Top 10 Cooperative Roll-and-Write/Flip-and-Write Games!

When most people think of roll-and-write games, they think of games like Yahtzee! See above! Players roll dice, mark things off a sheet, and try to get the best score to win! Surprisingly, there have been a considerable number of cooperative roll-and-write games over the last few years! That’s right! Players roll dice and cooperatively mark-up sheets to solve/win together! Now, flip-and-write games are very similar; instead of rolling dice, you flip up a card to show what you are dealing with. It’s the same idea, it’s just the randomness is a deck of cards instead of some dice!

Below, we list our Top 10 Cooperative Roll-and-Write Games! We also rate each game from 1 to 5 on how cooperative it is, with 1 being “multiplayer-solitaire” and 5 being “very cooperative“! We also note if the game works solo: surprisingly, not all play solo! Most roll-and-write games are about getting the best score you can collectively, but some have a more precise win condition!

10. Legends of Storm City

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 2/5
Player Count? 1-4
Print and Play? Only means available
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Defeat all Elite Villains or Deactivate the Main Plan

This roll-and-write has a special place in my heart, because it was the first print-and-play I have ever done! And boy, was it a learning experience! It also has a cool Superhero theme!

In the end, I liked the game a lot more that my friends; so that’s why this makes the bottom of our To 10 list.

I liked the way this looked, and I loved the Superhero theme! Take a look at our review of Legends of Storm City to see if this is something you might like!

9. Mmm!

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 2/5
Player Count? 1-6
Print and Play? No, must buy box!
Type? roll-and-write*
Win Condition? Mark off all the food!

This is a little bit different than most roll-and-writes on our list: it’s intended for kids 5+, so it’s pretty simple. The kids roll the dice every round and mark off food before the cat reaches them! The cat only moves if some piece of food isn’t completely marked off, so kids have to learn when to push their luck and when to stay!

This is also a little different because the “write” part of roll-and-write is “mark-with-a-token” rather than write-on-a-piece-of-paper. See above. But it’s the same idea: you are just marking up a board!

It’s also interesting that the board is shared cooperatively among all players, so players will need to talk to help each other “set-up” the board for them on their turn! This is a Renier Knizia game for kids, but it is kind of a neat little roll-and-write kind of game, even if it’s not “quite” roll-and-write … more like roll-and-mark!

8. Roll or Stand: Forbidden Adventures

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 1.5/5
Player Count? 1-100
Print and Play? Only means available
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Make it through all 4 puzzles on a page!

This roll-and-write has 4 puzzles per page, and has a “blackjack-like” mechanism where you push your luck to get more actions and more directions! But if you get a number that busts, you lose an entire set of actions!

Each player has their own sheet and uses the dice as given to them, so it’s mostly multiplayer solitaire! There is a mechanism for sharing, but resources are so limited in this game, we found that we didn’t really use the sharing too much! That’s why it’s 1.5/5 for cooperation … this is a mechanism, but we found we didn’t really use it!

Still, there’s a really neat physical aspect to this roll-and-write as you have to use the numbers marked to move around one of the four puzzles! See above! All-in-all, this is a pretty neat roll-and-write game! See our review here of Roll or Stand: Jurassic Adventures to see if this might be right for you!

7. Mission Control: Critical Orbit

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 4/5
Player Count? 2-4
Print and Play? No, must buy box!
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Success in mission!

This is an interesting perturbation on roll-and-write games: First, there’s no solo play! This is only a 2-4 Players game! Second, one player (Mercury) hides information behind a screen, and the other 1,2, or 3 players each operate some other boards!

This is also a polyominoes game, where the Mercury player has to fill in a grid! It’s a weird cross-section of roll-and-write, hidden information, cooperation, and polyominoes! But it’s really fun!

6. Escape: Roll and Write

Supports Solo? No (but you can simulate solo my playing as-if it were a 2-Player game)
How Cooperative? 2.5/5
Player Count? 2-4
Print and Play? No, must buy box
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Collect enough gems and all players need to be on their end space!

Those of you who know the original Escape: The Curse of the Temple game might be confused by this: “There’s a roll-and-write Escape game?” Yes!

It even uses the same dice as the original Escape game! This roll-and-write is all about the active player rolling dice, using them to move around the temple, and the remaining dice are used by everyone else! So, there’s some cooperation and discussion about which dice the active player takes! It’s not super cooperative, as each player moves through their own board separately, but there are still some elements!

This game didn’t take the world by fire, but it’s colorful and fun! See our review of Escape: Roll & Write to see if this is a game you might enjoy!

5. Luddite

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 1/5
Player Count? 1-100 (1-4 in base box, but you can keep expanding)
Print and Play? Yes, but there is also a boxed version with really nice components!
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Move your hack marker to the end, making sure you do enough damage along the way!

This game is probably the least cooperative and least interactive game on this list! It’s cooperation is really to average the scores of all players and make sure that average exceeds a threshold to win! That’s the only cooperation!

Other than the averaging scores, this game is pretty much multiplayer solitaire! See above! So, why did this make our list? Firstly, some people can suspicious of cooperative games: this is a first game that’s easy for people who want to put one toe into the water of cooperative game!

Secondly, this game has quite the story, in either graphic novel or movie form (see above)! This story really keeps everyone involved in the game! Luddite can be a real interesting experience if you let it! See our review of Luddite here!

4. Zombicide: Gear Up

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 3/5
Player Count? 1-6
Print and Play? No, must buy box!
Type? flip-and-write
Win Condition? Take out the Big Bad!

This is a gorgeous flip-and-write in the world of Zombicide! The components are really great with nice dry-erase boards and cards! This game is very thematic, as it simulates zombies invading your personal space! But in a flip-and-write game!

Each player deals with zombies on “their board”, but can help out their neighbors (on adjacent boards) using ranged weapons! This is surprisingly cooperative as you have to decide (with your group) who takes which zombies, and when to use your limited resources to help your neighbors!

Zombicide: Gear Up went over surprisingly well with our group! It really felt like zombies were invading … in a flip-and-write game!

3. Roll For Great Old Ones

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 2/5
Player Count? 1-4
Print and Play? Yes, but there is also a boxed version with really nice components!
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Take out a Great Old One!

Players roll dice and must each choose one of the dice to use on their sheet! The cooperation comes out in having players decide, collectively, who gets what dice! After that, each player focuses on their own board to do things!

The art is a little odd, but this game is surprisingly thematic! This game made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2023! Check out our review of Roll For Great Old Ones to see if this is something you might like!

2. Find the Source!

Supports Solo? Yes
How Cooperative? 3/5
Player Count? 1-3
Print and Play? Yes, but there is also a boxed version with really nice components!
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Find the Source! … then get the best score you can.

Find The Source was a game from Kickstarter; it was originally a print-and-play, but the Kickstarter upped the ante and delivered a very nice production with nice art and high-quality board! See above!

The solo game is quite fun, but the cooperative has players sharing resources easily for one action point. There’s still a lot of multiplayer solitaire on your own board, but the sharing of resources and hacking inspires a lot of cooperation and discussion!

This was really fun to play! It even made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2023! See our review of Find the Source to see if this is for you!

1. Super-Skill Pinball: Ramp It Up! (Pin Pals)

Supports Solo? Yes*
How Cooperative? 5/5
Player Count? 1-4 (but really only 2 or 4 players for Pin Pals)
Print and Play? No, have to buy box!
Type? roll-and-write
Win Condition? Get the best score you can collectively: it’s pinball!

This is a weird choice for #1 for many reasons! First of all, there’s only one cooperative scenario of the four in this box! That is the Pin Pals game! The rest of the scenarios are solo/competitive! Second of all, the cooperative game is really only for 2 people (although you can have two groups of two playing at the same time), so it has limited playability!

Despite these limitations, this was our favorite cooperative roll-and-write game! You mark off things to help your compatriot all the time as you are playing! The game moves so quickly! It feels like pinball! This was very interactive as we both played pinball on our own boards, but talked as we tried to give each other bonuses!

The wrestling theme was goofy, but worked really well as we “tag-teamed” each other, marking off bonuses for each other as we played! Even though there is only one cooperative scenario in the box, it was worth it! I highly recommend the Super Skill Pinball system and the Pin Pals board as a cooperative roll-and-write! It just moved along so quickly and cooperatively!

What Vantage Is and Isn’t: A Review of Vantage

This week we take a look at a very hot game called Vantage: this is an open world game with thousands of cards! We show pictures of the game with some cards, and although they could be classified as spoilers, all of these pictures are out of context so I don’t think they are really spoilers. If you are really worried about spoilers, just jump to the Conclusion and avoid all the pictures!

There’s already been a ton of reviews of Vantage: reviewers who got it early for free and Stonemaier Champions (members of a club who get Stonemaier games early with a discount). I am neither of these: I am a plain Jane game player who paid full price for my copy of Vantage! I pre-ordered it from the web site like any schlub and I just got my copy about 2 weeks ago. I am not a rabid Stonemaier fan, nor I am not a prepaid reviewer! I am just a guy who like cooperative games who pays for every single game he gets and never gets ANY consideration from any publisher. So, my review may sound a little different than the others.

The funny thing is that I pre-ordered the Vantage coins about a year ago and they arrived a year ago. Yes, they actually had the coins for the game a year ahead of the game itself! That’s kinda funny. The fact that I ordered these tells you, yes, I was interested in the game.

We are going to try something a little different: we are going to talk about what Vantage is and what Vantage isn’t. Vantage doesn’t really fit directly into any mold of what other games are; it’s its own thing! But, is it something you will want to play? Is it something you will want to buy? Let’s look more closely.

Unboxing

Vantage is a fairly standard sized box: see Coke Can above for scale.

Let’s be clear: I bought ALL the extras for this game! The wooden skill tokens, the metal coins, and the 2 layer player boards (see above). I was very excited about this!

Because I bought all the extras, I didn’t need to punchout anything. I just left this sheet untouched.

As you look at the box, you can see it’s got a lot of cards! It’s actually pretty heavy!

There are a LOT of books: see above.

There are two flavors of cards: giant Location cards (see above) ..

