Friday Filler: Paperpack

Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a clash of the old and the new. It combines concept of classic word games like Scrabble with the very modern playstyle of the deckbuilding mechanic from games like Dominion and Star Realms. In Paperback, each player is novelist, desperately writing one novel after novel, jumping from one genre to another with titles such as The Chinatown Connection, Dead Planet, and The Angel of Death, all to satisfy the voracious demands of their editors. Pump out enough of this pulp fiction and perhaps the novelist will get a bestseller and make a mint! That though is the extent of the theme in Paperback, the game being more mechanical than thematic, since what each player will be doing is spelling out words using Letter cards and generating a score which can be used to buy both more Letter cards and Fame cards, which will be used to spell out more valuable words and so on and so on until the end of the game when the player with the most Fame points from his Fame cards wins the game. Paperback is published by Fowers Games, best known for the heist themed Burgle Bros. and Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers. It is designed to be played by two to five players, aged ten and up, and has a suggested playing time of forty-five minutes.

Each player begins play with a deck of ten cards—five Wild cards and the letters ‘T’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘L’, and ‘N’. On his turn a player will five cards from his deck and attempt to spell a word using both the cards drawn, whether letter cards or Wild cards and the current Common card, which anyone can use, typically a vowel. If it is a viable word—it cannot be a name, place, or proper noun—then it generates a score. Whilst Wild cards can substitute for any letter and so help spell a word, they do add to the Score value of the word. The value of this score be used to either purchase a new letter or letter combination card (such as ‘ST’ or ‘ER’) or a Fame card. Letters purchased will all generate a greater score than the base cards in a player’s deck, but they often have special abilities. For example, the letter ‘M’ costs seven cents to purchase and generates a score of two, but if the word is correctly spelled, it doubles the total score value of the word. It also has to be placed in the trash after use. The ‘V’ costs seven cents to purchase and generates a score of four, but if the word is correctly spelled, it allows a player to draw an extra card on his next and potentially spell out a bigger word. Some letters are Attack cards, which means that their special ability affects other players. For example, the ‘H’ letter costs six cents to purchase, and generates a score of four, but if the word is correctly spelled, its attack is that the other player cannot purchase anything with a value of greater than eight cents. The ‘Q’ letter costs eight cents to purchase and generates a score of five, but if the word is correctly spelled, its attack restricts another player to just using the ability on the one his next turn.

Alternatively, a player can purchase a Fame card, each of which has a cost and depicts the cover of a fairly pulpy book from various genres. For example, The Angel of Death is a pulp novel, whilst Dead Planet is Science fiction. These generate four, seven, ten, or fifteen fame points, so generating enough score from the correctly spelled words is the aim of the game. When added to a player’s deck, the fame cards work like Wild cards in that they can be used to substitute for any letter, but do not add to a player’s score.

Game play continues until either of two conditions are met. One is to exhaust two stacks of the fame cards, each being organised by price and adjusted according to the number of players. The other is when the last Common letter card is taken. Throughout play, the current Common letter card can be used by all of the players to help them spell their words, but if a player spells a word of sufficient length, he can add the current Common letter card to his deck. This will bring in a new Common letter card into play and if a player wants to add it to his deck, then he needs to spell an even longer word. There are only four Common letter cards available throughout the game and the length of word required to add them to a player’s decks goes from seven to eight to nine, and then ten letters long. Once the end of the game is reached, each player adds up his Fame points from both the Wild cards and the fame cards in his deck, and the player with highest total wins the game.

The play of Paperback is about increasing word length. Increase the length of the words that he can spell, and player has a greater Score with which to buy better or more letter cards and fame cards, and potentially more abilities to bring into play. It entirely possible that a player can spell a word and bring two, three, four, or more abilities into play. Balanced against keeping an eye out for letter cards with special abilities, a player needs to keep an eye on the letter cards available and what he thinks he can spell with them. He also needs to bear in mind that the higher the score a word will generate, the more difficult it will be to successfully spell a word with it is. He will also want to maintain a good mix of consonants and vowels too, along with the two-letter combinations on some letter cards. Favour one letter type over the other and a player will have difficulty finding words that he can spell. It is also possible to combine special abilities for enhanced effects, but these are not as common as in other deck-building games.

