic pirate game, this delivers.

House Rules

My main problem with the game is that there might be too much randomness to the game. If you do poorly in Act I, even with the balancing of the Block Spot cards, it just feels like you are going in with significantly reduced chances. A very simple way to help with that: make it so Gold can be spent for re-rolls in Act I! That way, if you feel like Act I is too random, it can be mitigated. This also makes the game more consistent: “You may spend one Gold to re-roll one die at any time”.

The inconsistencies between Act I and Act II were a little frustrating sometimes. (“Wait, can I spend a stat to not sink in Act II? Or was that just Act I?” ) Making gold always useful as a re-roll seems to make sense.

Also, consider the Rescued Deckhands rules: The entire purpose of the Rescued Deckhands is to keep players involved if their Ship sinks in Act II: And this will happen! It happened to all of us except 1 in a 4-Player game! The game can really feel random sometimes and one player gets all the Tentacles! I love the idea of the Rescued Deckhands, but it is SO MANY Rules after learning the Act II rules! A simple way around them: Give the players a “Witch Brew”. If any player ever sinks, the players can use the “Witch Brew” to immediately resurrect anywhere at full health. I love the idea of the Rescued Deckhands, but it is so much more work in a game that already has a lot of work!!

These are just suggestions. Feel free to ignore. I do think the using gold for a re-rolls should permeate the game: it gives the players choice when they need it, it simplifies/consistentifies the rules , and it makes more juicy choices: “Do I save Gold to buy cool upgrades, or do I use gold to re-roll to pass this encounter?”

Conclusion: A Tale of Two Pirates

Sara played this game and had a miserable time: her Act I succumbed to bad rolls, and she was never as able to get anything going.  Sara had to watch everyone else do well in Act I, then she immediately died at the start of Act II.  She disengaged the whole time.  In the words of Sara, “There were too many rules, the games was far too random, and it was way too long.  I hated this game”.

Teresa has played this game multiple times (including with Sara), and Teresa is interested in playing again.  She loved the theme and the dice-rolling: she liked living in this world.  “Can we play again when it’s just the two of us?”

At the very start of this review, we asked: Would Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Wakes make our Top 10 Cooperative Swashbuckling Games? It would, but just just barely. Teresa liked it better than Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Andrew and Rich were generally positive about it, So, that would put Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Wakes in the very bottom of our Top 10 Cooperative Swashbuckling Games (probably supplanting Pirate Republic)!

This game has amazing components and feels very piratey! The theme is all throughout the game!

If you think you can handle the randomness and swingy nature of this game (almost everything is a dice roll), and if you enjoy living in this vey thematic pirate universe (the games are long), then this can be a game for you. Be aware of what this is! Sara hated the game because of the randomness, but Teresa liked living in this world! Andrew and I are somewhere in the middle.

• Sara: Hated it. 3/10
• Andrew: Enjoyed it, positive feelings but noticed how random it can be. 5.5-6/10
• Rich: Both hated it and liked it over many games.  There is too much randomness for such a long game, but there were some great moments and theme in here. Somewhere between 5 and 7/10! (quite a range)
• Teresa: Liked it. 6.5/10 maybe a 7/10, would recommend it and want to play it again as a 2-Player game

We’ll finish by saying that the solo game may be a little too much work to play a lot, the game can be too long and too random, and the rules could use a few rejiggers (both having too many rules and needing a minor rethink), but this could be a game for you because it really does evoke a very piratey theme: there’s still a lot to like in the box.

2070 arrived at my doorstep in early August 2023: This is a cooperative (sorta) Graphic Novel book game from GNA. 2070 was on Kickstarter in back in October 2022 and it promised delivery in July 2023. I think it missed July 2023 by days, but I will count this as on time! Good job GNA!

This is a semi-cooperative game (wait, wait, we’ll come back to that) game where 1 to 4 people sit around the table reading simultaneously from 4 separate Graphic Novels, playing the game together. See the picture on the back of the box, and see us reading below.

What Is This?

This is the third in the Graphic Novel series of games from GNA.  It’s been a while since we’ve seen one of these: the original Crusoe Crew we reviewed in  2019 (see Part I here and Part II here), and the Sherlock Homes Baker Street Irregulars we reviewed back in 2020 (see Part I  here and Part II here).  So, it’s been about 2 to 3 years since we’ve seen a follow up from them!