And generic “little” cards which will come out as you play. Items, animals, … just different stuff that emerges with gameplay.

Notice just how many books there are! They are called Storybooks: we’ll revisit that nomenclature later.

There’s two kinds of dice: Challege (black) and Skill (white) dice.

And there’s a ton of tokens!

Overall, there is a LOT that comes with this box! It looks really nice!

Rulebook

The rulebook is very good, modulo one or two issues. The paper is a special “silky” paper that feels really nice. Note! It has a Table of Contents! Yay! But no index! Boo!

The rulebook gets a straight-up A on the Chair Test!

The rulebook fits PERFECTLY on the chair next to me, and it can lay open just right (see above). The font is nice: it’s a good size (not too small, not too big) and it very readable. It’s been a while since we’ve had a rulebook that gets a straight-up A on the Chair Test. Nice job!

The Components and Set-Up are great: they are all on the same page, so it’s easy to correlate what things are and where they go! Granted, Set-Up is pretty “easy”, but this works really well. And the Components have pictures and are labelled. Very nice!

The rest of the rulebook is good: lots of pictures, lots of color to help distinguish things, and sidebars that help explain an issue (without being the only reference to that rule!).

My only complaint is that the back of the rulebook doesn’t have a list of all Icons. It has friendly reminders (see above), but I feel like that should inside the rulebook.

Now a lot of these Icons are on the side of the box (see above and below)

Or on the back of the books:

However, I was very annoyed that I couldn’t find what the little circle meant:

… until I just happened to find in the rulebook! I think that means MONEY! See, it frustrated me that I had to go searching for this. It should have been on the back of the rulebook with a list of Icons! I don’t know where this is defined except for the passing reference on page 10 where you have to infer the meaning!

That’s a pretty minor quibble, but it did slow me down for long enough that I was annoyed. And it really shouldn’t have been an issue, especially when the rest of the rulebook is so good!

But overall, the rulebook was very good.

What Is This?

The game bills itself as an Open-World Adventure (see the top of the page). What does this mean? We are going to explore this issue via what this game is … what this game isn’t ! If we hack away at the positive space of what the game IS and the negative space of what the game ISN’T, then hopefully that will be enough information for you to figure out if this is for you!

Is This a Storybook Game?

We’ve talked about Storybook games for years here at CO-OP Gestalt; we tend to love them! See our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook Games!

Recently, we reviewed and loved Tales of Arthurian Knights! There is no question Tales of Arthurian Knights is a Storybook game with a beautiful hardbound book and tons of text! See above!

The text in the book flows and paints a picture of Arthur’s Knights! See how flavor exudes from the text above!

Another game that’s a Storybook game is Wandering Galaxy (see our review here). In fact, the recent Kickstarter included two ways to enjoy this Story! On way is a full text experience from the entry book (above and below)!

See more flavor exude from the text above!

However, you can also enjoy the story text is from the app: it shows the story, but also has Voice Actors read out the text! But there’s still a lot of flavor! (And silliness) It’s very … flavorful!

Why am I going into so much detail about Storybook games? Because I think Vantage is both a Storybook game and NOT a Storybook game! It depends on how you look at it! What do I mean by this?

Many, if not most entries in the Storybook, are very very terse; almost like directions. See above for examples. There’s not of flavor or story in this text! Sure, there are entries with more flavor and story, but it feels like most of what’s in here is more directions than story. I struggle a little with the appellation Storybook when that’s not much story. That’s why I think this ISN’T a Storybook.

My friends LOVE Storybooks and text (see above), and Tales of Arthurian Knights is probably their favorite game of the year! There is so much flavor, so much story, so much … flowery text in the storybook! My friends LOVE this type of Storybook!

Before you go off and write me hate mail, I realize that a lot of people don’t like lots of flavor or Story text! Some people prefer to just get to the game! You could argue that this is just a very concise Storybook, but it’s still a Storybook! That’s a very reasonable argument!

But I wanted to point out that some people would see the lack of flavor as a reason NOT to call this a Storybook game.

It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of Story in Vantage comes from the Location cards! As you explore the world of Vantage, these little scenes truly paint a picture of what you see! There’s no need for flowery text in a Storybook because you have beautiful images to tell the story! Who needs flowery text when a picture paints a thousand words?

The Location cards are, strictly speaking, distinct from the Storybook. You could argue that because the Location cards are technically not part of the Storybook, that makes the argument that the-Storybooks-aren’t-Storybooks even stronger! The story is REALLY on the Location cards, not the Storybooks themselves!

That’s a silly argument because Vantage as a full game includes lots of story. But this is why I wanted to talk about why you could consider Vantage’s Storybook NOT a Storybook! These distinctions helps define what this game is. There’s still story, but arguably it’s distributed among the cards and Storybook. The Storybook is NOT the traditional Storybook of Tales of the Arabian Nights. Vantage’s Storybook is … different: it’s more like directions.

If you love flavor text and like reading flowery text aloud (like my friends do with Tales of Arthurian Nights or Wandering Galaxy), then Vantage maybe isn’t the game you are looking for. But, you may still like the way the story comes out in Vantage (with the art and Storybook giving directional text).

Is This An Adventure Game?

On the surface, the obvious answer seems “Yes! Vantage is an adventure game! Players explore and go adventures and interact with the objects/stuff around them!”

This is basically the same definition we gave for Point-And-Click Adventure games in our Top 10 Cooperative Point-and-Click Adventure Games!

“What makes a board game a point-and-click adventure game? For us, it breaks down into three fundamental elements:

You move along in a story! You are part of a story: this is interactive fiction!
You explore a world! The game is about exploration and discovery, as you “move” from location to location. In the point-and-click video games, you could “point-and-click” to move around a map!
You solve puzzles by combining objects! You need to find objects and combine them in unique ways to solve puzzles. In the point-and-click video games, you would “point-and-click” on items/verbs to combine them!”

On the surface, it looks like Vantage meets these criteria … because it mostly does. But let’s look deeper into the interactive fiction portion: although there are stories that emerge as you play Vantage, it’s not “quite” the same as interactive fiction where there is an overall story./puzzle you are completing. This point can be countered by pointing out that there are many many stories in Vantage waiting to emerge! That’s a fair point, but it’s worth pointing out that there’s not some overall story to this. If you want a novel or plot to emerge (like The Secret of Monkey Island or Thimbleweed Park), Vantage is not the same thing.

The more crucial thing is the rule that you can’t interact with a Location more than once! See the rule from the Vantage rulebook above! In most point-and-click adventures, it’s fundamental that you can go back and revisit a Location and interact in a different way or multiple times or just look everywhere! This particular restriction seems … strange. It’s one major reason I would call this NOT an Adventure game. Or at least not a point-and-click Adventure game? Maybe that’s the difference?

Maybe we should revisit our definition of point-and-click Adventure games and add something like “You can generally interact with the environment over and over“. (And to be fair, there are places in Vantage where you do get a few extra chances to interact with a Location, so don’t go sending me hate mail).

So, this is an Adventure game, but maybe not fully a point-and-click Adventure game?

One other thing also marks this down a little from the Adventure game for me: the exploration.

Is This An Exploration Game?

To say this isn’t an exploration game is crazy! Players wander! Players interact with new places! How could you claim Vantage is not an exploration game?

Consider Earthborne Rangers: a prototypical cooperative exploration game where I joke it’s a 4x game: Explore, Explore, Explore, and Explore! See review here!

In Earthborne Rangers, you can play over and over and over … and come back to where you left off! You have a map, and you get a feel for the world! There’s a lot of adventures in this world … just like Vantage! Like Vantage, you can keep coming back over and over and see more of the world!

Vantage isn’t a campaign. You just crash land on the planet every time at a different place: see the chart above. Every game is different, as seeded by the chart above.

So I finish a game of Vantage. And it’s over. My progress is essentially lost. In Earthborne Rangers, I can continue where I left off and keep exploring. That’s the difference; your exploration is lost in Vantage (but see below).

When I say I want to explore a topic, when I want to explore an issue, when I say I want to explore … I don’t want to lose all my progress! Lack of progress can make the exploration feel pointless. If I don’t have any vested interest, if I don’t have a desire to continue, it doesn’t feel like exploration, it just feels like random-stuff-happening-to-you. And that (admittedly subtle point) is why the exploration in Vantage may not feel like exploration.

My first solo game of Vantage ended in a win… it was fine! But it felt vaguely unsatisfying as “Well, I explored this world, but so what? I have no idea where I was or what I was going! I may never come back this way again, so who cares?”

This unease went away a little when I played my second solo game: if you just take the game for what it is, as a carpe diem game and just enjoy it for what it is, then it’s a lot more fun! This isn’t a game about trying to explore and keeping track of this planet, you just make decisions and live with them!

Of course you explore when you play Vantage, but it’s not the type of exploration that persists from game to game. But see below.

Is This a Campaign?

The rules state very clearly that this is NOT a campaign game. See rule above!

If you play this sporadically and infrequently, then this is absolutely not a campaign. There’s no memory of previous games.

But what if you play just enough that you start to remember things? Then is it a campaign game because you can take advantage of what’s you’ve seen before! Stated in a more mathematical way, as the number of plays going to infinity, this becomes a campaign game!

I don’t know if you remember Dollhouse; it was a TV show where dolls (people) were wiped of their memories and implanted with new ones weekly. Over time, some of the dolls started to remember what they did in previous runs … and that’s kind of what Vantage feels like over time. You are a doll from Dollhouse, and some of those implanted memories … stick. I don’t know of any other game like this; It’s a very different way to look at a game.

Vantage isn’t a campaign game. But over time, it can become one. Sorta.

Starfleet Mode

After my first solo play, I was a little depressed. I liked this world! I liked the pictures in the game! I liked the basic gameplay! And yet, all the exploration I did was lost. All that work, gone. In a later game (I want to say it was my third game), I got to a place where I could keep exploring for a while … and that was cool! I like being in this world! But whenever I finish a game, I think “I’d really like to come back to where I was and continue exploring and get to know this world better!” I get a little depressed when I did all that exploration … for no reason?

