Pantheon Review

One of Rio Grande Games' newest titles is Pantheon.  Since I like so many of their other titles, I decided to try this one.

In Pantheon, the player represents a race of people that continues dying off and coming back to life. Or something like this - I'm unclear on what exactly. Either way, the players are attempting to build monuments and win the favor of the gods, because ultimately, their dying and resurrecting people group wants one thing - victory points. Pantheon is played over 6 "epochs". In each epoch, a certain civilization (not one of the players) is in power - this determines where the "temple" (starting point for the epoch) is placed, and each civilization also has a special effect that immediately occurs. After this setup, player take turns selecting actions. One action is movement - the player can play any number of movement cards from his hand, and gets one bonus movement for selecting the action. All of the movement has to start from the temple, and while placing, the player can attempt to claim "booty" tokens or can place monuments. After the first player performs his movement, all other players can choose to move as well (or draw one card). The next action that a player can select is a buy action - this lets you unlock more feet and columns (for movement), place feet and columns, or buy and upgrade sacrifice tiles (which help with gaining the favor of a god). The final two actions are gaining the favor of a god, or drawing three cards. The epoch continues until all of the booty tokens or god tokens have been collected. Then, you select a new civilization and start over. Except for after the third and sixth epoch - on those, you score for monuments and minor gods.  (And after the sixth epoch you also put the game away.)

The first thing that I will note about Pantheon isn't really a pro or con, just an observation. From what I have seen, there are really two main strategies in Pantheon - you can attempt to build a lot of columns (the more you have, the more points they are worth, and ideally you want to place all of them if you want to win), or you can attempt to buy sacrifice tiles in order to gain the favor of the gods. When you gain the favor of the gods, you do this with a combination of sacrifice cards in your hand and sacrifice tiles you have purchased. But, sacrifice tiles don't go away after you use them (whereas you discard the used sacrifice cards). So, later in the game, if a player has purchased higher level sacrifice tiles, he will be able to gain the favor of many of the gods without even needing to draw extra cards. This is an incredibly strong strategy, and initially I thought it was overpowered. However (finally getting to my observation), I think that a player really needs to choose one of these two strategies if he wants to win. There is no middle ground. If a player attempts to both build monuments and gain the favor of the gods, he will probably lose. The monument strategy is viable, because monuments become more valuable as you place more of them, so the difference between placing all of your monuments and placing all but one of your monuments changes the score from 48 points down to 33 points! (You will also want to place as many monuments as you can early so that you can score as much as possible in the scoring phase after the third epoch.)  Also, the better your sacrifice tiles are, the more easily you will be able to claim god tiles. So, having mediocre sacrifice tiles will force you to continue drawing cards while the other player is completing his empire. Choose one strategy and stick with it!

Some feet and gods

Now, with that said, it's time for pros and cons. The first thing that I really enjoyed about Pantheon encompassed everything about movement. Specifically, each player starts with a few monuments and feet (yes, feet) available to be placed. This selection is incredibly limited. But, in your buy action, you can purchase more feet and columns, which then can be played on a future turn. I thought this worked well. Also, I like that the monuments remain on the board, whereas the feet are removed after each epoch. This means that once you have enough feet unlocked, you only have to worry about unlocking monuments so that you can place them (again, because you want to place them all). I also like the bonuses you can get to movement, the fact that some "booty" tokens unlock more feet and monuments for you, and that you can place feet with movement or a buy action (depending on if you want other people to place feet as well - and what cards are in your hand).

The next pro really helps make the monument placing strategy feasible. I like that the temple moves to a different location each round, and that there are far more monument sites on the board than monuments each player has available. When I first started playing, I was assuming that if I didn't place a monument in every spot available to me on any given round, then I wouldn't be able to place them all. However, as I kept playing, I realized something - there are 18 locations where you can build a monument, and each player only has 12 monuments. Plus, since each epoch causes the temple to be in a different part of the board (and since you pick up your feet after each epoch), you don't have to have a major infrastructure in order to place these columns. Each temple has at least three suitable monument locations that are fairly close to it (though you might have built on them on previous turns). So, if you successfully build monuments on the available spaces near you each round, then you are going to be able to score very well! (Though, you will have to find something else to do in the final rounds if you somehow manage to place three monuments every epoch for the first four epochs.)

