Bethel Woods was a Kickstarter co-operative board game back from September 2016. According to the box, it is a game for 2-4 players, 12+ and takes about 40  minutes. I received mine sometime in the March/February 2017 timeframe.

Bethel Woods is a cooperative game where the players have to build a machine:
the DreamCatcher to win. Each player plays one of 8 characters (see below)
with a different power.

The game takes place in, shockingly, the Bethel Woods. (see below).

On a player’s turn, they move around some workers who can “fix” certain parts of the machine. At the end of every players turn, a new malfunction shows up. The malfunctions are colored and numbered and come from a bag.

Three (possibly four) malfunctions come out every turn and atrophy one of the six machines on the board.

When the malfunctions run out, the players lose. If too many machines are malfunctioning (four), the players lose. Finally, if too many spies come out the players lose. A spy come out when a machine malfunctions.

The spies are like malfunctions, but harder to get rid of.

Overall Impressions

 
Overall, I like this game. It’s a very puzzly game. The components and art are apropos, and I think the board (in particular) really pops. If you are looking for a medium-weight co-op game of about 40 minutes, this is fun. It’s not too complex, but still presents a good challange.

There are some issues you should be aware of.

The Rulebook

 

The rulebook is fine. Not great, not bad. I was able to learn the game in about 30 minutes by reading the rules and setting it up. I maybe got one or two rules wrong the first time, but I was up quickly and playing. My only real complaint is that the rules are very dark. The black background was a little hard to read. Arguably, it’s very thematic. But I had a
little trouble with it.

The Characters

Each player plays one of eight characters, where each character has a special power.

I didn’t realize it until I played the second time, but eveyone (except Fenn) looks really depressed! I remember being bummed after my first play through, and I wonder if just looking at all those gloomy faces really set me back. I don’t know about you, but seeing a *kid* depressed makes me extra sad.

I know these are orphans in a alien-infested world fighting for the world, but man, they really bummed me out. I tend to play with Fenn, just because he’s doesn’t look all depresssed!

Don’t get me wrong, here. I like the art. It fits the game—it reminds  me of illustrations in a kid’s book (which is very thematic for the orphanage kids).

The characters special power are minor, but they are useful. The powers are important enough that they will probably make a difference between winning and losing. (The text at the bottom was kind of hard to read because they are dark).

The Board

 

The board really pops.

It’s easy to see where things go. My one complaint is that I wasn’t sure what the things in the middle of the board represent.

I thought, for quite a while, that I needed to discard those knowledge cards to enter the orphanage. Nope! They are just repeating information on the edge of the board (the starting conditions). This was probably the most confusing thing in the rules. Honestly, I think they could have gotten rid of those markers in the middle and it would have made the game better. The are distracting and don’t do anything but repeat information.

The Workers

On your turn, you grab a bunch of worker at one machine and move them around the board (clockwise or counter-clockwise, your choice) dropping off one worker as you go to fix malfunctions. A red worker can only fix a red malfunction, a blue worker can only fix a blue malfunction, and so on. They have different names, (engineer, technician, electrician, mechanic), but I never used those names once I left the rulebook.

I like the idea that the when a worker fixes a malfunction, you gain the malfunction as a knowledge token. That’s pretty cool! “You learn from fixing the machines!”

The workers are fine and easy to grab:

They are all different looking, but I guess I never really concentrated  on that. I am very glad they are different colors! The color (not the name) is what’s important. It was very easy to know what worker fixed what malfunction: just match the color. It was easy to see across the board and work it out without having to pick up and investigate tokens. I appreciated that! That made turns easy and quick (from that perspective at least).

Single Player Rules

Sigh. When will designers learn Saunders’ Law? There are NO solo player rules in the rulebook at all. Luckily, it’s really easy to play solo: the solo player plays two characters. Done. It’s really obvious that this is the way to play solo, but a single sentence in the rulebook would have gone a long way … something like …

“Bethel Woods plays 2-4 players, where each player chooses and plays one character.  The solo player can play Bethel Woods by simply playing two characters and alternating between them.”

The game plays fine solo (two characters) and this is how I learned it so I could teach my friends. I think they could easily say 1-4 players on the box and not be lying.

GamePlay

Gameplay is fairly straight-forward.

A player figures which workers to pick up, which direction to move, which malfunctions to fix (by dropping which a single color worker on each spot). The last worker is special: that worker can go and try to build the next stage of the DreamCatcher rather than go to next spot.

You can only win if you build the DreamCatcher: you have to keep discarding more and more knowledge to build the next stage. There are 6 stages and it costs X knowledge to build stage X. By stage 6, you have to  collect 6 knowledge and discard it at the orphanage.

But you can only enter the Orphanage at six points: one an entrance has been used, that entrance cannot be used again. It’s even worse than that, you lose a worker when he enters the orphanage! And the knowledge all has to be the same color and the same color as the worker.

What makes this game hard is that you lose workers as you build the machine, which makes it harder to keep the machines from malfunctioning (as there are fewer workers to move around).

 

Paralysis Analysis

Is there paralysis analysis in the game? It wasn’t too bad. There’s not too much to do on our turn, so you don’t have to look too much into the future to figure a good move. It really depends on how much you want to look ahead. BUT since you have no idea what malfunctions will come out at the end of your turn, you can’t plan more than a few moves in advance.

There’s two sides of this. Since you can’t do that much on your turn, it seems like there’s usually an obvious move. “Hey! That group of 4 workers can fix 4 different malfunctions if you move them!” So, unless you are setting someone else to fix the DreamCatcher, usually, your move is fairly obvious.

But, in the end game, there is a lot more thought, and you will find yourself planning moves out to set-up the last worker to go in and fix the last piece of the DreamCatcher.