What I want is a Starfleet Mode or Exploration Mode or … frankly, a Campaign mode. I understand that the game is all about getting your nine cards in a grid, and once you do that, the game kind of ends. Maybe there could be a way to “continue” the game; maybe you just lose some of your cards and continue?

The rulebook is very “open” about how you play the game, from the Universal Rule of Thematic Fun (see above), to victory conditions even being kind of what you want! It’s very open. But I wanted a more systematic way to explore this world! Every game starts fresh with you crash landing on a new place on the planet! Sure, you can make up your own rules for a Starfleet Mode (My current set is: keep all but three cards and keep exploring, but get rid of your old destiny), but this feels like something we should more direction on (from the rulebook).

I want to continue exploring this planet in Starfleet Mode (my own term, it basically means Campaign Mode) but it kind of bugs me off that I don’t have a systematic or defined way as defined by the rulebook.

Solo Mode

Vantage plays well solo: the rules are very well-defined at the bottom of page four. (Thank you for following Saunders’ Law)!

My first three games were solo games; I think it’s very important to play solo before you teach others. There’s just enough rules that it’s better to have a sense of the game before you bring this out to a group. Luckily, the solo mode is easy to get into and learn the game.

My first solo play left me a little … depressed. I wanted more exploration, but I felt a little unsatisfied that I lost all the exploration I had done. After thinking about this for a few days, I came back and played my second game. This time, I was in carpe diem mode: I just played, made decisions, and took the consequences of my actions without caring too much. I know I probably won’t come back to this part of the world anytime soon, so I just enjoyed what I was doing. And my second game was much more enjoyable. But I feel like I almost had to get depressed in my first game to appreciate what this is and what this isn’t.

A third solo game had get to do a little exploration. And after my third game, I realized that every single one of solo games was VERY DIFFERENT. I explored more Locations in some games, I interacted in others, the items I got influenced more what I did in other games. That’s quite an accomplishment for a game!

To teach the game: absolutely play this solo first, then bring this out to your friends. Do I like this game enough to continue playing it solo? Maybe? If you enjoy the carpe diem flavor of this, where you just enjoy this game for what it is, then I think you will love the solo mode! But, if you are like me, and wanted more persistent exploration, then you may feel a little unsatisfied.

I think a Starfleet Mode would make me want to play this again solo MUCH MORE. Sure, I can make my own rules for that, but why aren’t these in the rulebook? NOTE: (For all I know, the Starfleet Rules are in hidden somewhere in the Secret pouch, or the Books of Secrets, or somewhere else. But I can only tell you that after about 5 plays, I haven’t seen anything like that).

Cooperative Mode

I invited my Escape Room buddies (Charlie and Allison) to play this with me.

It was a hit! We played a two-hour game and had a fun time exploring and reading to each other! One of things you forget in Storybook games is that everyone stays involved as you read the Storybooks to each other!

I asked Charlie and Allison what they thought? Would you play again? Absolutely! The vague sense of dissatisfaction I had in the solo game went away in the cooperative game, as we all stayed involved and just enjoyed the game for what it was.

The cooperation was .. interesting. In the cooperative game, we have all crash-landed at different points on the planet, so we are “kind of” playing multiplayer solitaire. We each have our own viewpoint or vantage (see what I did there?), and we don’t really interact with other (although you can if you end up on the same space, but that’s generally not what happens).

The cooperation comes in by either sharing skill tokens with each other (to mitigate die rolls), or sharing dice-placement locations with each other. When you make Challenge rolls, you have to deal with the consequences; you can mitigate the dice-rolls by doing dice-placement on appropriate spaces on characters. See above as the Blue character can always mitigate a die for a Explore (blue) type roll. Also, she has a “global” place for any character to mitigate Morale (the lightning bolt means “global: any character may use”).

Any dice you can’t mitigate are either Morale, Health, or Time losses. See above as each character has their own Morale, Health, and Time. If any of these go to zero, the game is “over”.

Thematically, it’s a little specious that we can share skill tokens and dice-placement spaces, because we aren’t on the same Locations (usually). My own interpretation of this: I like to think that we are all in constant communication over some intercomm system, and we can share each other’s expertise! So, the sharing skill tokens and dice-placement spaces, at least in my mind, is sharing expertise! “Don’t eat that! Purple plants are generally dangerous!” I kind of wish the rulebook had done more to explain this cooperation thematically. But hopefully my explanation of sharing expertise works for you.

One more thing, I kind of think three or four is the best player count; With three, you are only “not involved” every third turn, and you can care about your friends stories … because there’s only three or four of them. At higher player counts, I think you will “stop caring” and the game will become much more multiplayer solitaire (and you might get bored waiting for your turn).

Things We Were Unsure About

Locations: Charlie and Allison didn’t love that we couldn’t see each other’s Location pictures: but the rules are very clear about this. I think the game would offer the explanation that it would “break immersion” if we could share pictures: you should only be experiencing your own story. While I understand this explanation and maybe even might agree with it in theory, it’s so much more fun and cooperative to say “Look how cool this Location is!” .. and show it to everyone. It would actually make the game more cooperative, or at least more interactive. In fact, if we go with premise that we have an intercomm system that we are communicating on, I’ve got to believe we have a camera on our phone! 🙂 Maybe the game should just allow you to share pictures every so often … the rules are a little draconian on this point, but maybe a little too much.

Bottleneck: The major bottleneck in the game was almost always waiting for Rich (me) to get the cards. It was probably the most annoying part of the game. The rulebook suggests that only one player should handle the cards … as it makes the game move faster … but it feels there could be a better way to share the load on this. Me, as Rich, ALWAYS did all the work and it was annoying. An easy easy thing would be to let one person handle the Location cards and one person handle the items. At least then 2 people would be doing that in parallel and share the load!! The decks can always easily be divided as well. Maybe it’s too chaotic to split these decks, but I feel like there’s got to a better way to share the load: this is a cooperative game for goodness sakes.

Conclusion

You might think, that after reading this, that I didn’t like this game. But I did! I just wanted to explore a lot of the issues so you understand what this game is and isn’t! It’s not a campaign game, but it can be over the long haul. It’s an exploration game, but it’s kind of not as you forget all the exploration you’ve done from game to game (usually). It’s an adventure game, but it’s kind of isn’t as you can only interact with Locations once. It’s a Storybook game, but it’s kind of not as the Storybook is more like directions (and the story exists in the Locations). Vantage is just a little different, and I hope you got that from this review.

I liked the solo mode: it works well and it really teaches the game. Be aware that you might feel vaguely dissatisfied in the solo game because you don’t get to continue your exploration from game to game. If you go into the solo game with a carpe diem mindset, and just enjoy this for what it is, you will be much happier! I’d probably give this a 7/10 for solo mode, but if there were a more systematic way to explore the Planet and keep the exploration going (especially in the solo mode), I’d probably bump this up to an 8 or a 9/10. It’s a pretty neat world!

The cooperative mode was a hoot and we had a fun time playing! The cooperation feels a little athematic unless you think of us all sharing an intercomm system! Then the sharing of skills and dice-placement mitigation spaces is like sharing expertise amongst ourselves; that little premise really goes a long way towards making the game feel cooperative. Of course, the Storybook reading to each other makes the game very interactive and fun too! I’d give this 8/10 for cooperative play. I’d probably never play with more than four players though.

If you are interested in Vantage, you should give this a try to see if you like it: It’s very different from other Storybook games like those in our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook Games!! I freely admit I didn’t love my first play of Vantage that much; I had to play it a few times. Maybe you want more flowery prose, maybe you want more story, then consider Wandering Galaxy or Tales of Arthurian Knights instead. Maybe you want more persistent exploration, consider Earthborne Rangers instead. But Vantage is such a different beast than many games out there, don’t judge it right away. Give it few times to see if you like it. And it’s okay if you don’t like it. It’s also okay if you do like it!

Late To The Party, But The Party’s Still Going! A Solo and Cooperative Review of Tales from Red Dragon Inn!

So, the original Tales from Red Dragon Inn was on Kickstarter way back in October 2021, and delivered to backers in 2024. It was so popular, they had a second Kickstarter in June/July 2024, and that’s the one I backed! This cooperative dungeon crawler for 1-4 players looked really cool!

Why didn’t I back the original? I think I was afraid of getting YET ANOTHER DUNGEON CRAWLER (YADC) campaign that I wouldn’t play!

I do love this universe … especially the Red Dragon Inn cooperative Deck-Building game called Battle for Greyport (see review here and here: It’s also in our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games!)! I love the art-style and the silly vibe of this universe!

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

This is a fairly big mama-jamba of a box: see Coke can above and below for scale.

Ah, this game comes with a first-play walkthrough! This is a really good walkthrough!

What’s in here?

The game comes with most of the cards and minis in this little grey box. (Grey box? Greyport? Get it?)

And some dice.

The minis are pretty good.

Underneath all that are the map packs.

This map pack is pretty huge! See Coke can above for scale.

… and there are quite a few maps for the adventurers to go on!

Underneath the maps are TONS OF PUNCHOUTS. And by tons, I mean tons by weight!

There are 5 individually wrapped punchout sets (with multiple punchout sheets per set!)

And a new chapter rulebook per set! Whew!

There are … so …. many … punchouts!

But overall, this looks pretty cool! I am just scared of how many punchouts there … (but keep reading below …)

Gameplay

This is a cooperative dungeon-crawler where each player takes the role of a different hero … the typical Dungeons and Dragons archetypes are all here: thief, fighter, barbarian, etc. Despite the classes being fairly generic, these characters have so much … character!

Each character has some character specific cards giving the asymmetric powers.

For example, Zot (above) has some special Actions specific to his character! But notice the art and the feel! This is not your typical dungeon crawler! There’s character and a sense of humor here! The game looks light and fun … and surprise! It is! And pooky!

Players will set up the Chapter of their campaign; see scenario 1 of Chapter 1 above!

One of the coolest parts of this game is that the monsters are all described ON THE MAT! So, you don’t have to go searching books or monster manuals for the monster info!

