So, as I am pretty sure I only posted here once in the last year, (and in that post I vowed to try and write here more), I think it’s pretty fair to say I’m bad at this website stuff. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, I just don’t find time to say them. Hopefully, things are on the up on that front though!
Some monsters, recently
Back in the far flung past of 2020 I used to do some videos on YouTube, I did pictures on Instagram and I did blogging both here and over on the Zatu Games website. Up until recently I barely posted to instagram, my YouTube channel is basically dead and like I said, I only posted here once last year so things aren’t exactly rosy. But, and I know I’ve said this before, I’m going to pick it all back up!
As I’ve not been able to play many games as we’ve not been allowed to see many people this last year and my home becoming a building site for 9 months, my shelf of shame/opportunity has grown pretty exponentially. What with the steady stream of Kickstarter projects turning up as well as the odd optimistic purchase, I have a lot of unopened games that I really should play.
I’ve always been pretty awed by some of the challenges I see people in the community taking part in. the ten by 10 challenge, where you play 10 games 10 times each over the course of the year, is always a very popular one. But, my goal is to play more than 10 games. So I’ve decided to try to play 1 new game a week on average. Now, that isn’t quite what I’m attempting, but that sounds more snappy.
The actual rules I’ve made up for what I’m attempting is that I will play either 1 brand new game to me, or a brand new expansion to a game I have played before, or play a game with other people that I’ve only played solo. Those seem pretty sensible to me and will hopefully give me a nice mix of games that I’ve never played before and games which I haven’t had a chance to experience fully due to being limited to solo play. One last rule is that each game can only be featured once. So I can’t solo a game, then play it with friends and then again with an expansion for 3 quick entries. The forms must be obeyed.
Project: Elite man being elite
After I’m done playing a game for this challenge I will hopefully find a bit of time to talk about it here. I’m not going to be doing a full review as likely I will have only played it once. But I think some initial thoughts could be useful as well as not too tricky to jot down.
I’ve already got 2 games played so I’m slightly ahead of schedule, which is pretty unique for me. Hopefully I can keep it going but as my track record around here shows, I’m not the best at sticking to things. Happy 2022 people, hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other!
Excavation Earth is a 2021 release from Mighty Boards that was kickstarted a year or so ago. It was designed by David Turczi, Wai Yee and Gordon Calleja. Now, I’ve not heard of the latter two designers before but David Turczi is somebody who’s work I am very familiar with. His epic time travelling worker placement game Anachrony is one of my favourites in the genre. Also, last year’s Rome and Roll was a highlight as well as one of the heaviest roll and write games I have ever played.
Excavation Earth. Jelly beans for scale.
Anyway, back to Excavation Earth. This is a set collection game, with bits of area control thrown in. There are also worker placement elements as well as some hand management as well. The idea of the game is that some sort of extinction event has happened on Earth and all of these alien archaeologists have decided to come by and dig up what they can find from old human culture. Some of this will end up in museum collections, but the vast majority of it will end up being sold to private collections or on the black market. There is some definite humour here in the types of items that are considered valuable artefacts of human civilisation.There are number plates, lucky cats as well as some more…adult items in the kickstarter promo tiles.
Adult Artefacts
Each player will have three explorers that can travel all over earth and a hand of action and fuel cards. Action cards have a colour and market symbol on them. You can move your explorers around the map by discarding action or fuel cards. The different spaces on the map will either give you access to dig sites to dig up artefacts, markets to sell your artefacts to collectors, or black markets to buy and sell your goods at face value. To interact with these spaces you’ll either have to discard a card of matching colour for some actions or a matching market for others.
At the beginning of the game, some artefacts are set up on the map and each of the six markets will have some initial demand for each of the different types of artefacts to be found. The artefacts themselves come in one of five different colours each with four different types giving a total of twenty artefacts to find. Over the course of the game, if you ever manage to get all four of a particular colour of artefact, you can claim a little bonus. If you manage ton get all five colours of a particular type of attract you’ll net some big end game scores. This is where the set collection aspect of Excavation Earth is found.