Overall, this works pretty well. The beginning game is quick, and people get into the game, even if the proper move is obvious.  Once people are invested, the game gets harder and much more thinky as you have to plan the last few moves.

So expect some analysis paralysis in the end game, but otherwise turns will be brisk and fun.

Final Analysis

In the end, this reminds me a little of Pandemic. Keep the malfunctions (infections) under control so players can decide when build the DreamCatcher (cure disease). That’s not a bad comparison because I love Pandemic. I like the theme a little better in Bethel Woods,  although the world still ends if you lose in both games.

My main problem with the game is that it gets a little samey. You do the same things over and over: move workers. Luckily, it’s a short game so that mechanic doesn’t wear out. But, I feel there’s “something” missing! It would have been great if maybe …

• A one-time use power for each character?
• Choose how many workers to place when you move?
• A way to reseed the bag with malfunctions?
• Knock over a worker to “prevent” malfunctions on machine during
  the malfunction placing?

I’m not sure, I just wanted “one more little choice” I could make on my turn. That would have made it just a little more fun.

Again, I need to say that I like this game. It’s a simpler Pandemic in many ways. I can teach Bethel Woods much more quickly than Pandemic, and it has fewer moving parts. I think younger players will like this better than Pandemic: both the theme and gameplay are a little more appealing.

Conclusion

I like Bethel Woods and will keep it in my collection. It’s a simpler Pandemic and I think it will be a good gateway game for younger gamers. I also like it as a solo game for when I just want a medium-weight puzzle game without too much set-up and without too much maintenance per turn.

I think in the long-run, an expansion could make a deeper game that might be more appealing to heavier gamers. Some things I’d love to see:

• Bethel Woods: Golem expansion. Adds a golem the players control who can fix more malfunctions autonomously, but can take malfunctions himself.
• Bethel Woods: Dark Forest Expansion. Adds one-time powers to each player, but also adds a drone which moves and can kill workers. Also adds rules for placing multiple players as well as keeping workers at one spot and working.

… but this is just me blue-skying.

 

Secrets of the Lost Tomb … a Prelude!

A while ago, I posted my “Top 10 Cooperative Games Off the Beaten Path“, and Secrets of the Lost Tomb was one such entry.  (As usual, I got the very first printing which has a huge/different box and different cover than most people have).

I have really enjoyed this game: it’s kind of like Arkham Horror meets Betrayal at House on the Hill, but with a story! It’s sort of an RPG-light, with the expanding tiles (laying out like Betrayal at House on the Hill) and exploration reminiscent of Arkham Horror.  It’s a fun game.

Some people didn’t like that it didn’t have miniatures in the box; I personally had no problem with the standees.  But it influenced the “next generation” of the game …

 

Secrets of the Lost Station

This game just came on Kickstarter today!  I loved the original, and I am looking forward to seeing what they did to “modernize” it and bring it to the future.  It looks like (basically) the same game, but with a Sci-Fi setting.

You’ll also notice it has miniatures galore.  I heard the Developer once say “We listened to the people: they want miniatures, and they want a normal sized box”.  The very first Secrets of the Lost Tomb had a HUUGE box, but the second printing had a more standard box.  It appears this will also have a standard box.  And lots of miniatures.

It looks cool.  Check it out here!

 

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, there is a phenomenon called The 6th Man.  The home games of the University of New Mexico Lobos (college) basketball games are played in an arena called “The Pit“. (No, really!)  The 5-man basketball team is helped by their spectators. The spectators generate such an uproar supporting their Lobos, the Pit is frequently called The 6th Man. 

The crowd (booing and yelling when appropriate) in the Pit  supports their home Lobo team,  becoming the 6th Man in the basketball game!  This gives the Lobos a decided advantage when playing.

Spirit Island

Recently, I received my Kickstarter for Spirit Island in the mail.

I have played Spirit Island a  number of solo games, and I was ready to bring it to my game group.  So, there are a lot of rules.  This is probably a “Euro” co-operative game.  It’s a great game, it’s fun, the components are fantastic, but it is by no means a light game.  It was critical I learn the game ahead of time before bringing it to my game group; it’s just too much to learn and play without some understanding upfront.

Player Count

So, I put out the call to my game group to “Come Learn Spirit Island!”  I invited a small group.  The game plays 1-4 from the base game, but if you want you CAN play 1-6, if either (a) you have the Kickstarter exclusive map (see below) or (b) buy two copies of the game.  I was lucky and had the map.

But, the rules BEG you (seriously) not to play with the large big map until you have played the game a few times. (If you look closely at the map, you can see huge amounts of starting resources per area.  That’s waaaay too much for a starting game). Given that I was the only one who had played, I acquiesced to the rules “begging”.

The 5th Wheel

So, we played the 4 player game.  That means I became the 5th wheel.  I sat out of the game (I am not pictured below) so my friends could play.

Yep, I really wanted to get the game played so I sat out and became a “5th wheel”.  I was bummed.  I wanted to play.   I became more a shepherd of the game, answering rules questions and teaching the game to my friends.  I, of course, wanted to play, but I really wanted to get this played in a big group to see how it went.  And I noticed something: as the “fifth wheel”, I was helping EVERYONE win the game.  Spirit Island is a cooperative game, which means I could roam and help whomever needed help.

I became The 6th Man.

The 5th Wheel Becomes The 6th Man

One of the things I love about cooperative games is that you can easily add and take away people from a game.  Since you are all working together as a team, everyone is on the same page trying to win the game as a group.  Someone can easily step out and someone can easily step in to take their place.

The 6th Man is an obvious extension to this idea.  Even if a game, like Spirit Island, has a smaller player count, other players can join in and help as The 6th Man, a roamer who people can bounce ideas off of, or just offer a new perspective.  Seriously!  Just getting around and looking at the board can sometimes offer new physical and mental perspectives on a game.