The minis are color-coded via bases, and this system works great. I was a little worried that the bases might “harm” the cardboard standees ( … Gloomhaven: I am looking at you …), but the standees stand well and the bases DO NOT harm the cardboard (NOTE: After a number of plays, there’s a little bit of wear and tear, but it doesn’t ruin the cardboard: it just indents it a little).

To keep track of hit points, each mini has a number above it, and it also a little card associated with the number. See above.

It makes it really easy to correlate the mini with its hit point card! This system is simple and works surprisingly well! They used colors really well here.

Players operate these heroes, explore the dungeon, and fight the baddies!

This is a fight-em-up dungeon crawler!

Combat is decided by the yellow and black dice. You might be worried that the game is too random if dice decide a lot, but the dice are pretty consistent. You will always get at least one success per dice, sometimes you will get exploding dice (which you can reroll over and over) and sometimes you will get some extra epic dice for FUTURE rolls!

If you roll the ! (exclamation point) symbol on the yellow dice, you get an Epic black die (modulo some rules) which you can use on a future turn! My favorite part of this is that you can CHOOSE when to use the Epic dice on a future turn! This reminds me a little of the Hour of Need system (see review here and here) where current rolls can contribute to future successes WHEN YOU WANT/NEED THEM! You choose when to use those Epic Dice! That’s so cool!

This is a Variable Turn Order game: each player and each set of monsters gets a token and one players pulls the token out of a bag to decide when each one goes. See above. I was very worried when I saw Variable Turn Order: was I going to have to worry about all the problems and try to come up with a solution? See a very in-depth discussion of Variable Turn Order and its problems/solutions here!

After all was said and done, the Variable Turn Order system didn’t seem to suffer from the problems we normally see!

Depending on the token you draw, you either get 2 Actions and 1 Shenanigan …

Or 1 Action or Shenanigan! (1 and 2-Player games with partial actions).

Your Actions and Shenanigans are well defined on your cards! See above!

Note that every character has very different Actions and Shenanigans! It’s funny, that one word Shenanigans kind of implies the overall vibe in this game …

This is all about your characters moving around the maps and fighting baddies!

If you reach the final objective (killing the yellow slime above for scenario 1: see above), you win (… if you survive to the objective phase…)! If any character dies, you lose! There are other losing conditions too, as you get further into the game.

It’s a fun dungeon crawler! And you get to level-up your characters too! As the game gets further along, you can get new cards from THE VAULT which you can use to choose upgrades!

Walkthrough

By far the best part of this game is HOW GOOD the first play walkthrough is!

This Walkthrough takes you through the first 4 scenarios of Chapter 1 in great detail! There’s no need to read the rulebook ahead of time (well, because there isn’t one) … you are just learning the rules as you play from the Walkthrough!

Coupled with the Walkthrough is also the Chapter Guide (see above). The Walkthrough tells you when to look at the Walkthrough and when to look at the Chapter Guide for specific set-up.

I can’t tell you HOW MUCH I liked this walkthrough! Worried about getting into the game? Naaah … this Walkthrough is fabulous! It slowly introduces you to all the rules as you go. This reminds me very much a video game training mode; it works so well!

Incremental Punchout

One thing I was VERY worried about was punching out ALL THOSE TOKENS before you can play! And guess what! You don’t have to! You can punchout what you need as the game flows!

Do you need some monsters? Just punch them out now when you need them!

This Incremental Punchout philosophy worked really well with the way that the Walkthrough taught the rules; learn a little bit at a time, punchout a little bit at a time!!! So, don’t get overwhelmed by all the tokens … just take tokens as you need them. I wish the rulebook had emphasized this point, because just LOOKING at the token sheets gave me heartburn!

I strongly recommend you punchout as you go and do not do everything at once: you’ll get right into the game that much quicker!

What Is This?

How would I describe this game? In one word: Lighthaven! Tales From Red Dragon Inn has a lot of similarities to Gloomhaven: it’s a cooperative dungeon-crawler campaign! Players explore the world, fight monsters, upgrade characters, and quest quest quest. But the gameplay is lighter, the rules are lighter, the world is “lighter”, the art is lighter and cuter … there’s no Gloom here!

Like Gloomhaven, Tales from Red Dragon Inn does have a lot of components, but this world just feels just so easy to jump into.

There is some story here: about as much story as Gloomhaven. If you are looking for more adventure games, consider games like Arydia (see review here) or storybook games like Tales of the Arthurian Knights (see review here). If you want story story story, this probably isn’t the game for you … this is a dungeon crawler where you fight monsters!

Solo Play

So, Tales from the Red Dragon Inn does support a solo mode! (Thanks for following Saunders’ Law!) In fact, two solo modes!

It’s a little bit of a bummer that the solo play isn’t addressed right up front … you have to go looking for the solo rules in the Glossary (a very complete book!) that comes with the game. See above. There are two solo modes; play normal, but alternate between some characters like a multiplayer game … or play a solo character with a Companion.

The Companion has a special set of cards: see above. The Companion rules also take up a full page on the Glossary with lots of exceptions to gameplay. I usually HATE solo modes with lots of exceptions to the rules, so I opted to just alternate between two characters because there are NO RULES CHANGES. I strongly recommend this is how you play solo; the Companion is still an “extra” thing to play and doesn’t save that much context switch overhead. At this point, I have played the first Chapter all the way through with two characters and didn’t have any problem going back and forth between characters. In other words, the context switching between two characters didn’t seem to cause me any issues as I played solo.

My solo game was operating Deidre and Gerki. They made a great team! These two characters really worked well together; Deidre is better at long distance stuff, but occasionally she’ll get in there and help Gerki! If she stands NEXT TO some monsters, Gerki gets his backstab ability (an extra die!) The amount of cooperation between the two was quite good.

I have spent about 15 hours playing the game solo. I learned the game solo, set-up the game solo, upgraded, read the Walkthrough solo, and played all 4 scenarios of Chapter 1! I had a blast! I loved the simplicity of the system, I loved how the characters can work together well and support each other, I loved the “sense of humor” the art implies, I loved the art, I loved the vibe!

Once you know the game, your sessions can be quicker, but be prepared for your first 4 sessions to take about 15 hours or so! But, it flies by! You are having fun and always doing something!

I look forward to more solo sessions, but I had to reset the game (this is not a legacy game, but it is a campaign game and you can reset it) so I could play it cooperatively with my friend(s).

Cooperative Play

My first cooperative experience was a 2-Player game with Teresa. She brought over a little red dragon as a mascot … it was quite apropos!

For a different experience from the solo game, I played Zot the wizard. He was funny!

It’s hilarious that the little guy POOKY who helps Zot summons HIM! (Not the other way around) See above! That’s hilarious! And yes, we are convinced this is the rabbit from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

Like the solo game, we saw some good cooperation as Teresa’s Fiona Character was all melee, while Zot was all distance! A good combo!

The game also moved much more quickly since I had already played the entire Chapter 1 solo. A lot of those “15 hours” I spent in the first 4 solo games were shortened considerably! I think Teresa and I got through Scenario 1 is about an hour!

Playing solo ahead of time significantly increased how quickly we were able to get into this game.

Will we play more? Basically, Teresa wants to wait until Sara comes back and then we’ll start a 3-Player campaign!

I think it was a success cooperatively: it’s always a good sign when your friends ask to continue the campaign!

Story vs Flavor Text

There’s not a lot of story per se, but there is a lot of flavor text that gives the game direction and charm, and helps establish the parameters of the game. To be clear, you really don’t HAVE to read the flavor text … I didn’t read it all in my solo play, but it didn’t really detract from the game by not reading it. Teresa LOVES flavor text, so we did read it (see above) and it did contribute to the atmosphere of the game: see above.

What I Liked

Charm: This game has so much charm! The art style that permeates this game is just so much fun! It stays within the Red Dragon Inn universe … Dragonverse?

Unique Characters: The characters are also so unique and different! For example: the fact that Pooky (the little familiar) summons Zot is hilarious!

Walkthrough: This first play Walkthrough is exceptional and makes it easy to jump in!

The Dice System: I was really worried the dice system would be too random, but it’s really not. You always get at least one success, you can get exploding dice, and you can choose to use Epic Dice if you want for “extra help”! The Epic Dice system worked well! You could choose when to use the Epic Dice when you really needed a win!

Vibe: This is a light-hearted Gloomhaven … it could have easily been called Lighthaven! Yet, it’s still a deep game with lots of play and meaningful decisions!

Level-Up: Levelling-up is easy and interesting! Every character levels up, but it’s not described u pages and pages of tables in a book! You just grab the cards destined for you, or choose some! It’s really easy!

What I Didn’t Like

SO MANY PUNCHOUTS! The sheer number of punchouts in this game is terrifying. Word of advice, just punch out tokens as you need them. In fact, I ended up trying to put the monsters BACK into the token sheets when I was done with them! Partly I did this to reset the game, but the game just stores easier if you keep things in the punchout sheets as much as possible. I know, that’s not ideal.

Part of this was a little foreshadowing too … you saw how many punchout sheets are coming, right? Do you REALLY think you are going to be able store ALL THESE tokens in bags back in the box? So, I put as many tokens as a I could back into the punchouts as a favor to future me.

Conclusion

Well, Tales from Red Dragon Inn should have made my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024 because the first release came out in 2024. But I didn’t get it until the second Kickstarter, so I didn’t get it until 2025! So, it will probably make my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025 … but it might have to be an honorable mention, just because it wasn’t released in 2024. Or maybe I’ll just count it as 2025 since I backed the second Kickstarer … not sure …

This is a fun and light dungeon-crawler, but still lots of depth and meaningful decisions. You fight monsters and you have fun as a group of adventurers! There is some story here, but it’s mostly just fun flavor text.

Tales from Red Dragon Inn is a great solo and cooperative game: 9/10. It’s so fun!

I think the only reason this didn’t get a 10/10 was because the Variable Turn Order can sometimes be … disappointing. I wish there had been a way to mitigate/control the Variable Turn Order, but it didn’t get in the way that much.