In comparison to other deckbuilding games, Paperback is not necessarily all about trying a way to find a way to get rid of the initial cards in a player’s deck. This is because there are special abilities which work with the Wild cards in a player’s deck and all of the cards in a player’s deck, whether Wild cards or starting letter cards, are useful throughout the game. Nor is Paperback as adversarial as other deckbuilding games. There are elements of it with the attack cards, but these impede player for a turn rather than directly attacking him. Rather it is competitive, not combative.

Beyond the base game, Paperback adds various options and extra rules. These include adding a reward if a player helps another who is stuck on what word he can spell out using his current hand, adding awards and themes as bonuses to towards a player’s final score, playing in simultaneous mode, and even a co-operative mode played against the game itself. These all change the game in various ways, but do not stray too far from the core mechanics of spelling words, purchasing further letters and Fame cards, and so on.

As clever a combination as Paperback is, it does suffer from the problems of both game types. As a word game, players with greater word knowledge and vocabularies will be at an advantage and often, players with lesser word knowledge and vocabularies will sometimes lead to slower play as they try and work out what they can spell. The deckbuilding means that it can be more adversarial and fiddlier with a lot of cards than a word game like Scrabble. Yet, Paperback does not rely on needing to know lots of short, high-scoring words or needing to have to put them on a board building from what is already there, and as deckbuilding games, the focus is on the letters rather than the special abilities per se. However, the use of the special abilities on the cards do go towards countering the spelling, so that a player who is more used to word games such as Scrabble can still play against players more used to deckbuilding games.

Physically, Paperback is well produced and well designed. The cards are colour-coded according to cost making them easy to tell them apart, the artwork on the Fame cards—each is done as a pulp novel—is excellent, and the cards are all easy to ready. The rulebook is also decently done. Lastly, it all fits into a neat little box which comes with dividers so that everything is neatly organised and easy to find.

Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a novel clash of two game types that surprisingly, work well together and can be used to introduce the fan of one type to the other. So, a fan of word games can be introduced to a deckbuilding game (that fan of word games also likely to be used to family games too), and the fan of deckbuilding games to word games. As a word game Paperback forces a player to strategise beyond the spelling to gain extra abilities through latter cards’ special abilities and as a deckbuilding game, it forces a player to think about what he can do—rather spell—right now rather focus on the strategy. Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a witty, wordy game, that as hybrid deserves a place on your shelf between the traditional and the modern game designs.

Friday Filler: Star Realms

The traditional card game plays from a single deck of cards, with players drawing from the same deck during play, for example, in games like Poker or Braggart. The publication of Magic: The Gathering in 1993 introduced a new type of card game—the collectible card game—in which players not only had their own decks, they could design and build their own decks from the ground up and then bring them to play. In 2009, the publication of the Spiel des Jahres-award winning Dominion introduced another type of card game—the deck builder. Just like the collectible card game, in a deck builder type of game, each player has his own deck, but the difference is that instead of building his own prior to player, each player starts the game with a basic set of cards and then builds and uses his deck during play. Typically, the deck building game will provide a means to purchase or obtain further cards and either attack or affect rival players or affect the game in some way. One good example of the latter is AEG’s Trains in which players acquire cards in order to build a railway network and its associated facilities, whereas a good example of the former is Star Realms.

Published by White Wizard Games in 2014, Star Realms is a spaceship combat deckbuilding game designed for two players. Starting from exactly the same set of base cards, the players will take it in turn to draw cards, generate Trade with which to purchase better spaceships and bases and Combat to attack their opponent and his Bases and Outposts, discard their used cards, and then refresh their hands for their next turn. Each player begins play with fifty Authority or health and since the base Personal Decks only include two cards (Vipers) which generate a point of Combat each, players are going to want to buy Spaceships, Bases, and Outposts which generate more combat and thus inflict more damage. Of course, these cost anywhere between one and eight Trade, and since the base Personal Decks only include eight cards (Scouts) which generate a point of Trade each, players are going to want to purchase Spaceships, Bases, and Outposts which generate more Trade. So from the outset, players are really going to want to buy more and better Spaceships, Bases, and Outposts.