Roles of The 6th Man

The 6th Man is not just limited to one type of role.

• The Rules Shepherd: This is someone who knows the game, and helps shepherd the game along, answering rules questions and helping players with basic strategy.
• The Expert: If a game is particularly hard, this player can work closely to make sure the players have a chance of winning.  He can roam the game and make suggestions as the players play.  This player has to be careful not to catch Alpha Player Syndrome.
• The Watcher:  Like Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Watcher can be an equal member of the team, concentrating on things outside the game:  “What’s this rule?”  “Can you look up this rule?”  “What do you think of this idea?” “Can you help me with this?”. Whatever is needed by the players, the Watcher does whatever is needed to move the game along.

• The Replacement:  Many times, people need to come and go from a gaming session.  The 6th Man can be watching and ready to jump in if someone else has to leave suddenly.  He is also participating as the game plays.

Certainly, there are other ways The 6th Man can be useful.  Are there other roles we are missing here?

Conclusion

In cooperative games, a 5th Wheel can become the 6th Man.  This is just one of the may great things I love about cooperative games!  Even  players who aren’t directly playing can still participate and have an impact.   The next time you are playing a cooperative game and are worried that there are too many people, consider assigning some players to be The 6th Man.

 

 

For those of you who don’t know, RICHIE CON 2017 was a huge success!  What’s RICHIE CON?  Officially, it stands for Really I Can’t Heft myself to dIcE tower CON (because it’s far away and costs lots of money).  It’s really just an excuse for friends of Richie to come over to his house in Tucson and play board games!

We probably had 35 people over at the height of the CON on Friday night, with 6 tables supporting 6 different games!  Whew!  Saturday was  a little more tame, with some swimming for some, and constant board games for others.  It felt like 4 tables were consistently full at Saturday.

The Badge

Thanks to Josh Macey for making and printing this year’s badge.  We actually ran out of them, but we’ll make sure to print more next year.

The Best Gaming Experiences!

I asked a bunch of people what their favorite games were from the CON.  Here are some results!

• Weird and Wacky Seven Wonders: Kurt D. has every single fan expansion (we think) and multiple games with 7 people were played with these.  Apparently, they roll dice to determine which expansions (fan and official) to play with.  Multiple people claimed this as their favorite gaming experience.
• Mythos Tales:  I finally got a chance to pull out Mythos Tales and play it (I had an unboxing blog plost about it  a loooong time ago, but I still hadn’t played it).  We had a small group of 4 to play it (including myself).  EVERYBODY WHO PLAYED IT LOVED IT.  It was  CC’s and my favorite gaming experience.
• Artemis:  Josh finally got Artemis set-up in the ManCave.  For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a mult-computer/multi-pad game where people play the bridge members on the Star Trek: Enterprise, except they had to called it Artemis so they wouldn’t get sued.  A lot of people loved Artemis.  It was played all Saturday morning and early afternoon.
• Firefly: One group had a real nice time playing the Firefly board game (but see below!)

Favorite Quotes!

• “Just when you think Hollywood has run out of ideas, they show they’ve really run out of ideas” – Upon discovering that there was a Kindgarten Cop 2, and then a Kindergarten Cop series on TV!
• “Buttboard!” – Joe discovering a kick-board like apparatus that you sit on in the pool!
• “I liked CO-OP, but it’s kind of a dark game” –  Mangling the context and quote of a friend, that CO-OP: the co-op game is kind of a dark game (when it is, in fact, a very light-hearted game)
• “The Firefly game was great!  It was so thematic!  Especially after we got canceled Friday night!” – After closing down at 11 on Friday night and having to shutdown a Firefly game in progress…

Least Favorite Games

Some of the games went over like a Lead Balloon …

• The Captain is Dead!  One group played a 7-player version.   And they all hated it.  Some of these same people (earlier)  played a 5 player version and loved it.  The takeaway here?  Don’t play with 7 people—5 players seems the max.
• Gloom.  It didn’t go over well with some people.
• The DC Deck Building Game.  It was Dominion with super heroes.  But pasted on Super Heroes (at least, that seemed to be the consensus).

Regrets

I really wanted to get Nemo’s War and The Dresden Files to the table for some more plays (for further insight into the games).  But Nemo’s War didn’t get a single play.  And Dresden only got 1 play without any follow up.  I don’t have any new insights into either game, but I DID sit on the top of the Dresden files box and squish it!  Oops.

We also never got to play Star Trek: Frontiers.  Josh even put it on the calendar, but it fell by the wayside …

Next Year

This was real fun, but it’s too much of a strain on my house and my wife.  We’ll either do it a hotel or maybe somewhere else.  But the plan is to do it again next year!  Yee-ha!

 

The Dresden Files is a series of books about Harry Dresden: A Wizard who is a Private Investigator in Chicago.  The series has a Magic meets Noir vibe.  I picked up the the first two books sometime ago after hearing a recommendation from the Pulp Gamer PodCast: they really liked the Dresden Series RPG.   So, I started reading (well, listening to books on tapes) the first two: Storm Front and Fool Moon.  Annnnnnnd … they were okay.  Harry was kind of a whiny character in those first two books.  I almost stopped reading.  But then I picked up a bunch of later books and they were so much better!  Seriously, the series really ramped up in later books.   It’s more fun, it has better writing, and you really get invested in the characters.   I am very glad I kept up with the books because this really has become one of my favorite book series.

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

Fast-forward to April 2016:  There was an announcement that the Dresden Files: Cooperative Card Game was on Kickstarter!  I love cooperative games!  I love Harry Dresden and all the characters.  So, this was a natural “buy”.   The game includes playable characters for many, many characters in the Book!  Harry, Micheal, Thomas, … anyone you could think of!