A Cooperative/Solo Print-And-Play Roll-and-Write Game! Roll or Stand: Jurassic Adventures! The Theme is EXACTLY What You Think It Is!

Roll or Stand: Jurassic Adventures is a print-and-play solo and cooperative roll-and-write game that was on Kickstarter back in March 2025, and it promised delivery in April 2025. That’s right! One month afterwards!! And it did it!!! How did they do that? Because there was no actual physical delivery; I was sent some PDFs in email after the Kickstarter fullfilled. It’s a print-and-play!

In order to play, you need to print 3 pages per player (if you want the full campaign). You also need just one copy of the rules (4 pages of rules) and one copy of the campaign rules (1 page). See above. For one person, you need to print 3+1+4 = 8 pages. For 4 people, you have to print 4*3 + 1 + 4 = 17 pages.

Ever since my first print-and-play was a little more work and money than I expected (see our review of Legends of Storm City), I picked up a newer printer that was was MUCH cheaper to print stuff on. I was able to print pages for one solo game and a 4-Player cooperative game without worrying too much about the cost. (But see our Legends of Storm City review if you want more discussion of how much it can cost to print print-and-play games!)

In case it isn’t instantly clear (see above): this is a roll-and-write with a Jurassic Park theme! The publisher probably won’t get sued for calling it Jurassic Adventures, but you never know!

Let’s take a look!

Printing

What are the pages you need to print?

The rules: See above. The rules are very nicely done over 4 pages. The rules have lots of examples! The font, although is a little small, is very nice and, dare-I-say, pleasant to look at?

There were a few times when I wish the rules were a little better, but they do seem to specify everything: you might just have to look through them a little. Luckily, you can reuse these rules over and over after you print them.

The Campaign Sheet: See above. This sheet gives bonuses and starting conditions for each game plus a little flavor text. You only need one of these for each group (arguably, you can reuse this over and over if you don’t put your name at the bottom).

But the most important pages are the 3 Scenario Sheets (see them above). Each player will need their own copy of these Scenario Sheets to play: this is the one thing of which EVERYONE will have to have their own copy!

Each scenario sheet has four chapters (puzzles) at the top of the page (see above), and a shared preparation area at the bottom. The player will marking both the top part AND and bottom part up! See below!

Gameplay

Every turn, two dice are rolled (you have to supply your own dice). These two numbers are shared to everyone playing.

The stamina area “forces” dice to a certain regime; if there is no entry (“charge”) for one of the numbers you rolled, you must decrease that die until you find an empty charge (rolling over back to 6). Once a stamina line is “filled”, you move to the next line … and possibilities open up again. Let’s be clear; when the stamina line is almost filled, you have a very good idea what the next numbers will have to be! This really helps mitigate some of the randomness of rolling dice!

After you get your two numbers, you choose to record one number on the left Preparation side and one number to the right Preparation area. See above.

If you wish to “futz” with your two numbers, you can cross off “ideas” to add or subtract one to the numbers (for you only: this doesn’t affect anyone else).

You record the number to the next empty box. If you want, you can push-your-luck and “roll”, hoping to add more numbers to you line on the next roll of the dice.

Or, if you want to, you can “Stand” (marking off the leftmost square with a cross) and activate your actions! You are now committed to act!

The number of actions you get is based on how far you pushed your luck: the longer you wait, the more actions you get. See above as I get 6 actions when I activate my line!

How many actions do you get? Your sum (4+2+6 = 12) – rightmost (6) = 6 actions!

Note that you CAN BUST if you put too many numbers on a line! In the case above, I BUST because my numbers exceed the MAX (10) by being 2+3+1+6 = 12!! If you do BUST, you lose all the actions of that line BUT you get a booby prize of one of the tools (the rightmost symbol: the binoculars at the right under the 6).

So this is a game about pushing your luck, and knowing when to activate a line to get your actions! The Kickstarter called this a “blackjack-like” mechanism! Basically, push-your-luck so you don’t bust!

Once you have your actions, what do you do with them? Basically, you mark off lines on the current puzzle! With each action, you can mark a line!

Which lines? It depends on the numbers on the line! On the line above, I had a 2, 4, and 6 which means I can only draw upper left, upper right, and down lines!

That’s right! You are limited to what lines you can draw by the numbers you used to activate the line!

This is why ideas and Tools are so important! If you really need to up/down a dice, you can use ideas or tools to draw the line you need! Be careful! Ideas/Tools are a limited resource!

After you achieve the current puzzle, you immediately move to the next!

If you can get all 4 puzzles done before the stamina or preparation lines run out, you are done!

Whether or not you win depends on “how many puzzles you failed!” If you failed NO puzzles, you get the Success story!

If you have under 1 failure per player, you get the Delayed outcome (which is usually still a success .. see above!)

Play all 3 scenario sheets for a full campaign!

Solo Play

I had my solo copy ready since April 2025, but I just had never gotten around to playing it. It didn’t take too long to print out (3 months ago), but I was ready to go!

Over the course of one evening, I played through the entire 3-sheet campaign. I took a break after scenario 2 for dinner, but came back to it. All in all, it probably took about 2 hours to play all the way through, with about an extra 1.5 hours of reading and deciphering the rules.

The solo campaign is easy to get to the table; it has some interesting decisions as you have to decide when to use your limited ideas, limited tools, which dice to use in which area, when to stand and when to roll!

This is also a very spatial-oriented puzzle, as you have to make sure you have the right line segments to do what you need to on your current puzzle! The puzzle above starts at the top (3), and you want more “downwards” line segments to help!

There’s a lot of great decisions, but the game moves along at a pretty good clip. You can have as much analysis paralysis as you want, but generally the game moved along. I freely admit that I stopped a few times and had some analysis paralysis …

I had a fine time playing solo. Even though the puzzles are similar in some ways (just draw line segments), they were pretty thematic with the “Jurassic park”-like concept. There was a good variety over 12 puzzles in the campaign—I saw a neat little story unfold.

Fun solo.

Cooperative

For my cooperative game, I readied myself for a 4-Player game. I may have overprinted the game; I probably didn’t have to print rules sheets for everyone, but in my group, people like to have their own copy of the rules!

We ended up only playing a 3-Player cooperative game!

This went over … okay. The only real opportunities for cooperation are that you can share Ideas and/or Tools. Thematically, that made some sense! “Hey! I got an Idea I can share with you!” Unfortunately, we didn’t end up sharing at all! The resources are so limited in the game (you only have so many Ideas and Tools) that it never felt good to share them! Although the opportunity was there, we never availed ourselves of the “sharing”.

This game was mostly multi-player solitaire. But at least we weren’t getting in each others way.

Pen vs. Pencil

A pencil probably won’t work with this game. Can you tell I circled the first 5 Ideas above? No? Me neither!

I ended up using a red sharpie so it was VERY clear when I noted something. See above.

Ah! Now you can tell I circled the Ideas!

Of course, sharpies may bleed, so I got a paper bag on the back side to handle any bleed through.

The only problem with the Pen is you really can’t correct any mistakes. Remember my BUST example? Can you tell that was a 6 on the right? It was only a 6 after I “sorta” corrected it.

If you find yourself wanting to play more of this, consider laminating the Scenario sheets and using dry-erase (extra-thin!!) markers; then you can correct them and re-use the sheets over and over.

Small House Rule

The rules specifically say to write the number of actions in the right most area: see above as I clumsily write a 6, and it obscures the direction wedges!

What I ended up doing is writing the number of actions off to the side! See above as the actions are on the LEFT for the left prep area, and the actions are on the RIGHT for the right prep area! And then it’s MUCH easier to see which wedges are available for your actions, since the action number isn’t obscuring the wedges!

Things I Liked

Theme: there’s a surprising amount of theme and story

Choices: I generally feel like I have a lot of choices, and I know what’s coming because of the stamina concept forging the dice. This had just enough randomness to be interesting, but not enough to infuriate me.

What I Didn’t Like

Too small: the sheets at times felt a little too small! Each scenario sheet feels like it should be two sheets; the top half should be its own sheet, and the bottom half should be its own sheet. I am surprised this wasn’t a printing option. The whole thing does fit on a page, which is nice, but I think if I wanted to laminate this and use dry-erase pens, I’d want bigger sheets. I wish a full-sized upper half and full-sized lower half had been PDFs included in my distribution.

Cooperation: There wasn’t really any cooperation. Although the opportunities were there, we didn’t avail ourselves of them because the resources were so limited.

House Rule for More Cooperation

How can we cooperate more? One complaint is that the game really wasn’t that cooperative.

Looking back on our cooperative game, the one thing you can do is change the dice separately! The players have to take the dice as rolled, but then each player can spend Ideas “separately” to +- 1 the dice on their board. What if this were more cooperative? What if, as a group, we could decide to spend an Idea and have it change a dice for all of us? This would promote a lot of conversation and lots of interaction! “Well, I really need a 6!” “But we both need 5s!” “Hm, you can save an Idea if you change it once!”

This is just an idea for a House Rule, but it would make the game more cooperative and interactive.

Conclusion

Jurassic Adventures was a mixed bag. I liked it solo and might play it again: the theme and gameplay was fun! It was a 6.5/10 or maybe 7/10. My friend Sara probably wouldn’t play it again cooperatively, (5/10) but my friend Teresa would (6/10). Although the game bills itself as cooperative, it felt much more multiplayer solitaire … mostly because the resources were so limited that it was too hard to share! We do propose a house rule that might make Jurassic Adventures more cooperative and more enjoyable, but you may like this “mostly” multiplayer solitaire game as it is.

If you do play this, make sure you play with a pen instead of a pencil; even though you can’t correct your pen without making a mess, you just can’t see the pencil marks!

RichieCon 2025 And Top 6 Interesting Games In The Last Year!

RichieCon 2025 had a lot of drama this year! We had to get a new venue this year because of … reasons.

If you want the long version of why we got a new venue, I encourage you to listen to “Tales of Horror” in the Dice Tower Podcast “Where Credit is Due” (timestamp 32:41, see link below)

At The Table with The Dice Tower – Where Credit is Due | The Dice Tower

New Venue

For RichieCon 2025, we had to go looking for a new venue. We ended up at Fruchthendler Elementary School!