However, though I thought that there were a lot of unique and fun things about Pantheon (I wasn't exhaustive on my pros), there were several drawbacks as well. First, I was a bit disappointed with the actual production quality of the game. Without trying, I can think of three different typos in the game instructions/components, and also one place where the wrong image was inserted. Things happen, and I understand that. However, the typos would have been easily caught by any spell checker ("popints"). Whereas, I play games enough that I understand that the hobby board game industry is very small and can't afford a lot of proofreaders and editors (and, for that matter, I periodically find typos and grammatical errors in published books as well), these kinds of things would prevent me from showing Pantheon to my non-gaming friends, as I wouldn't want them to think that the board games I play aren't high quality.

My next con (actually game related!) is that the end of the game feels very anti-climactic. At the beginning, players are doing a lot of work building up their empire, and each epoch will probably last a decent amount of time. However, towards the end of the game, the epoch might only last a few turns. If players have purchased high level sacrifice tiles, they will be able to gain god tiles without having to play any cards, and player using the monument strategy will either have a lot of feet unlocked (so that they are ready to place many of them on their turn), or might even be out of monuments to place by the last epoch (this happened to me once). I felt like the game should have been scaled more to have more activity in each epoch, instead of the last couple of epochs being glorified scoring rounds for the player collecting god tiles.

Overall, I give Pantheon an 8.0/10. It was a fun game, and I enjoyed my plays with it - honestly, I'd be up for playing it more. However, I don't know that it has the staying power of a lot of Rio Grande's other titles.

If you like Pantheon, you might also want to check out Babel, Caylus, and The Heavens of Olympus.

I would like to thank Rio Grande Games for providing me with a review copy of Pantheon.

1955: The War of Espionage Review

Today's review is of a Kickstarted game called 1955: The War of Espionage.

In 1955, each player is taking on the role of a spy, and the goal is to successfully seduce ("secure control") of three of the six countries in the game. Alternatively, you can also win if you can seduce your opponent's home country. To start the game, each player gets five cards in hand and gets to pick a home country (though, obviously, they can't both be of the same affiliation - the Cold War was not fought between two different Communist countries; or by two Capitalist countries). Now, each turn, a player can "play a card" (which might consist of several cards) twice, then redraws, and (optionally) moves his spy. You can only "play a card" (for influence) in three places - your home base, your spy's location, and the country pictured on the card. Your opponent can also defend if his spy is present, or if you attack his home base. When playing a card that pictures the country you are influencing and your spy is there, you get bonuses (which include playing extra cards and it still only counting as one). Most cards can also be played for a "Special Action" - these can increase your hand size, move your spy outside of his normal movement action, draw extra cards, etc. Players continue alternating turns until one player successfully seduces three countries or his opponent's home country. (Sure, the box shows a picture of two male spies, and I'm using the term "seduce", which implies female spies - but, those pictures are just trying to mislead you!)

The first thing that I like about 1955 is the critical role of your spy. "He" is your main conduit for influencing the board - in fact, he's the thing that changes this game from a boring game where you simply play whatever you draw (and have no decisions to make) to actually playing with strategy. You can place him in order to stack several cards in an influence action that you are planning for your next turn, or you can place him in an effort to thwart your opponent's influence. However, if you defend with too many cards, then on your own turn you will be limited in your actions (which is a nice balance). If you are close to securing a country, it might be important to place your spy there so that you have more options of what you can play. Conversely, if you have a lot of cards that match a certain country, you might place your spy in that country in order to combine those cards for maximum effect.

Deporting can be important

The next thing that I like about 1955 is that you can defend - and yet the defense isn't overpowering. If defending were too appealing, or too powerful, then the game would be very dull. ("I will influence the USA." "I'll block." "Ok, I'll influence Poland." "No, I'll counter." etc.) However, the fact that you can defend means that you're not completely at your opponent's mercy about whether a country moves. However, defending is limited - you can only defend in your home country and where your spy is. And, there are some special cards that allow your opponent to move your spy to your home country. So, the only place that you are guaranteed to have an opportunity to defend is your home country - but if you don't have the right cards to defend with, even this can fail.  Yet, stopping your opponent from securing his third country can be the difference between winning and losing the game!