The Kickstarter had some interesting things going for it: the shipping price got cheaper and cheaper the more people backed it.  I also ended up with a few specials:  A Mouse character deck, a Hank Walker/Ra (A crossover from Sentinels of the Multiverse!), and a few variant cards. This forum posting on BoardGameGeek covers everything special the Kickstarter got, and points out that people who didn’t kickstart the game can still get the extra content.  But, my favorite extra is the Mouse character deck.  Who doesn’t love Mouse?

The Art

As you can see from the picture of Mouse, the art in the game is very comic-booky (Tyler Walpole I think did the art).  I like it!  But, I love comic books (pre-2012) so I liked this.  There is an interesting mix of art: the backs of the story cards are the covers of the all the Dresden files books.  The game is a weird mix of the two art styles: I think it works, but it is a bit jarring.  The art on the cover and the back of the story cards is very different than the comic-booky art.

It’s by no means a deal breaker, and, for people who have read the Series and are VERY familiar with the book covers, I think it’s cool to see the book covers as the back of the story cards.  It’s just an interesting mix of of art that people would complain about in other games, but I think it worked here.  I think the character art is snappy and bright.  And the book covers are very evocative of the theme.

Rulebook

The rulebook is pretty good.  It explains things pretty well, it’s not too long, it has some sample plays.  Three things, thought, came out that worried me:

1.  You can’t say exactly what  a card does!  If I have an Investigate Card of 5 clues that cost 5 Fate, I can’t say that, I can only say “I have a high cost, but good Investigate card!”   I thought we all agreed we’d stop doing this back in Shadows Over Camelot!  I suspect they wanted to avoid Alpha Player Syndrome,  and indeed, the rules say they do this to keep the game going so it doesn’t bog down.  I feel like we will just ignore this rule, like we do in Shadows Over Camelot.  Maybe I’m wrong (that’s why this is a first impression).
2. The solo player rules are complicated for a first-time play! The solo player game makes you play three characters.  I understand, once you play the game a few times, that this is a very good solo mode (and it is fun), but I feel like there should be a solo mode with only 1 or 2 characters.  It’s very daunting, as a first-time player, to keep track of 18 cards to try to figure out what to do.  I’d really like a solo mode with 1 or 2 characters (similar to my discussions on a solo mode with Sentinels of The Multiverse here and The Captain is Dead here).   I’ll bet that the same ideas I propose for Sentinels could work here.  This is by no means a dealbreaker, but it just made the first playthrough more daunting.  It might scare other people away.
3. Passing using Stunts.  There is a LOT of discussion about how you can’t use your stunt (a “one-time” action for each character) to just pass a turn.  After playing a bunch, you absolutely don’t want to waste your stunt!  It’s very valuable!  And using it to pass a turn is a huge waste!  But the rules  go out of their way to say “You can’t use your stunt if it’s not useful.”  This  seems … not thematic.  I can totally see Harry trying to blast a creature to no effect (with his stunt) as a DISTRACTION so the next character can do what he needs to.  And it’s not consistent: For example, Thomas Raith randomly pulls a card for his stunt: if he can’t use the card, he just discards it and wastes his turn.  So, I don’t think it’s consistent or thematic.  Honestly, it’s such a minor minor corner case, and the rules go on and on and on about how you can’t just use your stunt to pass.  I just think it takes away a player choice (more choices means more fun, usually).

So, I was kind of grumpy from those three items when I started the game.  But, I got over it.  I was able to learn the game from the rulebook.  And, there are multiple online resources to help you play the game too.

Components and Getting Started

Solely from the box, the game looks like a deck-builder (It’s not).  It’s well designed to hold just the base game (using the foam inserts to block out space for cards that aren’t there).  I have all the expansions (as of this date), and it holds the whole game easily.  I am glad they thought ahead for space for expansions.

This game board is big and nice, and it’s very clear where to put everything.  It seemed like I got two copies of some of the separator cards?  For example, for Thomas Raith, there was one in the main game and one in the expansion itself.

One of the things I like about this game is how easy it was to get going and set-up.  It was very clear where everything fit on the board, the tokens were easy to distinguish, and the cards were easy to set-up.  (The Arkham Horror devotee would have preferred that the clues be little magnifying glasses, but at least they are still green).

And the game was ready to go!

Some Playthroughs and Plans

I opened the game about 3 days ago, even though it came from the Kickstarter a few weeks (months?) ago.  I would have opened it sooner, but work and health problems with my mom stopped me from trying this right away.

As of right now, I have played over 15 times.  Maybe 20?  I love cooperative games.  I love the Dresden Files theme.  So, I have been playing the heck out of this in solo mode.  My plan is to get this to RICHIE CON this weekend and get a bunch of multiplayer plays of this (and also Nemo’s War).  For those of you who don’t know, RICHIE CON stands for “Really, I Can’t Heft myself to dIcE tower CON” (because Dice Tower Con is far away and expensive).  It’s really just an excuse to play games with friends here in Tucson.  It’s also called RICHIE CON because you can only go if you are friends with RICHIE.

Initial Runthrough

My initial thoughts from my solo plays:  It’s a good, puzzly game.  It has lots of content (especially with the expansion) because each book is a different scenario, and they are all different.  I have played 15-20 times through the first 3 books.  And the scenarios are all different enough to make this interesting.  So, I think there’s a lot of replayability here.

