Goa Review

A game that sat in my "to play" pile for far too long because of timing issues (and not play issues) is Goa.

In Goa, each player takes on the role of a spice merchant attempting to gain the most prestige by discovering plantations, selling spices, and upgrading their shipping infrastructure.  The game consists of two phases, each consisting of four rounds.  To start each round, the first player will place a flag (the first player marker) along with an auction indicator next to any of the tiles in the center of the board.  In turn order, each of the other players will place an auction indicator on one of the tiles adjacent to the previous one, followed by the first player placing a second auction indicator.  After this has occurred, each of the tiles will be auctioned in order - with tiles representing colonsits, ships, plantations, victory points, and more.  After the auction, players take turns performing actions until each player has performed three.  After the third action, players with extra action cards may perform bonus actions (or carry one bonus action into the next round).  Actions consist of gaining ships, replenishing spices on your plantations, collecting income, drawing expedition cards, and attempting to establish colonies.  Finally, a player may also take an action to spend spices and ships to upgrade any of the previous actions.  At the end of the game, players will get victory points for how much they have upgraded each of these sections of their board, how many colonies they have established, what cards are in their hand, and from tiles that they have purchased.  Whoever has the most points wins (yes, yes, this sentence is normally a given, and maybe I should stop bothering to type it)!

Auctions are ready to begin

The first pro that I have for Goa is that I think that the auction system is very interesting.  Specifically, I like that where you place your auction indicator affects where the next one can be placed.  So, as the first player, you want to start off by placing near the tiles that you need.  Yet, each other player is going to attempt to place their tile on the one that they need (or think they can make the most money from), so the tile the first player still might not be auctioned.  In addition to the creativity of this initial placement, the money changing within the auction is another important aspect of the game (and so should also fall in the "pro" category).  Specifically - when you buy a tile, you pay the person that has put the tile up for auction (or, they have the option of purchasing the tile for one less than the highest bid).  The only use for money in Goa is buying tiles (though the person with the most money at the end also gets victory points).  This means that a player that collects far more in taxes than the other players will have his pick of whichever tiles he wants to purchase - and will do so, since there's no other use for all that tax money.  Yet, since he has to pay that money to another player, if he is not careful, he may enable one of his opponents to have enough money to outbid him on the next tile!

The second thing that I like about Goa is that everything feels vitally important.  You always feel like you're doing poorly in the game, because one of the other players will inevitably be doing well in whatever area you need at any given moment.  Do you have all the ships and spices you need?  Well, then you probably had to neglect taxes in order to upgrade those things.  So, during the auction, you're going to feel like you're getting obliterated.  Have plenty of money?  You're going to feel like you can't colonize.  Do you feel like you have a little bit of everything?  Then you're not earning many points in any area!  (You score 0, 1, 3, 6 or 10 points depending on how many times you've upgraded each section.)  Yet, this feeling of doing poorly isn't depressing, but just makes each decision that you make feel very important.  And, you want to do everything now, dangit!  But, unfortunately you only have three actions per round.  Which then makes buying extra actions feel critically important!  A side effect of how many different difficult choices exist in Goa is that you are able to win with a large variety of strategies.  You can win by dominating the auction, upgrading better than other players, getting a lot of expedition cards, etc.  I appreciate games that allow for varied strategies to all be successful, and Goa definitely falls into that category while providing a very tense, satisfying game experience.

What is most important to you?

With all of the brilliance of my pros, there are a couple of nitpicky things that I should mention as cons.  First, I don't really like how expedition cards score points.  Each expedition card has a symbol in the bottom right-hand corner.  This symbol means absolutely nothing in gameplay terms.  However, at the end of the game, you get points based on how many symbols you were able to match (again using the 1, 3, 6, 10 scale).  This makes absolutely no sense to me, though I realize that if this weren't in place, then the expedition cards would quickly become unbalanced.  If you scored simply based on how many you had (with the escalating scale), then they would be far too valuable; and if you made them not worth any points, they wouldn't be valuable enough.  Yet, this forces you to make strange decisions about which cards to play, and allows the "luck of the draw" (drawing matching symbols) to swing the game by a few victory points in a game where less than ten points may separate first from last.