This venue was great! It was a little expensive to rent it for two days, but it was spacious and easy set-up in! The cafeteria had plenty of tables!

It even had a stage which we used some presentations (see below).

The best part of the new venue was the sound baffling! The major complaint we always got from the Rec Center was how LOUD it was. With the Sound baffles all over the cafeteria, that was not a problem this year!

Because of the cost, we engaged a Sponsor to help defray the costs: Thanks to Return From Subroutine Games for helping out! See their website here!

Day -1: Getting Coolers

Because of the new venue, we don’t have a refrigerator any more! So, I had to put the call out to all my friends to get coolers to store drinks and perishables in! In the weeks leading up to RichieCon 2025, I collected about 10 coolers!

We actually ended up having too many coolers, but that’s a good problem to have!

Day 0: Boxception and Sleeve-It!

We end up playing some games as we get ready for RIchieCon … but they aren’t the funnest games in the world!

The Wednesday before RichieCon has become Boxception: The Cooperative Dexterity game of putting boxes in other boxes!

We end up putting about 200 games into 20 boxes over the night! (Some boxes have tons of games, some have just a few!)

We also spend some time playing “Sleeve-It!” In this case, Teresa played a solo game of “Sleeve-It!” with the Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking game!

Day 1: The Secret RichieCon House

A large contingent of people rent an AirBNB and stay near Fruchthendler so that it’s easy to go back and forth: it also is a great place to game before everyone arrives! Most of the out-of-towners end up here over the course of Friday before we have access to Fruchthendler!

Day 2: RichieCon 2025 Starts!

Day 3, The Last Day: RichieCon 2025

Top 6 Interesting Games Since Last Year!

On Saturday of RichieCon, we like to do a little show to bring the RichieCon Community together! In that show, we discuss some games that drew our attention since the last year. The purpose of this list is to give people some ideas of games to play for the remainder of RichieCon! Without further ado, here’s our 6 questions with answers from Richie, Kurt, and Sam!

#6: What game from the last year surprised you the most? Good or bad surprise?

Richie: The Secrets of Zorro. This fun little cooperative game didn’t have a very big Kickstarter, but me and friends really liked it! It’s quick, it’s fun, and very thematic! Good Surprise! See our review here to see if you might like it!
Kurt: Wandering Galaxy; disappointing given the awesomeness of Forgotten Waters & Freelancers Sam: Luddite. From watching the comic book into video on the wall in the man cave I was expecting it to be very story driven and thematic and RPG-like. It turned out to be a very fun roll and write that had none of that. See Richie’s review here.

#5: What game in the last year do you disagree with reviewers on?

Richie: Tales of Arthurian Knights. This game went over like gang-busters in my group, getting played multiple times and getting borrowed for birthday parties! All of my friends gave it a strong 8.5 (maybe 9), but the the Dice Tower seemed less enthusiastic and only gave it a 6 or 6.5. We were very surprised! We loved it! See our Review here.

Kurt: THE GANG! Tom Vasel didn’t like this game very much, but my group (Kurt’s group) loved loved this game!

Sam: Soul Raiders. Tom V. thought it was great end gave it an 8. I wanted to like it because it has great art and a great premise but ended up being too random and grindy for the story driven feel that it was giving off. My final score 5.5. See our thoughts here.

#4: What game (that you paid for) did you really dislike? It’s easy to dislike games other people paid for, but what did you pay for that you disliked?

Richie: I bought and sold two games because I disliked them so much. Corps of Discovery: in a game where one resource can mean the difference between winning and losing, the rules needed to be tighter. It didn’t land for me (I gave it a 4/10), but it might for you. The Dice Tower and other reviewers seem to like this game (9/10), so try it for yourself to see if you might like it. See our thoughts here. I also wanted to like Freedom Five sooooooo muuuucch, but I ended up hating it and selling it. I am still very depressed about this: see our very different review here.

Kurt: Bear Mountain Camping Adventure. It’s all Richie’s fault; he pointed me at the game! I backed it, but when it came in, it wasn’t fun even though the production was gorgeous.

Sam: I don’t actually have one this year… Perhaps because I’ve been both buying and playing less this year I’ve been more selective (sorry Rich) and haven’t both bought and played a game I didn’t like. EDITOR: to be fair, part of Rich’s job is to review games, so he’ll take chances more

#3: What game that came out in the last year that you liked but other’s didn’t?

Richie: Dice Throne Missions/Dice Throne X-Men. I loved this new system that makes the Dice Throne game work solo and cooperatively, but my friends didn’t love it nearly as much. See our thoughts here.
Kurt: Link City. This is pointed at Rich: he said he didn’t like it. (EDITOR: To be fair, I didn’t love it as much as other people, but I recognized that lots of people did, so it still made the Top 10 Cooperative Party Games of 2024!)
Sam: Ecosfera. This one is the opposite for me – I didn’t like playing it 2 player because it felt like my turns were basically scripted and I had no agency. However others in the group enjoyed it at higher player counts. See the review here to see what Sam’s talking about!

#2: What was your favorite expansion that came out in the last year?

Richie: Aeon’s End: The Descent. Aeon’s End is a great cooperative deck-building game with mages working together fighting the Big Bad. Aeon’s End: The Descent is a standalone expansion in the same universe, but adds the The Friends and Foes module! This module makes Aeon’s End a little more balanced as it tends to mitigate the Variable Turn Order problems! See our review here for more discussion.

Kurt: Forest Shuffle (Alpine & Woodland Edge)
Sam: Townsfolk Tussle: Foul Neighbors. We played with the expansion characters and bosses and it worked great. Our final battle ended in the perfect cartoon way of pushing the plunger on the dynamite and blowing up both the outhouse and the big bad in one shot. (EDITOR: It was so fun! That’s why it made our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024!)

#1: What was your favorite game that came out in the last year?

Richie: Marvel United Season 3/Multiverse. It’s not even close: I spent so much time playing the content of Season 3 and I had so much fun. Sentinels of the Multiverse used to be my favorite game of all time, but I think Marvel United has supplanted it!

Kurt: Tie: Fromage & Fellowship of the Ring Trick taking game

Sam: Limiting to only those released in the last year: Fellowship of the Ring trick taking game. It’s light, fast, thematic to the story, plays well, and is easy to just keep playing and lose track of time while going through the different chapters. Expanding to played no matter release date: Imperium (specifically classics). I really enjoyed how each civilization feels and plays differently from each other even though they all share common market decks and basic mechanics.

Solsbury Hill

It’s become a tradition that every year, Joe must sing a parody song and make everyone laugh. This year, I helped and together Joe and I penned the parody Fruchthendler (sung to the tune of Solsbury Hill) as a means to vent our frustration of getting unceremoniously kicked out of the Rec Center. It’s mostly meant in jest, but with a little heartfelt sentinement! We also had the audience participate with Kazoos. No joke. Thanks for Mike H. for directing the world’s greatest kazoo group! See lyrics below, and video below that!!!

Fruchthendler – sung to the tune of Solsbury Hill

Driving up to Fruchthendler
I could see the parking lot
Left the public defender
Firebird is our new mascot (Firebird is the mascot of Fruchthendler Elementary school)

This was something of a mess,
Called HOA, they had disclosed
Richie Con would be suppressed
Through attrition, I got hosed

I called Cthulu in frustration
The Swim Team cancelled my reservation,
It’s like that game of Gloom Gloom Gloom,
“Joe”, I said,
“Grab your games, we’re going to clone the zone”

Yeah, clone some zones

The Aquatics had made me blind
The chlorine spewed out from my guts
Our holy grail had been maligned
Our old game venue had been cut

So I bravely ran away
Quest to find a new place to hut
With my minstrels Joe and Mike
And where’d you get them coconuts?

I was feeling down in chicanery

Highly Overbearing Authority (stop song in cheesy fashion to point out that we satirically re-acronymed HOA)
They won that game of Gloom Gloom Gloom”
“Mike”, I said,
“Grab your games, we’re moving Richie-Con”

Hey –like your mom…

Found a new place to play our games
It’s probably when we want to be
Because of HOA I have no claims
To a place I thought was free

Screwed by faceless bureaucrats
Who close their gates to my party
Add one to my gaming stats–
In their pool, I will pee –soon as I saw “pee,” I had to go there…

I’m not afraid of their displacement
Even if I have to pay rent
I won that game of Gloom Gloom Gloom
“Kurt”, I said,
“Keep your games, and come to Richie Con!”

“Wha!”

“Hey!”

“Con!”

Most Played Games

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition was played quite a bit! I personally saw at least 3 plays of it!

By far the most played game was Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking game! We had sleeved it just before, and it was good thing we did! It was pretty much always being played!

I saw Lon teaching Nana (Japanese version of Trio) quite a bit!

I saw Aeon’s End: Descent played a number of times!

Weird Games

Lon brought a lot of weird games from Japan.

DroPolter (above) was this weird one like Jacks where you grab things on the table, but can’t drop anything!

Toy Story is a cooperative memory game ONLY in Japan! It was my birthday present!

Nana is the original Japanese game that’s the inspiration for Trio!

There were several RPGs going too!

Kurt R. brought the original Dark Tower game … and it worked! Did you know that they stored the values in BCD in 128-Nibble RAM memory? Josh looked it up! This game is from 1981!!!

Conclusion

After all was said and done, was it worth it? I think so! I got to see friends from out of town and play games with everyone for my birthday, and that’s what I wanted!

What will happen next year? I really don’t know! This was a very expensive and stressful year because of the events leading to the venue change. I love the new venue, but it is expensive. Will we come back? Come back next year and find out!

Designer’s Diary for Sidekick Saga

As we pass the 6th Anniversary of Sidekick Saga being on Kickstarter, let’s look back to the original design and development process! This was a labor of love for me; I have collected comics since I was 10 years old, and I think I still have every comic I every bought! I love comic books and Super Heroes! I wanted a cooperative Super Hero game with a story, as none really existed at the time!! Let’s look back and see how this design came about! For the record, all pictures in this diary are from my own personal comic collection! See below as I go hunting for comics!