Figuring out when to OVERCOME Obstacles, when to TAKE ADVANTAGES, when to ATTACK, when to INVESTIGATE is really fun.  You also have limited action points (Fate points), and occasionally you have to discard cards to get Fate points BACK.  It’s a nice system.  You have to figure out when to act (INVESTIGATE, ATTACK, TAKE ADVANTAGE, OVERCOME OBSTACLE) and when to Discard for Fate.  To act, your card will cost Fate points.  Sometimes you can’t act (because there are no Fate points left) so you have to discard).  Sometimes you discard so you can give enough Fate points to the next player (it’s a co-op after all).  Very puzzly.  Which I really like!

So, to win, you have to have solve more cases (like Who is the ShadowMan? above)  than foes (like Bianca above) leftover at the end of the game.  You solve cases by INVESTIGATING: an INVESTIGATE gives you a number of clues you can put on a case.  You kill foes by ATTACKING: an ATTACK card (like Murphy’s P90 PDW card above) puts a number of hits on a foe.  OBSTACLES are nasty ongoing “Bad News” cards (like Three-Eye Drug War above) which you can only get rid of with OVERCOME cards (like Harry’s Hexus! above).  Finally, You can help yourself out in the game by using TAKE ADVANTAGE to get Advantage cards (like Beer at Mac’s).

All of this happens at different ranges: you can only do an act if the card is in range.  All the Foes, Cases, Obstacles, and Advantages are arranged in a 2 by 6 grid on the board.  Any card can be used on any line, as long as it is in range. Below we see all 12 book cards on the game board in a 2×6 arrangement.

Below, we see a mid-game with 2 cases on the top line and 2 foes on the bottom line.

So, part of the puzzle is figuring out when/how to move cards towards, when you can even use certain cards.  For example: Bianca is at Range 1 above and a Vampire is at Range 2.  You can only use an ATTACK on the Vampire if the attack range if 2 or greater. Murphy’s ATTACK (above) has range 3, so she could ATTTACK either foe on the second line.

Showdown

After you have “done what you can” to solve the puzzle, you have a Showdown.  A typical showdown card looks like this:

Basically, you are trying (at much lesser odds) to solve the cases you didn’t finish investigating and the attacking foes you didn’t defeat, WITH A FINAL DICE ROLL.  For example: If I spend 2 fate, I get 2 clues + 5 fate dice rolls).  If you aren’t familiar with Fate Dice, they are 6-sided dice with basically 2 +1s, 2 0s, and 2 -1s.

So, with your final leftover Fate points, you roll and see how many foes and cases you can finish.  WITH A DICE ROLL.

How do we score? However many foes are left, that’s the game’s score.  However many cases are solved is the player’s score.  If the players have solved more cases than foes left, the players win.  Otherwise, the game wins.  In the case of ties, the game wins.  Because Harry really can’t catch a break.

Final Thoughts

I love the first 90% of the game, and I hate the last 10%.  Here’s why: in my first 15-20 plays, the game always goes the same.  The first 90% of the game, I am playing cards to investigate, discarding to refill fate, really having fun.  Then, the last 10% involves rolling some dice during the Showdown to see if I have won.  I have established here that I am cursed by the Sea Hag of the Scottish Moors, so when it comes to dice rolls, I always lose.

For every solo game I played (except maybe 1), I had to roll to see if I won the game or not.   I always needed to solve one more case or kill one more foe in the final Showdown.  If I roll right, I get the case/foe and squeak a win.  Otherwise I lose.  So, because of the curse of the Sea Hag, I always lose.

As a designer, I admire this.  The game is so well-balanced that the game is decided in the Showdown almost every time!  That’s very cool!  It’s very thematic too!  Harry always just barely scrapes out a win at the last minute.  So, at one last dice roll, you win or lose!

Here’s the problem: It’s not fun.  I worked very hard to get to the Showdown: I solved the puzzle as best I could.  And, at the very end, a dice roll decides the game.  After all my hard work, it doesn’t matter.  It’s debilitating. I just roll some dice and they determine if I win or lose.   I might as well just skip the game and roll some dice.  “Hey! I rolled +1! I win!”

But I don’t want to skip the game: the first 90% really is fun.  I just want a different end-game.

One thing I tried: To mitigate this randomness for a solo game, I used 7 cards per player during solo player set-up (the default is 6).  All of a sudden, I had a lot more fun.  I just assumed I would roll badly in the Showdown, so I gave myself a chance to win by giving each character more cards.  Basically, I downplayed the Showdown (and the randomness therein) by giving myself more resources.  Then, if I lose, it’s my fault.  The Showdown then becomes more of a denoument then a climax.  This made the Showdown much more fun—knowing it might matter, but it wasn’t required.

Conclusion

The Dresden File book series had trouble getting off the ground, but once it did, it was great.  The Dresden Files cooperative game has the opposite problem: It starts great, but I hate the ending.

Despite the randomness at the end of the game, I really do like this game.  It’s got a good well-designed box with plenty of content and space for future content.  It’s thematic (for the most part).  The cards are great. The rulebook is good and the game is easy to set-up.  The game is, for the most part, very fun.

I am very curious what my opinion will be after I have played multiplayer with a bunch of people.  Will we keep the “No Table Talk” rule?  Or will we banish that rule to the Shadows of Camelot …

 

Nemo’s War (Second Edition) was a Kickstarter back in about January of 2016.  The purpose was to reprint Nemo’s War in a second edition.  It was promised in November of 2016, but just delivered to me yesterday (Friday, June 23rd, 2017).    So, it’s about 7 months late.  Typical for a Kickstarter, but still slightly annoying.

You’ll notice (from my unboxing above) that I got some cool swag: a canvas bag for the ships and a canvas bag for the treasures (polus a neato little Nemo’s War pin).  The bags are Kickstarter exclusive content (I think the button is too?)