My third pro, which I mentioned briefly before, is that I like the balancing elements of this game. For example, when you defend against a powerful influence action, you will probably have to spend a lot of cards from your hand. This causes your options to be very limited on your own turn (since you don't draw until the end of it). Another balancing element is that some of the special actions can help setup a powerful attack (like moving your opponent's spy out of your way) - but these are balanced by costing one of your two "card plays" for the turn. And, then you can't use the card for influence.

Good strategy - draw Mercs

With all that I've said about 1955, there are still a couple of parts of the game that I'm not a huge fan of. First, the game can be heavily influenced by draw. In the games that I've played, this hasn't been a huge factor, but if one player is regularly drawing the 4-influence cards (which also have better special actions) and the other player is drawing mostly 2-influence cards, then the person with better cards will have a major advantage. What I've seen more in my games is that if one player draws a lot of Mercenaries (these can be added to any influence action, regardless of where your spy is), then they could have a serious advantage.

My other con for 1955 is that towards the end of the game, many of your cards can be essentially worthless influence-wise (and may not have useful Special Actions). This happens more if you are forced to defend. Here's what happens - towards the end of the game, you and your opponent will probably have some countries seduced (secured). You cannot play a card in these countries for influence. Fortunately, you can still play cards that show those countries on the country that your spy is in and on your home country. However, if you have a blue home country, and your spy was defending in a different blue country, then all of the cards that you would have played to defend would have been blue. Which means the cards left in your hand are red. Playing a card of the opposite color of the country you're influencing (because your spy is there or it's your home country) makes your card have one less influence. So, playing a 2-influence card is only worth one influence. And, the special action may not be helpful. So, essentially, you wind up wasting your turn. This is part of the balance I talked about earlier, but is still a bit of a nuisance when it happens.

The last thing that I will mention before I conclude the review is something that I was a bit surprised by, but wasn't really a pro or a con.  I was surprised by how little we used Special Actions in this game.  This may have been influenced by our style of play more than the game itself (I'm not convinced of that), but it seemed like we only played a Special Action every few turns.  Now, this isn't to say that Special Actions aren't important - the ones that we played were often very powerful, but I think I was just expecting to play them more often.  One of the games we played, I even said "Ok, I'm going to try to use Special Actions as often as I think they're appropriate, so that I get a good feel for them."  Sure enough, even that game we spent most of the time playing cards for influence rather than Special Actions.

Overall, I give 1955 an 8.5/10. As I said before, it is a Kickstarter game. However, the game has a high enough production value and a good enough design that I didn't even realize this until I saw something online about it (after I had played it). This is what I hope for from Kickstarter games - that they are games first, and how they get funded is an afterthought.  (To be fair, 1955 isn't the only game like this - Alien Frontiers, Eminent Domain, and Glory to Rome: Black Box I think also easily fit this criteria.)

If you are looking for quality 2-player games, you might also like Summoner Wars, Mr. Jack and (the admittedly much bigger) BattleLore.

I would like to thank Ape Games for providing me with a review copy of 1955: The War of Espionage.

Ranking Review

A game that was sent to me before I had even heard of it was Ranking!

In Ranking, you and your opponents will... rank various items. Each round there will be a question posed - something like, "Which is found more often in the forest?" From here, each player selects one of the tiles they have in their hand that they believe most accurately answers the question. You add in a few random tiles, mix them up, and reveal them. Now, players take turns ranking items. The active player will select two items on the same row and explain why one fits the question better than the other - moving one up and the other down. After any ranking, the other players may guess what the active player's tile was by placing a "guess marker" on the guessed tile. Play continues until at least one tile is in the top (6) spot, and at least one tile is in the bottom (0) spot. At this point, each player gets a number of points equal to their tile's current place on the tower (from 0-6), but loses a point for each person that correctly guessed their tile (to a minimum of 0 points for the round). Play continues like this until one person scores 15 points.