The best description I have for these games is that they are like a table read: each character is reading from their own copy of a “movie script”, except each of the scripts are each different! The scripts are generally the same, except occasionally, one character may occasionally see/experience different things as players play. There are also really nice graphics in the book! This is a Graphic Novel game mixed with Choose Your Own Adventure: players cooperatively (sorta) make choices about what scene to go to next!

These really are Graphic Novels, except each one is tailored to an individual character.

In 2070, each player takes the role of one of four characters: Itaka, Suaoran, Dama 2D, and Yzaline (see pictures above).  Each character has a very different personality, and your job is to inhabit that character for the adventure.

Each character is described on the back of their individual books: See Ittaka (the alien) below.

This game is set in the world of Anime/Future Tech. The object of the game, without giving away too much, is to catch “the bad guy”.

Components

The components are very similar to Crusoe Crew and Sherlock Homes: Baker Street Irregulars: there are four Graphic Novel books (one for each character), a map, and some tokens. The box has a really nice magnetic clasp and a fantastic ribbon for making it easy to pull all the books out. The ribbon is both necessary and a really nice touch: without it, the books would be very hard to get out.

The map describes the city you are exploring (but we didn’t really use it very much).

The instructions were on the back of the map, and they weren’t great. They are just a little too terse and the teeny font made it harder to read. For example, there’s all sorts of symbols in the book that aren’t explained… you know what those are? They are to “double-check” that you went to the right panel!

See the winged circle in the upper left? If you solve the puzzle on the panel correctly (I elided most of it to avoid spoilers), the panel you are taken to should have that same symbol! We figured it out because we have played all three books! But the rules DO NOT explain this!! They sorta allude to it..

There are also a number of punchouts that will be used in the game: as the characters find things, these items will help “augment” their character. This is a little different than the first two books: almost everything was in the books. Now, there are some physical tokens you can collect! And you also have hit points! Essentially 4 hit points: you may take damage as you play … there are consequences if one of you “dies”…

The components are good, but the real determining factor for most people will be: “Do you like the art in the Graphic Novels?” I think the art is great, and so did my gaming group.

Semi-Cooperative?  Naaaaahh

If you look very closely at the back of the box, you can see that this is a semi-cooperative Graphic Novel Game. Whaaaaaaaat? The original two Graphic Novel games were cooperative, but this one is semi-cooperative?

The rules basically say that players work together to play through the adventure, but each player is collecting Success Points throughout the game as they play: whoever scores the most Success Points wins!

There’s a scoring table on the rulesheet so you can score yourselves at the end of the game.

At the start of the game, each player also has a Secret Objective (hidden from other players) which is a secret way of scoring extra Success Points. See the Secret Objective cards above.

Players still have a play as a group “cooperatively” to win, but the final score determines the winner.

We think that the purpose of the Success Points was an attempt to keep players more engaged as they play: each player can be concentrating on their own Secret Objective, which helps guide them and focus on their character.

Here’s the thing: we accidentally ignored the Secret Objective. It almost seemed to get in the way more than it engaged us. As we played, the Success Points and Secret Objective were more like an odd rule that we had to keep track of while playing, rather than something engaging. The STORY was engaging! The world of 2070 is engaging! The reading to each other is engaging! The Success Points and Secret Objectives were NOT engaging … they actually took us OUT of the game as we played. It seemed liked any dealing with Success Points would interrupt the flow as we were trying to to get through the game. For Example: “Oh, wait, stop the game, I have to get 3 Success Points for no reason .. hold on ..”

In the end, we just ignored the Success Points and Secret Objective and just played completely cooperatively. This might remind some of you of Marvel Legendary: it’s a semi-cooperative deck-builder game with points, but everyone I know just ignores the points and plays cooperatively. I suspect most people will prefer 2070 purely cooperatively and it enjoy it that much more .. but maybe I’m wrong. My group enjoyed it much more cooperatively.

Thoughts

Of the three Graphic Novel games, 2070 was our least favorite. Now you have to understand that’s a high bar: Sherlock Holmes Baker Street Irregulars made the #1 spot on Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2020 and Crusoe Crew made the Top 10 Cooperatives Games of 2019! We still liked 2070, but it was everyone’s least favorite. Part of the problem of 2070 was the “distraction” of the Success Points and Secret Objectives. Even if you play fully cooperatively, the game is more of a chase than an exploration. You are basically chasing the bad guy throughout the game. Now this “chase” was novel (no pun intended) at first, but it felt like we were speeding through the game, and maybe not enjoying the art and story as much as we should. One of the reasons we liked Sherlock Holmes: Baker Street Irregulars so much was the exploration. Maybe you would enjoy the chase idea more?