Solo Game and Cooperative Game

So, this game is a solo game.  Out of the box, all the rules refer to a solo game that you set-up and play.  I loved Friday by Friedemann Friese, so this solo game looked fun and enticing.  What sold me to back this Kickstarter: At the $63K funding mark, they added a cooperative variant for 2-4 players.  I was intrigued: I like solo games, I like the underwater Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea theme, and I love cooperative games.  So,  I backed it.  (There is a semi-cooperative variant, but I suspect I will never play it).

What’s Inside

Here’s what’s inside: lots and lots of token to undo: (220 or so, according to the rulebook), some dice, some cards, and a really nice 6-panel fold-out board.

The components are very nice.  Most of the token are (fairly think stock) cardboard.  The cards seem to be linen-finished.  The rulebook is shiny and on nice paper.  Overall, the components are good.  The art is good (not great, but I do really like the picture on the box).  In general, good stuff.  Nothing great.

The Rulebook

I am very happy with this rulebook overall.  My only gripe was that there was no glossary at the end (for terms you didn’t know).  A lot of the nomenclature is introduced in the first few pages, so I think that “counts” as the glossary.  Still, it would have been nice to have.

Having said that, this was a rulebook better than most!  As the rulebook explained some rules in each section, there were sidebars which showed examples and pictures of the rules under description.  The text was fairly clear.  I can’t remember being confused at any point, especially after looking at the sidebar examples.  This rulebook was a little on the long side, but it did a good job of explaining all the concepts.

Set-Up

The set-up took a long time.  After I got the game on Friday, I tried to learn it Friday night.  Nope, I had to start into it and leave it halfway for the next day.  Be warned: it’s going to take some time to get through the rulebook and set-up the game the very first time.   Two to three hours?  Now, mind you, I am one of those people who wants to understand what each piece is as I set it up.  As one of my bosses at work (Bob Weyker) says:

“If you don’t know what something is now, it will come back to bite you later!”

The point is that I make sure I understand each piece as I play it.  So, someone who just wants to jump in will probably be able to set it up much faster.  But I claim that’s a false savings: the time saved setting up the game will be spent when you have to look up rules when you are playing.

Anyways, I got it all set-up.  Whew!

First Play

My first play took about 2 hours.  That’s in line with the playing time (60-120 minutes from BoardGameGeek).

There was a lot of maintenance per turn placing ships and following the “placing ship” algorithm: as the game gets in later stages, there are more and more ships placed, which cause the algorithm to get more and more complicated.  Well, it’s not that bad, but it was starting to get annoying.

I am concerned about the randomness a little.  The number of actions you get per turn is based on the difference of two dice. So, some turns you get 0 actions (17% of the time), 1 action (28% of the time), 2 actions (22% of the time), 3 actions (17% of the time), 4 actions (11% of the time) and finally 5 actions (5% of the time).  They actually have the percentages on the board, which I really like.  But, I am reminded of a recent Top 10 list from the Dice Tower:  Top 10 Things Designers Need to Stop Doing!   One of Sam’s gripes:  (At Number 1!) : “Stop Rolling for Actions/Movement”.   And that’s exactly what this game does.

Sam’s point: sometimes you have 0 actions, sometimes you have 5 actions!  A turn with 5 movement is sooo much funner than a turn where you do nothing.  And what if you get 3 to 4 turns in a row where do nothing?  It’s so frustrating.

There are mechanisms to mitigate this random number of actions.  For example,  there are one-time-use characters which grant “extra actions” (and I think there are some events).  Over time. “statistically”, you will get 2-3 actions per turn over the course of the game.  But those particular turns where you get 0 or 1 action are just not fun.  And it’s hard to be strategic: you tend to react (based on the number of actions) rather than plan (knowing you can execute a plan).

Impressions and Next Steps

The components are great.  The rulebook is very very good.  The theme seems to come through pretty well. I am concerned, however, about two problems: the maintenance and the randomness.

The amount of work per turn to “keep the game going” is a bit much, but I believe this will be okay once I know the game a little better.  I think this will get better in future plays, but we’ll have to see.

I am more concerned about the randomness.  I lost spectacularly on my first play: which I expect!  I’ve never played before, so of course I did horribly.  I just hope I can do better and “take into account” the randomness on my next play.  That’s my main question: Can I leverage the randomness to come up with a strategy, or am I just going to be reacting every turn?  We’ll see with future plays.

This sounds more negative than I want: That’s not my purpose.  I am excited to play this in the cooperative mode.   And, I will give this a number of plays to get a feel of what the strategy is.

Nemo’s War is a fairly complicated solo game with good components.  I was pretty overwhelmed on my first play (and lost horribly).  I look forward to future plays to see what the longevity of this game is.

 

 

 

I was surprised how much traffic I got from this original Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games “Off the Beaten Path”.   Here are a few more: most of these are ones I’ve reviewed over the past year.   But I haven’t really seen a lot of buzz about any of these games.

 

 

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I haven’t seen much buzz about any of these games, but they are all fun!  Check them out!

 

 

This game is really fun.  I’ve played it solo mode many times and had a ball.  Just this last Sunday, I had an amazing game where I just barely stopped a Red Alert then was able to Warp out for a out an win.  So satisfying!  I have also played with a group and everyone had the same reaction:  That was fun and I’d play it again.

A Few Negatives

There’s just a few very minor negatives.  First,  I’m already a little worried about the cards: I’ve been playing a lot and they are showing just a touch of wear and tear.  My friend Charlie says “That’s a Great Problem to Have!   You play some much the game starts to show!”  True enough, but if the cards were linen-coated, I think the game would last longer.

In general, the game has tremendous replayability: there’s 18? different roles, and every role does something very different.  The cards come out differently, which means you have to decide what to handle and what to attack based on what cards you have and what Alerts have come out.  So, there seems to be a great deal of replayability there.  My only complaint is that there seem to be two things I do every game, and I have to because they make all the difference!  Get the torch and put out the upgrade that reduces shield damage by 10%.  Every single game, it’s been clear that I had to do both of those things or I would have lost.  The other tools aren’t quite as useful, and the same with the other upgrades.  So, that cuts into replayability a little.