Each of the six standard markets will have varying demand for each of the 5 different artefact colours. The players can manipulate this to try and whip up a frenzy for what they are selling, but you can only sell at markets where you have already deployed some of your worker cubes as traders. To deploy traders you need to discard a card matching the market you would like a trader in whilst you have an explorer at that market’s spot.
Once you’ve done your trading, any cubes you used can be promoted to envoys on the alien mothership. This is like an area control game where the player with the most cubes in each of the three envoy areas can snag a load of points at the end of each round. There are nice stages in this game where one mechanism sort of flows into the next.
The market board
From round two onwards, there are some really powerful abilities tied to these mothership envoys. You can reclaim one of your envoys to use one of these powers. They can be really powerful if used well but you could well be giving up your majority in the area control so you have to be careful or make sure the power is really worth it.
As a game, it took a few rounds for it all to click into place. One aspect of setting up for each round is that you can see where the artefacts will be placed next round. If you’re clever you can try and make sure your explorers are all in those areas of the map as if you’re lucky, you may be able to grab more than one artefact for that action.
In a strange way this game reminds me a lot of Concordia. A lot of the actions give you opportunities to really maximise your efficiency by selling multiple goods or digging up multiple artefacts at a time. It all just requires a bit of planning. I’ve only played Excavation Earth a few times but in my experience, it’s the player who manages to spot these opportunities for extra efficiency that comes out on top.
Lovely metal coins
The components are really nice. The player boards are all double layers, as is the market board. The artwork is clear and bright and the graphic design is good. Your explorers are these painted wooden pieces and they look great on the board as well. If you can get hold of them, the metal coins are excellent but the standard card coins are ok. But I do love me a metal coin upgrade.
There is also a solo mode included. Basically you’ve got an AI player that is driven by a deck of cards. For me this is probably the weakest part of the game. The AI player can break a lot of the rules that the human player is constrained by. This can make the game feel a lot more unfair in solo mode. It’s not terrible, and I’m definitely glad it is there what with people not really being able to have game nights at the moment, but it is a distant second to playing with other people.
And that is definitely something I want to do more of! I am really enjoying this game so far. I’ve not played with the promos or the expansion that came with the kickstarter yet, so I am eager to mix them in as soon as I’m ready. Excavation Earth isn’t a heavy game, especially when you compare it to something like Anachrony, but it definitely has enough moving cogs to keep me engaged and serve up some interesting decisions.
What a year it has been! Well, after the best of intentions in getting started with spreading my thoughts and feelings about this wonderful board gaming I’ve ended up neglecting most of it. I think my Instagram, punk.meeple for those who aren’t following, is the only thing that has survived, and even that has been updated sporadically at best.
one of the many kickstarters that has turned up and I’m yet to play…
I’m sure we’ve all had a rough year. I’m not going to complain about anything because although I did lose my job, on the whole I am in a very privileged position where I was lucky enough to find a new one. My family has managed to remain healthy and although it has severely cut down on my tabletop time, in the grand scheme of things, that really isn’t so bad. But I have missed it, and I want to start putting in the effort on this site and online in general.
So, I’m hoping to turn over a new leaf. I’ve had a think about how I can go about things and I’m hoping to post a bit more often over here. Let’s face it though, it could hardly be less often. I’m also hoping to reignite the YouTube channel to try and up up a video at least every month, hopefully once a fortnight.
Hopefully, you’ll enjoy coming along for the ride and we can talk about this fantastic hobby of ours!
Day 2 of the #7days7dice over on Instagram and we have Ashes rise of the Phoenixborn by Plaid Hat Games. This is one of the few collectable card games that has really grabbed me. The setting of the game is your standard, magical people must battle it out until only one is left sort of standard fare. Basically, the magical force that gives the phoenixborn the power to wield magic now wants to be united into one person. Kind of like the 2001 Jet Li film The One, except with dragons instead of martial arts.
(Nearly) everything for the game
The game looks beautiful, the bright, colourful artwork really pops off of the cards and is some of the nicest graphical design I’ve seen in a board game. Each player will take the roll of a unique phoenixborn who will have access to some unique cards and powers. To play any cards you need the right magical mana resources. This mana doesn’t come from coloured lands or any other type of card, it comes from dice.