I was also surprised that my friends enjoyed this one the least: they love anime (having been in an anime club in high school), and I thought the theme would would draw them in … nope! The exploration and mystery in the Sherlock Holmes Baker Street Irregulars Graphic Novel is what they enjoyed the most.

Player Count

You can play this solo, but it’s sort of lonely to do that. You can also play at two and three players, but four is absolutely ideal. Everyone stays involved as you play, and I think you get the most out of the story. You can play at other counts, but it’s not ideal.

Replayability

Replayability is an odd duck for this: we ended up playing through the adventure about 3 times in one night (for total of about 3 hours) until we finally caught the bad guy, so we call it a “win”. There is a timed element to the game (you start with 8 clocks and lose one every time you hit a panel with a clock), so sometimes you time-out when you play, and you can just start over. There are also points in the game, after you reach major milestones, where your time is reset.

Our understanding is that we just found “one path” through the book to win: there are multiple endings. So, even though we “finished” one path, there are still more to explore … so there is replayability.

Conclusion

We liked 2070 but didn’t love it like we did the previous two, much to my surprise since my friends are big anime fans! I thought the theme would influence their choice more! It turns out, 2070 is more of a chase game than an exploration game: it’s the exploration that my group enjoyed.

The choice to make 2070 semi-cooperative seems a way to try to engage the players more, but we found it to be distracting and ended up just playing cooperatively: your mileage may vary, depending on your group.

Looking back and refining our scores through the lens of time, The Sherlock Holmes Baker Street Irregulars game would get an 8.5/10, Crusoe Crew would probably get a 7.5/10., and 2070 would probably get a 7/10 (but only if played cooperatively: if played semi-cooperatively, it’s probably a 6.5/10.0).

Battle for Greyport is like an old friend I haven’t chatted with in a while. I loved Battle for Greyport when it came out: it’s a cooperative deck-builder with quirky comic book art and fun gameplay. I did a review almost six years back in 2017! See that review here. Battle of Greyport was quite popular in our circles at the time: it made the #4 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Deckbuilding Games, and its expansion Pirates! made the #4 spot of our Top 10 Cooperative Swashbuckling Games back in 2019. But, it’s been some time since we chatted with Battle for Greyport.

Chaos in Copperforge is a new expansion for Battle of Greyport that was on Kicstarter back in September 2022. This was an insta-back for me, as I love Battle for Greyport! This just arrived at my door about August 1st, 2023. It promised delivery September 2023. Seriously! It was two months early!! What’s going on here?? Recently, both Kickstarters Kinfire Chronicles and Race To The Raft both delivered early!!! It’s great to have Kickstarters actually deliver on time!

Let’s take a look at this expansion!

Unboxing Some Stuff

Speaking of trends on Kickstarters, when did Kickstarters start bundling my very different orders to save money?

I got both the cooperative game Where’s My Ride? and Chaos in Copperforge in the same box! I mean, they are both from Slugfest Games, and they both are from Kickstarter. It’s okay that they want to save some money, but I wonder if I got my boxes later because they had to bundle them. Should I be grumpy over this? I don’t think so?

Recall that I also got Astro Knights (see our review here) and Ares Expeditions Expansions: Discovery, Foundations, and Crisis (see our review here) in one bundle as well! Weird: I guess this is a new thing. Or maybe I back too many Kickstarters … maybe that’s the real issue …

So, this is true expansion in most senses: it just adds new content with a few new rules and clarifications.

I don’t love that the rulesheet is a tri-fold pamphlet.

Whatever: it’s still consistent with the original rulebook in font and look. It’s fine.

It’s an all cards expansion: it all fits in a decent sized box.

One thing you get in here are ten new characters: they are nine starting cards for each (see above).

For each of the ten new characters, you also get 3 oversized cards: see Wizgille above.

You also get 10 new Locations, 10 New Bosses, and 1 Boo Buggy.

There are plenty of new Locations and Scenarios to try out! There’s even a little checklist in the back of the rulebook for you to keep track of your plays of the new content.

See Gromitt The Foul, probably the first new bad guy you’ll fight!

You can see the Mech-Suit Mayhem and new Locations (above) for the set-up to battle Gromitt! It’s all in line with the original game.

New Mechanisms

There are two new monster decks (20 cards each): Constructs (above right) and Advanced Constructs (above left). The symbol in the lower right differentiates them. Many of these new monsters have a new mechanism called Contraptions: when you see the the little metal gear in red (like on Gizmoblin), that means a contraption comes out with him!