The first pro about Ranking has to be the replayability. People that enjoy this game will be able to play it forever without ever playing the same game twice. Between the 46 two-sided questions, and the 120 pictures, you are given significantly more components than you will ever need in any single game. Even if you did eventually play the exact same game where you used the same questions and had the same tiles appear (I'd estimate this to be approximately a 1 in a million chance), the reasoning that the players use for moving tiles would still be different, so the game would truly change.

Ranking has hordes of components

Before the next pro, I must make a confession. After receiving Ranking, I did not expect much from it - I read through the rules, but missed the part where the game was supposed to be "good" or "fun." However, this is why I actually play the game before reviewing it. Ranking features a storytelling aspect similar to Dixit. Therefore, I think that this game would truly appeal to creative people that enjoy making up stories. After all, you could take any two pictures and justifiably move either one up or down. For example, we had a question of "What is more likely to be lost or left behind?" One of the tiles was a treasure chest. Two of us immediately thought, "The treasure chest is least likely to be lost, because it's huge!" One of the other players thought, "You bury a treasure chest, so of course you leave it behind!" Therefore, when played with the right people, this storytelling aspect of the game can be quite enjoyable.

The final pro that I will mention about Ranking is that it has a bluffing element to it. If you are very obvious about which piece you are moving each round, people will quickly realize that it is your tile - and if they guess your tile correctly, you can lose a lot of points (both from losing points on the guessing and from them moving your tile down). Therefore, you have to strike a careful balance between moving several pieces around, and still trying to make yours move to the top (which can be easy if other people happen to be moving your tile for you).

With the pros I mentioned, there are still some cons for Ranking. First, the last player to rank a piece normally has a pretty major disadvantage. Once they do the final ranking, there is no reason that all of the other players shouldn't guess which tile is theirs. And, most likely, they are going to guess one of the tiles at the top (especially if you just moved a tile into the 6 position). But, players will quickly realize this, and so the con starts to mitigate itself as a wise player will learn to bluff better about which piece is his - possibly including moving someone else's tile to the top rank and attempting to get his to the second highest.  This also isn't a major issue if the players start guessing earlier in the round.

I would say that the biggest con with Ranking is that if it isn't played with the right people, or in the right mindset, it can be very dull. When we first started playing, we even caught ourselves falling into this trap. We explained why we were moving the first few pieces, but then we started just moving pieces without saying anything. We were cutting out the creative and interactive part of the game! I can see far too many groups of people (read "strategy gamers") looking at the game from a strictly strategic nature and trying to play (and judge) it accordingly. This means that a lot of people will not enjoy Ranking. Essentially, I see Ranking as a party game to play when you have a very small party. If you were wanting to just spend time socially with friends, and only 2-4 people showed up (the game is 3-5, but I counted you as already there), you could pull out Ranking. So, it seems to be a party game for a very small audience.

The final con that I will mention is related to one of my pros. I enjoy the storytelling aspect of Ranking, and I compared it to Dixit. However, Dixit does a very good job of giving you something incredibly ambiguous to tell stories about, whereas Ranking gives you pictures of fairly concrete objects. This makes the storytelling more constrained - especially since if you are very creative with your explanations, people will assume that you're just trying to make up reasons to move your own tile higher.

Overall, I give Ranking a 6.5/10. I rarely reference my scoring chart (mainly because it might change), but I currently have 6-7 as "Game can be played sometimes, probably has niche groups which may enjoy it." I think that perfectly summarizes my feelings on Ranking. There are some people that will get a copy of it and love it as a small party game. However, I see many people (who read this site) preferring something more strategic.

If you like party games, you might also want to check out Say Anything, Wits and Wagers, and Train of Thought.

I would like to thank Rio Grande Games for providing me with a review copy of Ranking.