Sometimes the blocky art on the standees is hard to distinguish, especially in a game with more players.  I like the art of the aliens, but they also seem to blend together.  I wish the characters were easier to distinguish on the board.  But you know, the clear standees is very thematic and cool.  I do like it overall.

Final Thoughts

In spite of the few negatives, this is probably my favorite game of the year.  I like the theme (Yes, we all know it’s Star Trek), it’s a fun co-op with a good amount of replayability, the game is good solo (esp. if you use my rules from Part II), and everyone I have played with likes it as a group game (it even played well as a 5-player co-op!).  The components are pretty good: I do like the look of the aliens and the standees feel very thematic.  I wish the cards were linen-coated.

And there is a lot of strategy here.  You don’t always do the same thing on your turn.  You have to decide as a group how to proceed.

A game that plays well solo and a co-op, especially 5 players is a win.  This game gets an 8/10 for me on BoardGameGeek.  It may still go higher!  I really like this game.

After thought: Expansions

There are some expansions available for the GamesCrafter version of the game, but they are not yet available for the AEG version.  Just be careful, if you get an expansion (there are 3? for the GamesCrafter version, none yet for the AEG version) to get the right one.

 

 

 

 

In Part I of my review of The Captain is Dead, I was frustrated with the solo player rules that came with the game.  As you recall, the rules that come with the game ask the solo player to operate 3-4 characters in the game.  I am sure, once you know this game, this might be a fine solo mode, but first time players or novices will be intimidated by that.

I have been playing the game pretty much non-stop since I got it (yes, it’s fun), but playing with my own variant of the solo rules.  I think I have a fairly robust set of rules for a solo player operating only 1 character.

The Janitor Fights Alone!

Solo Player Rules For Operating One Character: Choose a Character

First, you probably want to limit which characters you play.  Six characters don’t give ANY advantage to play, as their skills involve other players (or rules which you ignore):

Telepath, Science Officer , Diplomat, Cyborg, Ensign, Hologram: Don’t Play These in a SOLO Game!

The Cyborg looks great, but he can get stuck too easily.  All of the other characters special powers involve working with other characters.

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These characters are okay, but not real great: playing them doesn’t give a lot of advantages:

Counselor, Medical Officer, Crewman:  Probably don’t want to play any of these characters, but you can if you want a challenge.

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The four characters are pretty good to play: they do just enough to allow you to do a few interesting things, but aren’t great:

Weapons Officer, Tactical Officer, Soldier, Teleporter Chief: Pretty Good to Play, Not Great

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Finally, these 5 characters work really well solo:

First Officer, Chief Engineer, Admiral, Janitor, Scholar: Great for Solo play!

I strongly recommend playing one of the last 5: they are fun to play, you use their abilities all the time, and they each offer a different “way” to play.  If this is your first time playing, play the Janitor: he can make up for cards he doesn’t have by spending an action.

Solo Player Rules For Operating One Character: Set-Up

1. Up your hand limit by 2.   You won’t be able to get anything done otherwise.
2. Instead of each character adding a Skill card to the Cargo Bay, just randomly choose 3 skill cards from the main deck and put them there.  Thus, your single character starts with 5 skills.
3. Do set-up normal otherwise.

Solo Player Rules For Operating One Character: Play

The game plays normally, except: Whenever you draw Anomalies, follow the rules as if it were a 2-Player game.

And that’s it!

Summary

It really is easy: Pick one of the proper characters, up your hand-limit by 2, fill the cargo bay with 3 random skills, and follow the 2-player rules for anomalies. That’s it!

I have been playing this way for the past few days and really enjoying the game.  It’s not hard to play this game with a single character.  I hope this set of rules improves your experience with the game!  It certainly has mine: I have had a lot of fun playing as a solo player.

I have a bunch of people coming over tomorrow night to play in full cooperative mode with lots of players.  We’ll see how the game goes!

I remember when The Captain is Dead was on Kickstarter back in 2014! It was a cooperative board game in a space setting.  It was also a game that used the Games Crafter for fulfillment! Most Kickstarter games use China for fulfillment (as it’s soooo much cheaper), but here was a Kickstarter that was successful using a much lower threshold printing service! It looked cool! I wanted to pick it up! ………. and it was $50. Ooph. Don’t get me wrong: it looked cool, but $50 seemed a bit much for a game I didn’t know much about. I kept thinking I wanted a copy of this game … maybe I’d ask for it for Christmas …

Well, time came and went and I forgot about this game. In the meantime, apparently AEG picked up the game and had it printed! I picked it up fairly recently  for $39 from FunAgain! And it had with a much better aesthetic and much better pieces than the original!

Components

The components are pretty good.

The cards look good, but they aren’t linen-coated.  The rulebook is fairly picture-heavy and looks good (but we’ll talk about the actual contents below).  The board looks really nice: a lot of the locations are shiny:

It’s kind of hard to see from the picture, but certain spots look “shiny”, almost like they are stickers on the board.  I was worried that would be too distracting when I was playing, but it wasn’t.  It just looks shiny.

The markers are kind of interesting: they remind me of Shrinky-Dinks from when I was a kid! (Does anyone remember Shrinky Dinks?  They were clear plastic sheets you’d draw on.  The sheets would “cook” in the stove (seriously) and shrink and harden significantly!  But I digress…).

The components look really cool, but it’s a little hard to distinguish some of the characters.  All the aliens (the bottom 12 from the picture above) are easy to distinguish, but the characters that players use are somewhat hard to distinguish.  Part of it is the art style: it’s kinda cool, blocky style, but sometimes gets in the way.