My other con is even more trivial.  It is simply that a player with a lot of money will probably maintain the first player flag for much of the game.  Now, this really depends on your play group and how much they allow this to happen.  However, if one player collects four more dollars in taxes than all other players, then an extra action is worth four more dollars to him than all other players - after all, he can easily just use the action to collect income.  (Yes, I realize that it doesn't break down quite this way if you think of it in terms of potential victory points, but if you look at it strictly from a "what I spend versus what I can receive" perspective, then my statement is true.)  The only way to prevent this from happening is to spend enough money that the cost of keeping the first player marker is not worth the value gained for this rich player.  Yet, the money that you spend to take it away goes to the former first player (the rich guy), and so you actually may be helping him more by buying it from him!  However, being the first player (and getting the extra action) in no way guarantees the win, so this ultimately isn't a huge deal.  As I said - it's a minor complaint.

Overall, I give Goa a 9.0/10.  I enjoy the game quite a bit, and I think that it is a perfect example of an incredibly well balanced game with many strategies that can be victorious.  And, since those are two things that I look for in games, it should come as no surprise that Goa scores very highly in my opinion.

If Goa sounds interesting to you, then you might also want to check out Alien Frontiers, Princes of Florence, and China.

I would like to thank Z-Man Games for providing me with a review copy of Goa.

Belfort Review

So, I am pleased to introduce you to Board Game Reviews by Josh's first guest reviewer - Chris Casinghino.  Chris plays games with me on a regular basis in Philadelphia, and we seem to have similar tastes in games.  He told me one day that he liked "the new and the shiny" when it comes to games, and what better way to try out those new games than to help write blog posts, right?  Anyway... off to his review of Belfort!

The castle of Belfort needs constructing, but there’s a problem: the King has accidentally hired several architects instead of just one.  You must outdo the other architects by recruiting the most Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes and using them to construct as much of the castle as possible before Winter comes.

Belfort combines worker placement mechanics with area majority scoring.  The game occurs over 7 rounds where players use their workers at spaces in the city to gain resources and more workers.  Each round, players can use their resources to construct parts of the castle, unlocking new action spaces.  Players earn points both for having constructed the most buildings in each section of the castle and for having recruited the most workers of each type.  A scoring phase occurs at the end of the third, fifth and seventh rounds, and players who have been more successful will owe more taxes to the King in subsequent rounds.

While Belfort isn’t the first game to combine the worker placement and area control mechanics (see Alien Frontiers and Dominant Species) I found the implementation to be very fun and elegant, with plenty of neat little ideas.  For example, when players build a new section of the castle they both place a marker on the board (for area control) and unlock a new action space that only their workers may use.  These buildings come in 10 types, each with a different cost and providing a different action space or benefit.  Players start the game with a hand of three building cards, and can get more as the game goes on.  Restricting players to a hand of buildings elegantly prevents the number of choices from becoming overwhelming while still leaving enough room for strategic play.

A player board

There are a couple other gameplay elements that I really enjoyed.  First, players who earn more points in early rounds will owe more “taxes” in later rounds.  This very simple catch-up mechanic is helpful to players who get behind early without feeling burdensome or unfair to the leaders.  Second, the game comes with a collection of 12 action spaces called “guilds”, but you only play with five each time.  These spaces are often quite powerful, and they change the game in exciting ways.  Each game I’ve played has felt quite different, so I think the guilds really enhance replayability.  They are divided into three types (“basic”, “resource” and “interactive”), so you can customize the game by picking more guilds of the types you like.  This is also a great avenue for future expansions (in fact, TMG has already put out some promotional guilds).

Considering the strategic depth of the game, the rules are very easy to learn and teach.  The rule book is excellent both for learning and as a reference, with a table of contents and lots of nice big pictures
that make it easy to find what you’re looking for.  As a bonus, it’s packed with humor and was a delight to read.  It’s easily the best rule book I’ve read this year.  The player boards are well laid-out
and very helpful - the designers managed to pack in reminders for the starting set-up, the round structure, the cost of all the buildings and the scoring on each board all without making them feel cluttered.

Belfort's pentagonal board

The other components are wonderful as well.  The artwork on the boards and pieces is bright, colorful and whimsical.  Unusually, the main castle board is a large pentagon, and the fifths slide apart for easy scoring of each section.  There’s a lot of nice cardboard in here - in addition to the castle, there are two other boards with action spaces and five player boards.  The player pieces are thick wood and the game comes with nice Elf, Dwarf and Gnome stickers for the workers.  Overall the game is very nicely produced and packed with fun bits; I was surprised when I saw how much came in the box.