One type of card (Explorers) is available to purchase throughout the game and these generate two Trade when drawn. Five other cards are also always available to purchase in the trade row, being refreshed when a player makes a purchase on his turn. The cards in the trade row are where Star Realms begins to get interesting because they fall into four colour-coded factions each with their unique mechanical focus. The green Blob faction have organic ships and bases with an emphasis on generating Combat and removing cards from the trade row; the red Machine Cult generates Combat and enables cards to be scrapped from a player’s deck; the yellow Star Empire generates Trade and allows a player to manipulate cards, either letting him draw more cards or forcing an opponent to discard cards; and the blue Trade Federation generates Authority for a player to restore his health as well as Trade.

Further, most of the cards have a secondary ability which is only triggered when a card of the same faction is played on the same turn. So play two or cards from the same faction and if they have a secondary ability, then they are all triggered. The effects will vary from faction. Most generate more Combat, but a Trade Federation card will generate Authority, a Blob ship more combat, and so on. One way in which a secondary ability can be triggered is by having a Base or Outpost in play. All four factions have Bases or outposts or a mix of the two which can be purchased and added to a player’s deck. Both have abilities which come into play on a player’s turn, sometimes a choice of abilities which a player can choose from one turn to the next, with both having their health value which represents the cost in Combat for an opponent to destroy them and return them to a player’s discard pile. In addition, the health value of each Outpost also represents their ability to stop Combat getting through to damage a player’s Authority. Until such times as a player can generate Combat to destroy his rival’s Outpost, an Outpost will continue to prevent Combat getting through to his Authority.

Some cards give a player one last option. They can be scrapped and removed from play—rather than go into a player’s discard pile—and grant the player more Combat or more Trade. In general though, a player is unlikely to scrap a card like this, but will probably do so towards the game to generate sufficient Combat to inflict the final blow to an opponent, to get rid of cards that are clogging up a player’s deck, and to generate enough Trade to purchase that a player really, really wants.

One mechanic that is common to many deck building card games is that of clogging up a player’s deck, so preventing him from more frequently drawing the better cards he has purchased. In a game like Trains, it is represented by Waste or pollution as well as the base cards in each player’s starting deck. In Star Realms, what clogs up up a player’s deck are the base cards in starting deck—the Vipers and Scouts. These do not provide much benefit to player later in the game and so a player will probably want to scrap them. Here is where the cards of the Machine Cult come to the fore, providing the means to scrap a card from a player’s hand or discard pile when played. This is one of the primary strategies in the game—essentially getting rid of the chaff in order to bring out the wheat over and over again.

Other strategies in the game are also built around the factions. So play Blob cards to inflict a lot of Combat, Star Empire cards to draw as many cards as possible whilst stopping a rival from doing so, and Trade Federation to gain or restore as much Authority as possible. What is key though, is that a strategy solely focusing on one faction rather than another is difficult to bring into play, so a player will have to mix and match strategies and factions to one degree or another. Whatever strategy a player decides to use, his objective is simple: reduce his opponent’s Authority to zero and so win the game. Mastering these strategies is not difficult and overall, the game is easy to learn.

Star Realms comes in a small, tightly packed—and easily portable—box which contains two ten-card Personal Decks—one per player; an eighty card Trade Deck from which Spaceships, Bases, and Outposts will drawn to fill the Trade Row where the players can purchase them for their decks; ten Explorer cards which provide two Trade rather than the one of the Scouts in the base Personal Decks; eighteen double-sided Authority cards for tracking how much damage a player has; and a pair of rules sheets. The cards not only feel good in the hand, but they are very clearly designed and easy to read. Best of all, their fully painted artwork is excellent, every card type having its own illustration.