Inspirations

But let’s jump in … what inspired Sidekick Saga?

Sidekick Saga started life from an inspiration in (surprise) a comic book: Future Imperfect by Peter David and George Perez. There’s one very notable scene in Future Imperfect when Rick Jones, (the sidekick of the piece, and sidekick of many heroes like Captain America and Hulk), keeps the Maestro at bay using a collection of “artifacts”: Iron Man’s gauntlets, Captain America’s shield, Thor’s Hammer!

The sidekick, by being smart, was able to hold his own (with a little help) with the Maestro, an incredibly powerful villain!

The scene above, with its collection of items, stirred something within me …

Another comic that inspired Sidekick Saga was the 1990’s Robin (by Chuck Dixon, Tom Grummett, and Scott Hanna). In this era, Tim Drake became the third Robin, and frankly, was the smartest of all the Robins! He figured out Batman’s identity! In this series, the Tim Drake’s Robin patrols Gotham without Batman, but has help from The Huntress, Oracle, and even Commissioner Gordon! Tim Drake is mostly just a normal human doing the best he can to ward off evil, using his smarts and his fellow heroes to fight crime! The cooperation of the Arkham Sidekicks was pivotal to their success!

Another unlikely source of inspiration was Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 5 finale. Some SPOILERS: in the Season Finale, Buffy used pretty much EVERY WEAPON at her disposal, from other episodes in Season 5, to fight the big bad at the end! There was something familiar about this approach; it’s what Rick Jones did in Future Imperfect! In this case, it inspired more of the idea that some important items persist from game to game. It also kept alive the idea that “collecting stuff” was an important part to battling the big bad!

A final unlikely source of inspiration was a game called Seven Wonders. You heard me. It was interesting that, at the time, my friends were very bi-modal on two games: they either loved Seven Wonders and hated Sentinels of the Multiverse or hated Seven Wonders and loved Sentinels of the Multiverse! What if I could unite these groups and have the notion of cooperative drafting? What if, rather than working against each other in a drafting game, you could pass each other what we needed? This created the whole idea of Supply Lines: cooperative drafting, much like Seven Wonders (it even had a directionality of the Ages): see above.

Putting all these elements together served as the basis of Sidekick Saga: I wanted a cooperative drafting game (where players would pass each other cards they needed) where players explored the city looking for technology to help them fight the big bads! And every card should matter! You might not think something matters (like stuff in Season 5 of Buffy), but then all of a sudden, it becomes important!

Leads and Legacy

As the development of the game progressed, I need to refine the exploration-type mechanic to the game. For the Sidekicks to succeed, they had to find stuff (like Buffy or Rick Jones)! Some stuff was incredibly useful, so it seemed like you had to “pay” for it somehow! This introduced the idea of Leads (originally they were called clues, but I was worried this might invoke too much of a Clue game comparison): if you hunt down enough Leads, you can find where Jor’s Hammer (I didn’t want to get sued), the Star Shield, or the Cave Warrior’s car (which looks nothing like the Batmobile) would be stored! I originally considered the idea of having to have “different kinds of Leads“, but dismissed it quickly as it would too frustrating if you got the wrong types of Leads. Leads were generic: if you got 6 Leads, you could get the Cave Warrior Car which would help you move around the city faster AND protect yourself!

We dubbed these very special Items as Heroic Items: these were very special items that were hard to find! They might take three to six turns to get one of them during the game, so you didn’t want to lose them between issues! So, Sidekick Saga became a “legacy” game when any Heroic Items you obtained persisted from game to game!

Honestly, I really liked the idea of a story spanning multiple issues! It’s very typical of comic books of my era: a massive story would unfold over 4 to 6 issues of the comic! Think of the amazing story that unfurled from Issues 1 – 4 of the original Wolverine mini-series! Things would change massively from issue to issue, and what the heroes did really mattered! So, the idea of a legacy comic story was something I really really wanted to embrace.

(And the time Sidekick Saga was in development, there were NO Super Hero board games with an ongoing /legacy story)

In this case, each “game” would be an issue of a comic book series. What was the story? All the Super Heroes had disappeared! What had happened to them? All that was left were the under-powered Sidekicks! Could these lowly Sidekick keep the bad guys at bay while they tried to solve the mystery of what happened to all the Super Heroes? That was the story I wanted; that was the story that would make the Sidekicks take center stage!

So, Heroic Items, would persist from issue to issue. It introduced a tension; do heroes pursue Leads to get a Heroic Items, at the cost of making it harder to defeat the current bad guys?

To help alleviate some of this tension, The Leads became multi-use cards; you could either save them up to get a Heroic Item, or you could use them directly (Leads would also do something useful for you). This gave players more agency, more choice: they could pursue Leads, but could also just use them as needed (for immediate help or later help)!

Exploration

The exploration idea came from playing cooperative deck-building games like Aeon’s End; nine different things you could get! I liked cooperative deck-building games, but to me it always seemed an inversion of what I wanted: In deck-building games, you know what you buy, but you typically have no control over when it comes out! What if you inverted that idea and made it so you don’t know exactly what you get, but once you get the cards, you can play them whenever you want!?

That’s the idea of the city; each Location in the city has 8 cards, and those cards are “related” by a theme: The Police Station has Police cards, Rincon Labs has Scientists and Technology, The Suburbs have a lot of Research/Lead cards, etc. You have an idea what you will get, but maybe not exactly. Then, once you get stuff from a Location, you can play it whenever you want!

But through Heroic Items like the X-Ray glasses, you might have a little more control. And X-Ray glasses are an inside joke for anyone who grew up with comics; there were always ads for these things in the comics!

So, players move around the city and explore locations looking for technology and Leads to help them in their quest to take down the big bad!

Secret Identity and Hero Modes

Another thing I wanted was the tension of Secret Identity vs Hero form. The Secret Identity is absolutely am essential tool to keep the Sidekicks out of trouble! (At the time I was exploring this idea, Marvel Champions had not come out yet, and to my knowledge, it was an original idea to have players go from Secret Identity to Hero and back. I documented my playtest here on my Unpub play of Sidekick Saga, which was 6 months before Marvel Champions was released; so, don’t go saying I copied Marvel Champions on this!)

But, I also wanted the Secret Identity mode to be useful; when you go into Secret Identity, you escape combat, but that’s also a main way to get Leads in the game! The Secret Identity is all about doing research away from combat!! When you are in Secret Identity mode, you get BOTH a Lead AND a card on your Location! But, of course, while you are doing this research, the Bad Guys are getting more and more powerful since you aren’t fighting crime! It’s that tension you see in comics all the time! When do I go into Secret Identity mode to research (and stay out of the Bad Guy’s way) and when do I go into Hero mode to fight crime? That’s a big part of being a Sidekick! It’s also a big part of the game!

I still remember a particular scene in The Amazing Spider-man #18 where Spider-man changes back to Peter Parker to escape the Sandman. See above!

Those original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Spider-man comics (which I read when I was a young kid), had quite the influence on me! I still remember those scenes! (I didn’t have the original Spider-man comics that are worth tons … I was just a kid! I just had the little collection of books : see above). But Peter Parker used his Secret Identity as a tool so many times in those early Spider-mans … I really wanted a mechanic like this this in the game to capture that!

Advancement

One of the funnest part of Dungeons and Dragons is leveling-up: I wanted to make sure there usually some notion of leveling-up between issues: new powers, new Heroic Items, new heroes, … something to give fun choices between issues! I also wanted to make sure losing wasn’t so devastating!

If the players lose an issue, then new items, new Heroic Items, new things are introduced into the game .. and they get to try again! I wanted this to be a self-balancing game; if it was too hard, then new stuff would come out to help the Sidekicks!

Protection Hierarchy

One of the final pieces of the puzzle was the Protection Hierarchy; I remember reading many Daredevil or Batman comics where the hero has to work from the bottom-up to uncover the network of the Kingpin/crime lord who is running the city! And typically, the phrase “Stop protecting your higher ups; they don’t care about you!!!” comes up when the good guys question the underlings … what if that were actually a mechanism? What if you couldn’t actually even take out the bad guys higher up in the criminal network until you’ve “dealt with” with all of their subordinates? What if the subordinates actually “protected” the higher-ups?

And that’s exactly what the Protection Hierarchy is in Sidekick Saga: you can’t attack any upper level bad guys until you deal with the subordinates first! The lower level bad guys protect the higher one! (But, of course, the upper level bad guys can do stuff to YOU … because it’s hard to be a Hero!)

Hacking

If there’s any one mechanism that is really inspired by the Robin or Birds of Prey comics, it’s Oracle and her hacking abilities.

Oracle is a hacker who helps Robin (well, she helps the Dick Grayson Robin more, but that’s beside the point) by finding out information and “distracting” the bad guys with her hacking. How could we represent this idea in the game? Delphi (inspired by Oracle) can hack the bad guys and put them into disarray!

The idea of disarray is that the bad guy is so busy “dealing” with the results of Delphi’s hacks, they couldn’t do anything else. I loved the idea that even if you can’t take out a bad guy, maybe you can keep it out the way for some time. Thematically, the idea of “causing an alarm to go off”, “turning off the power in the building”, etc. are things that a hacker would do. And what does it do? It distracts the bad guy (puts them in disarray) for a few turns.

The idea of hacking was further improved by allowing hacking to bypass the Protection Hierarchy! Delphi can hack the upper level bad guys and keep them from wrecking the Sidekicks!

Art

I don’t love the art in most Super Hero board games: it always feels like they get artists who are great artists, but don’t “get” Super Heroes!! It felt like they didn’t love Super Heroes like I did! I just remember that I never loved a lot of the art of the first few Super Hero games I played, and I wanted something different for Sidekick Saga: I wanted an artist who got Super Heroes. I wanted someone who’s art really embraced that ethic!

One of my favorite parts of working on Sidekick Saga was working with the artists, especially Phil Cho! I adored his art from Venom Assault (see BGG entry here) and his Deviant Art page showed that he really understood Super Heroes! I contacted Phil, and he was very willing to help out.