The game does have one problem, which is its length and the amount of downtime.  The box says it plays in 90-120 minutes, but that’s optimistic for your first games (especially with 4 or 5 players).  Our first four-player game took nearly three hours.  More, there is a substantial amount of downtime.  During the “action” phase, each player takes as many actions of various types as they would like (building properties or recruiting gnomes, for example).  Other players must wait for them to finish, and if you are playing with many “interactive” guilds it can get tricky to plan your turn ahead of time. This can get particularly bad in scoring rounds, where AP-prone players (Josh's note: AP or "Analysis Paralysis" is when a player has so many potential decisions that he cannot choose which one to perform) may spend a long time calculating how each possible combination of actions will change their score.  Our subsequent games have been a bit quicker, but with players who have trouble keeping a game moving consider leaving out the interactive guilds or leaving this game on the shelf.

With fun, strategic game play, beautiful production and an exceptional rule book, I’d recommend Belfort to almost any gamer.  Everyone should try it, and it’s a must-buy for fans of deep worker-placement games.
9/10

Board Game Reviews by Josh would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing us with a review copy of Belfort, and, of course, would like to thank Chris for his great review!

If Belfort sounds interesting to you, you might also check out Stone Age, Caylus, and Age of Empires III.

Dungeon Command Review

One of the prettiest games that I've had the opportunity to play recently is Dungeon Command.

Dungeon Command is a two-player skirmish game that uses Dungeons and Dragons minis.  Each player builds their army (or uses a faction pack) and attempts to reduce their opponent's morale to zero.  To start the game, each player takes a leader - which gives them a certain number of character cards and order cards in their hand; as well as a starting leadership value, morale, and a special ability.  Using your starting character cards, you will play forces - with a total value up to your leader's leadership value.  Now, you are ready to play.  Each turn, you can activate each of your units once.  This includes moving and attacking, playing an order, or activating an ability.  You can also play any number of "minor" orders on a minion each turn.  When attacking, damage is simply dealt to the targeted creature - there is no die rolling to determine success (and, if you destroy them, then their controller loses morale).  However, the defending character has the option of playing orders from his hand, or he can "cower."  If he chooses to cower, then he loses morale equal to the amount of damage that the minion would have taken (divided by ten - for example, 20 damage loses two morale).  Once you are done activating all of your characters, your leadership value goes up by one and you have the option of playing more forces - again, up to your (new) leadership value.  Play continues until either only one player has troops on the board, or until one player has run out of morale.  The last leader standing is the winner!

My first pro for Dungeon Command has absolutely nothing to do with Dungeon Command.  When Wizards made this game, they decided to make all of the characters valid to use in their Dungeons and Dragons adventure games (like Legend of Drizzt and Castle Ravenloft).  That is absolutely amazing!  Plus, my biggest complaint with the D&D adventure games was that it felt like you were playing the same game each time - there were only so many monsters, and you encountered them repeatedly.  Buying all of the different adventures helped a little bit, but not terribly much.  However, now with Dungeon Command, you have the ability to play those games with a lot of different monsters!  I applaud Wizards of the Coast for doing this - I think that it is a brilliant business model, and it also is something that is great for their customers.  I am also hoping that they decide to make all of the enemies in Drizzt and the other adventure games playable in Dungeon Command, but I haven't heard anything about that yet.

A formidable army

The second pro that I have for Dungeon Command is that I enjoy the combat system that doesn't include dice.  Honestly, I'm not opposed to dice, and the skirmish game that most reminds me of Dungeon Command (Summoner Wars) uses dice.  However, if you play games with me, you will realize something - I am horrible at rolling dice.  I'm inevitably the guy that needs to roll a 3 or higher on 15 dice to win the game, and I will roll straight 1's and 2's.  That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I do occasionally get frustrated with dice.  Now, just because there are no dice in Dungeon Command doesn't mean that there's no randomness involved.  Between drawing the creature cards and the order cards, there will still be a random factor.  If you draw all low level characters to start the game, for example, then your attack strategy will have to be much different than if you had drawn all dragons and amazing wizards.  Either way, I think that the combat system is actually pretty intuitive because of the lack of dice.  It also helps you plan out your strategy more during your opponent's turn - you can see exactly how much damage you need to deal to a creature to kill it, and you can plan accordingly (and assume that your opponent will not cower - though them cowering can be very good for you).