Each player will have a pool of 10 dice that they will roll each turn to determine their mana pool. These dice come in 4 flavours in the base game but more are added in expansions. The dice you roll determine what you can do on your turn, there are ways to mitigate and re-roll your dice but it adds a fresh way to play one of these card battling games.
Lovely, lovely dice
The game comes with suggested decks and dice selections for each of the 6 phoenixborn in the box, but the game also has a deck building option to it. Or, alternatively you can mix up your dice selection so you are more able to play some of your card types.
The cards broadly speaking come in two types, spells and creatures. Some spells allow you to conjure creatures at a later time and others give you unique abilities to play with. Some of the spells sit out in your play area in your spell board and all of your creatures sit in your battlefield. Each phoenixborn has different limits for the number of cards that can be kept in each of these areas. This gives the different characters a unique feel to them.
It is/was a great game. To expand it you bought fully formed decks for a new phoenixborn. I much prefer this model to the random card packs used by other games. I own nearly everything for this game, everything except for a horribly out of print promo phoenixborn. I don’t get to play it nearly as much as I would like as there just aren’t many players out there. I tend to try and get it in as a follow on game after playing some Star/Hero Realms or Magic. Ashes was a game that never really got the love it deserved.
So, I’ve been doing a few of these #XdaysYchallenges over on instagram recently. I’ve been telling myself that I’d use them as an excuse to write some bits over here but I haven’t ever got around to doing it. Work is hard and you don’t get much chance to do fun stuff when you live with an angry 9 month old.
But, the baby is asleep and I’ve just posted day one of the 7 days 7 dice challenge so as the stars have aligned a bit I thought that I’d write a little bit about the game I’ve chosen for today, as it is one of my all time favourites.
7th Continent
7th Continent and its expansion
7th Continent by Serious Poulp was probably the first Kickstarter that I properly threw myself into. Both times it was there. The base game of 7th continent sees you and your friends cursed and marooned on a distant island. You will have a clue on how to lift the curse, and a deck of cards that is full of actions and items to craft. This deck acts as your timer for the game, take too long and you may find yourself succumbing to the curse that dumped you on the island in the first place.
You will be able to explore the island and resolve events and encounters. You can pretty much do anything and go anywhere providing you can pass the skill checks required. This notion of forging your own path across the continent while being stalked by a curse reminded me of the old fighting fantasy books I used to read as a child.
Once it finally arrived, I got it to the table as soon as I could and we lost. I tried again a few nights later and we lost again. What I hadn’t appreciated at first is how important the survival aspects of the game were. You see, hunting lets you put cards back into your deck, which gives you more time to try and lift the curse that has befallen you. But hunting grounds can only be used once each session. This means to play the game well you need to play in smaller chunks. Ideally you find resources, move into the next area, find a safe place to camp and call it a day. Then next session your hunting spots may have more food for you to try and find. Once you realise this, the game becomes a little more forgiving and you can really start to lose yourself in the fantastic setting.
The bone dice and their bag, not bone.
I do have to admit that although I own the expansion, I’ve not actually had a chance to play it yet. I’m not 100% sure that I’ve finished all of the curses in the base game to be honest with you. I’m certain there is some kind of time travel one I haven’t tried yet. I will get to it though and I’m sure I’m going to enjoy it. The balloon and boat mechanics evoke a kind of Jules Verne feeling to me, and I’ve always enjoyed those early adventure books.
This game is massive and ambitious. Perhaps it suffers a little on the replay value front as the curses themselves are fairly linear but that hasn’t stopped me enjoying this game. I am looking forward to see what this studio can do when they come back to Kickstarter later this year with 7th Citadel. I’m sure it will be epic!
It’s a bit sad but due to all the Covid-19 related badness going around today would’ve been the first day of the UK games Expo 2020. I was hoping to be having my first three day weekend there this year but alas it was not meant to be. Maybe next year. At least my wallet will get a little rest.
…At least until it sees Nemesis is back on kickstarter
I have done an unboxing of Traintopia and put it up on YouTube for people to enjoy.
Traintopia is a bright and breezy tile laying game where players will be trying to build a rail network that pleases as many commuters and tourists as they possibly can. It is for 2-4 players and takes about 30 minutes to play. It has a surprising amount of strategy in it for such a light game and is definitely worth taking a look at!