Hive Review

Ok, we need to start this review off with a confession: I've already reviewed Hive here. In fact, it was one of my first reviews. Unfortunately, in my early reviews I was very eager to write as many reviews as I could (and did so on most of the really popular games), but I wasn't very good at diving into what made a game good or bad (of course, this is good or bad in my opinion).  Hopefully in the year or more that I've been writing this blog now, I've developed a better writing style.  Because of this, I'm going to start occasionally "archiving" some of these older reviews; starting with Hive. This essentially means that I'm going to rename the old post to have "Archive" in the title instead of Review, and will remove it from the alphabetical review list.  I will also make a note on the original post linking it to the newer review. With all that said, let me start telling you about how great of a game Hive is!

In Hive, each player takes on the role of an insect swarm attempting to capture their opponent's queen (who, obviously, must be a usurper to their queen's throne). To do this, you alternate taking turns - which consist of placing new insects (you cannot touch your opponent's pieces with the newly placed insect) or moving an existing piece. And, so that you don't hide your queen forever, she must be placed in one of your first three turns. Now to the insects. Your insect horde consists of grasshoppers, spiders (yes, yes, they're not "officially" insects, but you'll have to ignore that), beetles, ants, and (of course) the queen bee. Grasshoppers jump directly across a line, spiders move exactly three spaces, beetles move one space (but can move on top of other pieces), ants can move to any space along the outside of the game, and the queen can move exactly one space. Play continues back and forth until one queen is surrounded.

The first thing that I like about Hive is the way that you can trap your opponent's pieces. Specifically, one of the movement rules restricts anyone from splitting the hive into two disconnected sections. This allows a shrewd player to move a piece (such as an ant) to where it is only touching one single piece - the piece he doesn't want his opponent to move. Once you have moved your piece into position, your opponent will no longer be able to move that piece because he would split the hive; he at least cannot move it until he brings other pieces along to reshape the hive.

The next thing that I like about Hive is the fact that the queen can move. She is often hindered by one of the other movement rules - you cannot move any pieces except the beetle and the grasshopper into a place that they cannot slide into. Hive is played with hexagonal shaped tiles, and thus you can create "choke points" where a piece is not able to slide in (by surrounding most of the sides of the position you want to block). This rule will often prevent the queen (who is normally at least partially surrounded... after all, that is the point of the game) from moving. However, when she is able to move, you can often completely throw your opponent's strategy into disarray. They will be stuck desperately trying to reposition their units while you capitalize by (hopefully) surrounding their queen!

The next thing I like about Hive is related to the actual components of the game itself. The game is incredibly portable and also a great tactile experience - and all with no setup time. The game (at least the edition I purchased) comes with a travel bag, which allows for the game to be thrown into a backpack and carried with you. If you also factor in the fact that there is no board, the game can be easily setup anywhere ("coffee shop") and play can begin as soon as the pieces are separated. Finally, the high quality tiles themselves make the game feel classy.

The final pro that I will mention about Hive is that I like the differences in the insects. Each piece is useful, but in very different ways. The person who wins the game will be the person who is best able to capitalize on the strengths of each piece. The easiest strategy to grasp is the ants, as it's fairly apparent that their speed allows them to move quickly to trap enemy pieces or to fill some of the spaces around an opposing queen. However, once you master some of the more subtle strategies such as moving a beetle on top of an opponent's piece so that you can start placing next to it, your play of Hive will advance to another level. I cannot say that I am incredibly skilled at Hive, but I do enjoy getting to challenge myself by finding new strategies and watching my opponents counter me at every move.

Now one thing that you need to be aware of with Hive is that there is no random element to the game. There is no dice rolling, nor is there any shuffling and random draw. Similar to chess (and many abstract strategy games like Yinsh and Pentago), every facet of the game is completely visible to both players and so Hive is a challenge to see which player can out-think the other - not which player can out-roll the other. I personally like some element of random chance in games, but I can also appreciate games like Hive which are completely strategy based; as long as they are fast paced, which Hive is.

Overall, I give Hive an 8.5/10. I think that it is a masterful game that you should look to try out (if you haven't already).

If you want another opinion on this game, check out this Hive Review from the Board Game Family. Or if you have already decided that you like Hive, you might also be interested in checking out Atlanteon, Abalone, Gipf, and Rise!