To this day, the cover for Sidekick Saga is one of my favorite pieces of art of all time, maybe because it has such personal meaning to me. Given more time, I would have had Phil Cho do all the art in the game, but I had promised my Kickstarter backers delivery quickly, so I did work with a few other artists to help out.

Christina Murphy did a fantastic job stepping up and “matching” Phil’s art! One of my favorite of her pieces is the army of snowmen! So creepy and so what I wanted!

I also had William Liberto help out, mostly with the Heroic Items: I wanted all the Heroic Items to have a similar and consistent vibe, and he did a great job!

Final Thoughts

I am very proud of Sidekick Saga! It’s the game I wanted! It’s a Super Hero game with an overarching story! It has exploration, it has cooperative drafting, it has every card being useful in one way or another (by being multi-use or directly useful), and it has ways for the Sidekicks to be clever in their combinations! I play the entire Sidekick Saga at least one a year, and I am always happy that the game unfolds differently every time! How could I use all the cards and powers I had to defeat the bad guys? It’s different every time!

I know Sidekick Saga didn’t have a great critical reception, but I am grateful to all my backers who supported the original Kickstarter and all the people who reached out to me over the years in support; thank you to all of you.

Leviathan Wilds: More Stuff! A Review of the Deepvale Expansion

Leviathan Wilds has a special place in my heart! It actually had to go up on Kickstarter twice to get funded originally! It did well the second time it went up, but it was touch-and-go whether this would do well enough to fund on Kickstarter! Luckily, it did! Leviathan Wilds (the base game) was on my #3 on Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024 and was #3 on my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024!

When the Deepvale Expansion went up on Gamefound, I was pretty much all in! Leviathan Wilds has gone over great in my groups, both with gamers and people who don’t usually like cooperative games! See our original review here!

Let’s take a look!

What Came In The Mail?

The Kickstarter actually came with three major pieces; deluxe components, upgrade kit, and the expansion itself. See above.

Deluxe Components Pack

The Deluxe Components pack upgrades a lot of cardboard tokens in the game and a few other things.

What’s in here? See above!

The Rage Track upgrade is now dual-layered. This pack may be worth it just for this?

There’s a metal coin for the Gambler.

This is the silliest upgrade; the marker tokens are now CLEAR red plastic instead of OPAQUE red plastic!

The tokens go go from cardboard to acrylic. I love acrylic tokens, but can you tell the difference between the two above?

Similarly for the mushrooms: acrylic tokens are nicer, but it’s hard to really tell the difference.

The upgrade I didn’t expect: the dice! I thought the original dice (left) were great, but apparently they don’t work for color-blind people, so the dice on the right are easier to distinguish!

Oh ya, and a nice wooden first player token (Sage the turtle!)

Do you need the Deluxe Components? Not really! They are great, and I am glad I have them (partly because I like the game so much), but you would do just fine with the base components. Decide for yourself.

Upgrade Kit

What’s in the upgrade Kit envelope? Basically, errata and upgraded cards for upgrading from v1.0 of the original game to v1.1!

Interestingly, the Gambler token (wood) is also included! So, you can choose the wood Gambler token (here) or the Metal one (from the Deluxe Components)! So silly to have both.

There is an upgraded rulebook: It generally looked the same, but it had an extra 4 pages:

One pack of cards just replaces some cards that needed updating/fixing. See the “new” card has the left up-arrow in the lower left corner.

I am actually chose to keep both rulebooks, but labelling the v1.0 rulebook clearly! See above!

How many times have you wished you had another rulebook while playing? Now I do!

The upgrade kit is what you expect: a slightly better rulebook, a few replacement cards, and yet another Gambler token.

Deepvale

THIS is the cool thing! It’s just more content for Leviathan Wilds!

There’s a new book with 7 new Leviathans!

The Leviathans here are maybe even a little creepier than the original Leviathans! See all 7 above!

There are, of course, new Rage decks for each Leviathan.

There’s a new Climber: Edge. (I joked there should also be a Bono Climber as well. No one laughed.)

There’s also a new class called Harvester.

The Harvester has a die that keeps track of “when can I get the double-sided action card”. This is a fairly new, if not particularly novel, new class.

Basically, this Harvester card sits on the side, and you have to “work” to get it, but it’s pretty cool!

This is a just a “more stuff” expansion! New Climber! New Class! And 7 New Leviathans!

Solo Play

Like before (see our original review of Leviathan Wilds), I still prefer playing Leviathan Wild’s solo mode by playing two-handed: ie. play two climbers and alternate between them.

The new first player token makes it a lot easier to keep track of whose turn it is when playing solo!

The very first Leviathan doesn’t seem that hard, but I barely lost on the last turn! I couldn’t get out with the key!

Basically, the opening Leviathan is already a little harder (Level 2 difficulty), as you have to take care of all the crystals AND get out with the key!

I lost with one turn remaining …I couldn’t get out of the cave even though I removed all the crystals!

Still, good times. This is a great game and I feel like I had to be smart about using my resources and knowing when to push forward. I am still learning how Edge works, but he’s a great addition. This is still Leviathan Wilds solo.

Cooperative Play

I told my friend Teresa that I barely lost the solo game, so we had to play it again!

And unfortunately, we still lost playing 2-Player!

The first Leviathan is a level 2 difficulty, and it’s the easiest of the bunch! Every other Leviathan is a difficulty 3 or 4! Oof! These Leviathans are harder!

Nothing broke. The game still works famously cooperatively. This felt like the same Leviathan Wilds I played so many times with my friends at Dice Tower West, RichieCon 2024, and game nights!

Choice: One Box or Sleeves?

You have a choice to make with this new expansion! You can either:

Put all the new content into the original box
or
Sleeve your cards, but have to use both the original box AND the expansion box!

I was tempted to put all the new cards and items into the original box, but once I sleeved the game, there’s NO WAY the expansion can fit in original box.

Yes, it was kind of annoying.

So, if you sleeve (and you want to keep the original inserts), you need both boxes.

Oh well. I chose to sleeve the game because RichieCon 2025 is coming up, and Leviathan Wilds was such a hit at RichieCon 2024, I thought I’d make sure it stayed in good shape! So, I have to have both boxes. I don’t think anyone will play it so much at RichieCon 2025 that I’ll need both boxes, so I’ll just take the original box.

Conclusion

If you like Leviathan Wilds, this is just more stuff for it! Although the Deluxe Component Pack is cool, you probably don’t need it unless you love the game like I do! And the Upgrade Kit is “nice to have” (fixing some cards) but again you don’t really need it that much.

The new content from the Deepvale Expansion is just that: new content to extend the life of the game! Again, it’s not strictly necessary (only one new climber and one new class), but having seven new Leviathans will really extend this game for you.

The new expansion, although not really that necessary, is still nice to have. There’s plenty of content in the original game and … you probably can be happy with all the stuff in the original game. Still, I am glad I got this. Solid expansion: more stuff I like.

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

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

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

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

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

Unboxing/Gameplay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are some dice that actually get rolled!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rulebook

The rulebook is pretty good, but has some issues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Strange Journey

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

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

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

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

Me vs. Me

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

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

Solo Mode (first game)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Competitive Mode (3-Player)

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

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

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

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

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

Cooperative Mode

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

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

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

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

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

Randomness

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

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

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

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

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

Solo Game Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

When Is a House Rule Not a House Rule?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cooperative Play (revisited)

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

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

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

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

This is the kind of randomness that kills us.

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s take a look!

The Rulebook

The rulebook was just okay.

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

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

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

The components page was pretty good.

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

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

Unboxing, Components, and Gameplay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worker Placement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deduction

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

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

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

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

Crime

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

Superhero?

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

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

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

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

Roleplay

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

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

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

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

Solo Play

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cooperative Game

I think this game shines better as a cooperative game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Campaign Modes

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s Take a Look!

Unboxing

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

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

High-Level Thoughts: No Spoilers!

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

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

In the end, we didn’t love this.

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

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

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

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

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

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Minor Spoilers: Some Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will say that the finale was very cool.

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Major Spoilers: Mystery Progression

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

There were two major problems with the mystery:

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

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

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

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

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Giant Spoiler!! Read At Your Own Peril!!

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

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

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

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

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Conclusion

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

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

A place to talk about cooperative board and card games!

10. Legends of Storm City

9. Mmm!

8. Roll or Stand: Forbidden Adventures

7. Mission Control: Critical Orbit

6. Escape: Roll and Write

5. Luddite

4. Zombicide: Gear Up

3. Roll For Great Old Ones

2. Find the Source!

1. Super-Skill Pinball: Ramp It Up! (Pin Pals)

Unboxing

Rulebook

What Is This?

Is This a Storybook Game?

Is This An Adventure Game?

Is This An Exploration Game?

Is This a Campaign?

Starfleet Mode

Solo Mode

Cooperative Mode

Things We Were Unsure About

Conclusion

Unboxing

Gameplay

Walkthrough

Incremental Punchout

What Is This?

Solo Play

Cooperative Play

Story vs Flavor Text

What I Liked

What I Didn’t Like

Conclusion

Printing

Gameplay

Solo Play

Cooperative

Pen vs. Pencil

Small House Rule

Things I Liked

What I Didn’t Like

House Rule for More Cooperation

Conclusion

New Venue

Day -1: Getting Coolers

Day 0: Boxception and Sleeve-It!

Day 1: The Secret RichieCon House

Day 2: RichieCon 2025 Starts!

Day 3, The Last Day: RichieCon 2025

Top 6 Interesting Games Since Last Year!

Solsbury Hill

Most Played Games

Weird Games

Conclusion

Inspirations

Leads and Legacy

Exploration

Secret Identity and Hero Modes

Advancement

Protection Hierarchy

Hacking

Art

Final Thoughts

What Came In The Mail?

Deluxe Components Pack

Upgrade Kit

Deepvale

Solo Play

Cooperative Play

Choice: One Box or Sleeves?

Conclusion

Unboxing/Gameplay

Rulebook

A Strange Journey

Me vs. Me

Solo Mode (first game)

Competitive Mode (3-Player)

Cooperative Mode

Randomness