Speaking of cowering, I think that it is another positive element to Dungeon Command.  I don't know that I've ever played a game where you can just flat-out ignore damage.  Granted, it hurts you considerably to do this, but it is still an option.  If I have a gigantic dragon that is about to unleash a massive attack on my opponent, but he gets attacked for just enough to kill him, I can choose to just take the damage as morale hits and then proceed with my attack.  Now, it is very important to choose wisely about when you want to do this, as you can end up losing far more morale by keeping a unit alive than by letting him die (and so, often isn't worth it with one of your wimpy little guys).  But, if that character is going to be dealing the deathblow to one of your opponent's better minions on the next turn, it might even be worth it to allow him to cower (after all, it's more fitting for little twerps to cower than for your Umber Hulk, but sometimes even the big guys have to live to fight another day).

The minis are definitely pretty

Now, with all of the things that I do like about Dungeon Command, the biggest negative is definitely the price.  A faction pack comes with 12 figures and 36 order cards for an MSRP of $40.  That's somewhat pricey, but not totally out of line for a miniatures game.  However, you really need to have two faction packs to play the "full" game - which means you already have an $80 investment in the game without any customization (yes, I realize that you can buy this on Amazon for a bit cheaper, and I even provided you the link above).  However, another neat element of the game is that you can customize your forces - putting extra copies of some orders and creatures in your deck, and removing others (and, in fact, I think that you'll probably get bored playing with just the basic factions).  But, to do this, you are going to be buying even more faction packs.  So, I think, to really play Dungeon Command and to get the most for your money, you're going to need friends that also enjoy the game enough that you are each providing your own figures.  For example, if I enjoy the Drow, then I may get two copies of the Sting of Lolth set, and expect my friend that I'm going to play against to buy a copy or two of the Heart of Cormyr faction pack.

Overall, I give Dungeon Command an 8.5/10.  If you enjoy the Dungeons and Dragons adventure games (and own them), then you should buy this game!  If you are just looking for a two-player skirmish game, then this is definitely one to consider; essentially, you just have to decide how much you're willing to pay for your skirmish game.

If you want a second opinion, check out Play Board Games' Dungeon Command Review. Or, if you want to read about games similar to Dungeon Command, then you should definitely check out Summoner Wars, Legend of Drizzt, and BattleLore.

I would like to thank Wizards of the Coast for providing me with a review copy of Dungeon Command.

Looking for Board Game Charities

Hello, all.  I had a brainstorm yesterday, and it involves charities.  As I was thinking about new things that I can do with this blog, one of the things that I've wondered about has been what charities are making use of "my kind" of board games.  I've heard about charities that use Chess to teach young children to think ahead.  I also know that some public libraries and YMCA branches use board games as a healthy avenue for kids to interact with each other - especially on the blisteringly hot days of summer.  I've also heard of the Jack Vasel Fund for gamers in dire straights.  But, I don't know much about any of these charities, and I'm sure there are lots of others that I haven't even heard of!  (Like, isn't there one known as "Meeples for Peoples" or something like that?)

Do you work with a charity that uses board games in some neat way?  If so, I'd love to hear about it!  Please tell me about yourself and your charity!  Why would you bother?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  First, I'd love to help spread the word about your charity.  If I get actual interest, I would like to create a "featured charity" post every month or so, in which case I will let you do a write up about how awesome your charity is and then I will post it here on the site.  This will help more gamers know about what you're doing.  Secondly, I have a lot of games.  Sometimes, you could even say that some of these games are "extra".  Now, I often try to trade games that I don't like, but occasionally I just like to clear the shelves and do something good for the world - and so, if you are able to use my games to make the world a better place, then that sounds like a great deal.  (The closer you are to Philly, the better, so that shipping is cheaper for me.  Or, if you authorize me to share your address, then I can notify others if they are looking to donate games.)  If this is you, then please let me know what kinds of games you can use - do they have to be new, or can you utilize used games?  Do you only want kid friendly games, or are more complex strategy games ok?

If you have any more ideas of how I can help your charity, please run those by me as well!  I just had the one quick brainstorm, so I figured I would get the discussion rolling - who knows where this might lead (if anywhere)!