Contraptions augment whomever owns it! The contraptions come out with a bad guy, but if you kill the bad guy, the contraption turns into a card Item characters can use! See above as the Stabby Stick is +1 damage when wielded by a bad guy, but +2 AND Snipe when wielded by the character!

See the Robogre with the Flux Calculator! He gets +1 attack from his contraption when he attacks! And I sighed at the Flux Calculator joke …

When you play a contraption with a bad guy, you are supposed to slide it underneath the card to make it clear how it augments the bad guy: see above. It’s also good to do that so it takes up less table space. 

Another new mechanism is the Grey-Border items: they may equipped by any hero – physical or magical! The Mace of Korash (above) is one such item!

Another new mechanism is that some monsters are immune to certain colored die (recall there are 3 types of dice with different distributions of values).

An Old Friend

Sometimes when you reconnect with an old friend, you forget things and find out new things about your friend!

I had forgotten that Battle for Greyport was an early game that embraced the “Choose Open or Closed Hand“! We discussed this rule in our Seven House Rules for Cooperative Games in the Allow Sharing, If It Makes Sense section: it’s nice to see a game that’s open enough to embrace this choice in play style! Open-Handed is more interactive, but can suffer from Alpha Player Syndrome; Close-Handed can be less fun and less interactive as a group, but can feel like you have more agency over your own choices: allows you to choose the play style you like!

I had also forgot that Battle for Greyport uses Player Selected Turn Order: they don’t call it that, but again, it’s an early game that embraces the idea that coooperatively players can decide player order!

And I may have been playing the game wrong in a few places: a new look at the game forced me to re-read some rules: “Oh, I don’t remember that about you!” It doesn’t change any opinions, but it does open my eyes!

Solo Play

One of my major complaints about the original Battle for Greyport game is that it does NOT have a solo mode!   This is one of the games that I use as an exampler as why need Saunders’ Law: here is a great cooperative game that DOES NOT have a solo mode!

Yet, it is so easy to play Battle for Greyport solo: simply play two-handed (two characters) and alternate between them like you were playing a two-player game. See above.

You’ll be happy to know that it’s still easy to play this solo: there’s no new rules or anything in the new content that prevent the two-handed solo mode.

I should qualify that “easy” a little: playing solo is easy, but the game itself can be challenging (so the difficulty of the game is not easy). I lost my first solo game pretty bad! And that was on an easy scenario! And I lost my second game as well! This expansion does make the game harder …

However, it turns out that one of the new “clarifications/adjustments” in the new Chaos For Copperforge is the establishment of a house rule called Rest Healing that’s been around for a while. That house rule (now official rule) says: 

At the beginning of the game, you now choose a number of hit points to heal between encounters (when you level up).  In general, we recommend 2 … if you liked the game it was before, you can simply choose a Rest Healing of 0 (now called “Hardcore mode”).

I would have done significantly better on my first solo game if I had just chose some non-zero Rest Healing … but I still had a great time.

Two-handed solo mode still works great with Chaos in Copperforge, even if it isn’t an official solo mode. Given that they embraced Restful Healing house rule, I am surprised they didn’t just embrace the two-handed solo mode house rule.

New Content

How much of the game can you play with ONLY new content from the Chaos in Copperforge expansion?  Pretty much all meaningful content can be new except for the recruit cards: Items and Heroes … those two decks still have to come from the base Battle For Greyport. Everything else can be new content!!! There’s new player Heroes, new Monsters, new Scenarios, new Locations, and of course the Contraptions (which count as an item if you get it).   See above as a game with as much new as possible!

Of course, you still need the base game for the dice, the tokens (hit point, coins, etc), the Taunt token, and especially the rulebook (needed for describing lots of the keywords).   (There are a few new Heroes you can put in the recruitment pile, but it’s not nearly enough to supplant the base Heroes piles.)

Conclusion

The best kind of expansion is the kind that makes you remember why you love the original game! And that’s what Chaos in Copperforge is: a reminder of how great the original Battle For Greyport is! I felt like I was reconnecting with an old friend, reminding myself why I love Battle for Greyport and just enjoying the new content. Basically, Chaos in Copperforge gave me an excuse to reconnect with my old friend.

Chaos in Copperforge isn’t a flashy expansion: it just adds some new characters, new scenarios, new bad guys, and a few new mechanisms. But, sometimes, you just need an excuse to reconnect with your old friends, and this gave me a great excuse to revisit my old friend Battle for Greyport. 9/10. Despite its simplicity, this could be my favorite expansion of the year: I was just so happy to be in this universe again.