I was slightly annoyed that I had to figure out which marker went with which base:

There are no directions in the box for how to put together the markers!  You just have to intuit this out!  It wasn’t hard, but it was kind of annoying.  Who on earth would make markers so hard to put together?

Oh.  Right. I did the same thing for CO-OP.  Curse you, irony!  Moving on …

Once I got all the pieces together, I have to say, they look pretty cool!

They look very spacey and very thematic.  After being annoyed at punching everything out, I have to say, I like how this looks.

Star Trek: Let’s Not Get Sued!

The Captain is Dead is NOTHING like Star Trek, except for the billions and billions of similarities.  Seriously, one of the reasons I wanted to get this game is because it looks like you could kind of play the crew of the Enterprise: it’s a cooperative game in a Star Trek universe.  And it is Star Trek: you know it, I know it, we all know it. Shields? Transporters?  C’mon.

One gripe I have it with the color scheme.  In the game, you have different colored cards representing COMMAND (blue) and SCIENCE (green)and ENGINEERING (orange) and some other types (TACTICAL (red).)

Does anyone else think there might have been some better colors to choose?  Ahem.

Seriously, I feel like this is a major missed opportunity.  When I think of command, I think of Kirk’s gold uniform!  When I think of Engineering, I think of Scottie’s red uniform and Science/Spock in blue.  I know it’s a minor quibble, but it really could have evoked the theme a little bit more.  Of course, if you like Star Trek: The Next Generation, the colors are a little better:

This is a little closer: gold is ENGINEERING (good match), the bridge and TACTICAL is red (but COMMAND is still blue) and MEDICAL is green.

So, I guess the maker’s of The Captain Is Dead were ST:TNG fans more than the original series.

How Many Players?

Um, how many players?  Can I play 1 player?  I looked on the box and in the front of the rulebook and had trouble finding any indication of player count.  It’s not obvious on the box.  But you gotta look hard:

On the back of the box in little, teeny letters is the player count.   I think this is the ONLY place in the entire game where it lists the player count.   I think this really should have gone in the Rulebook, and  we start our battle with the rulebook.

Oh, the Rulebook!

The rules are inconsistent and have some extraneous sentences.  It tries to be funny (and I laughed), but I’d rather they were a little bit more coherent.   The way it explains “pick a character card and marker” is convoluted.  For a while, I thought they meant “choose one at random and then take more”.  The rules ramble for a paragraph when one sentence would do: pick a character card and take it’s appropriate standee.  That’s all they had to say.

They also list a lot of special abilities of location, but they don’t really give any more information than is on the card for that location.  I can understand being terse on the text of a card (where space is limited), but if there are any intricate details, the rulebook is the place to explain that away and it doesn’t.  For example: The Internal Sensors.  Um, how do the cards at the Internal Sensors refresh?  Am I allowed to take any card there?  Or just the last? Can I spend an action to refresh?  Do I have to wait until the last one is chosen and then they get automatically refreshed?  So many questions AND THIS IS IMPORTANT!  Getting these cards is critical to winning the game!  So, I just made a choice and moved forward.   I plan to consult the FAQ (I assume there is one somewhere) tonight.

The rulebook was enough to get me going.  I was able to get a game underway.  But I’ll be honest, I expected a much better rulebook.  This game has gone from Kickstarter to being picked up by AEG!  It’s had plenty of evolve and get better.  I still felt like I was reading the Kickstarter rules.

Solo Rules: What SHOULD I Do?

There is a section in the back that talks about how to play solo. (So, shouldn’t the player count on the back of the box been 1-7 instead of 2-7? But, I digress)  The rules say that you should play 3-4 characters as a solo player.  3-4?????!?!?!?!  I have never played this game before!  Each character has special powers, and I already have a lot of reading for all the locations in the game.  There is too much context switching (at least for a novice and first-time player) to run 3-4 characters effectively.

I’ll be honest, this SOLO mode feels really tacked on. So, I kind of made up my own rules just to get through a game.  I played one character, that’s right kids, one.  All I had to do to get this to work was (a) up the hand limit  (b) don’t do the first 5 “bad news” cards.   I basically made the game easier.  That’s it!  And I was able to get through a game and learn the rules.  Why couldn’t they have done this?  I feel like the SOLO mode was tacked on, and I really don’t think it would have taken much to make it so one player could play. I get “later on”, when you know the game playing 3-4 characters.  But, as an intro player, they needed some rules for a solo player working one character.  At this point, I need to issue a mandatory reminder of Saunders’ Law.

So, can my Janitor saved the ship?

I thought it would be funny to have the Janitor play solo. Can the Janitor save the ship? It turns out, he’s a good character to play by himself.

Thoughts on Gameplay

My lone Janitor saved the ship! He repaired the Warp Code (pardon me), the Jump Core with Windex and was able to save the ship!

I was very worried after the missteps (with the component punchout, the poor rulebook, and the poorly-done solo mode) that I had gone too far down the well.   I was a little cranky when I started the game.

But, you know what?  I had fun!  My Janitor cruised around the ship killing aliens, launching torpedoes, fixing the Jump Core, doing research to get the Epinephrine Ventilation, and getting some Battle Plans.  I tried to do a little bit of everything to get a sense of the game.

In the end, it was fun.  My first playthrough was a success and I had fun.  I think others will enjoy this.  Other people will have a much more positive experience than I did because they won’t have to suffer through the rulebook!  I will teach them!  (That’s a different torture). I really expected the game to be a little more refined and polished, especially after AEG picked it up, but it’s still fun.

We’ll see what happens in Season 2: The Wrath of Continuing!  Watch the skies for Part II of this review!