With each player just drawing five cards per turn, they only have a few things to do each turn, Star Realms plays fairly quickly from one turn to the next. In fact, a game can be played in just ten minutes, making it easy to play, then set up, and play again. The rules do cover playing with more than two players, up to six, but for each extra pair, another copy of the Star Realms core set is required and that does increase the cost of the game. Plus, as much fun as multiplayer games are, the play of Star Realms feels very much best suited to just the two-player duel of the one core set.

Although there are now plenty of expansions available, the core set for Star Realms offers an incredible amount of game play and depth in terms of strategy in what is a small, inexpensive box. Plus it is really attractive to look at. Easy to learn, quick to play, very well designed, Star Realms is the perfect two-player deck building game and the perfect two-player filler.

—oOo—

White Wizard Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between May 31st and June 2nd, 2019 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Friday Filler: Temp Worker Assassins

How do you feel about your boss? Does the boss ever annoy the heck out of you? Do you have the urge to do something about it? You could go postal, take up the weapon of choice, and strike him down, but that would be too obvious, so why not put a bit of planning into it? Why not hire assassins and send them to do the job for you? The easiest way of getting them into the place where you work—Bureaucrat Castle—is as temps on a one-week contract. Unfortunately, only the security is so good at Bureaucrat Castle none of the assassins have been able to smuggle their weapons in. Fortunately, the assassins are so good they can turn anything into a weapon, including office supplies. So your assassins have a week in which to assemble the best weapons they can from the stationery cupboard and take the opportunities to strike at Bureaucrat Castle’s Health & Safety Halfling, Internal Audit Ninja, and Acquisitions Merger Viking! (If only real life was like this?)

This is the set-up for Temp Worker Assassins, worker placement-decking building, hand-manipulation game published following a successful Kickstarter campaign and a launch at UK Games Expo, 2017. It is designed to be played by between two and four players, aged fourteen and over, in roughly forty minutes. From one round to the next, players will send their assassins to the Forbidden Stationery Cupboard, the Really Spooky Recycling Area, and Malevolent R&D Department amongst others to gain offices supplies such as the Evil Pencil Sharpner, the Pointy Edged Clipboard, Not-So-Floppy Disk, and Hideous Highlighter Pen, all in readiness to launch an assassination attempt at a chosen target.

The game consists of some one-hundred-and ninety cards, twenty Assassin Meeples (five of each colour), a Starting Player Marker, and a fourteen-page rulebook. Of the cards, forty consist of four identical decks, one per player. These are mostly Fairly Sharp Pencils and Reasonably Blunt Pencils, providing +1 or +0 Attack respectively. Even if a player has all of these in his hand, they are rarely sufficient to make a successful assassination attempt on a target, so better cards are needed. These come in the form of the Stationery Supply cards, of which there are sixty. Four of these are placed face up to form the available Stationary with the Stationery Supply deck nearby. There are forty Department Cards, ten of which will form the various locations in Bureaucrat Castle where a player will send his Assassin Meeples to gain more cards, improve his hand of cards, and gain other benefits. Forty-five Target Cards provide the victims for the players’ assassination attempts. Five of these are actually Typing Pool Zombies, which mostly stationary, are easier to assassinate, but worth fewer Victory Points. Three of these Targets will be available to assassinate at any one time, as will one Typing Pool Zombie. Together, the number of Department Cards and Target Cards gives Temp Worker Assassins a fair degree of replay value.

The last card type in the game is the Turn Marker card. There is one of these for each day and they each provide a better bonus as the game progresses through the week. They are won by the first player to make a successful assassination attempt on a day and go into the player’s discard pile. Here is where it is worth targeting the Typing Pool Zombies as although they may not be worth points, a quick stab with a bunch of pencils might be enough to bump one off as soon as an assassin gets into the office and so get the Turn Marker card for that day. Lastly, there is the rulebook. This is nicely laid out and easy to read, but it is underwritten as some of the rules are not as clear as they could be despite the game’s relative simplicity. 

Turns are quite simple. Beginning with the Starting Player—who will change day-by-day—the players take it in turn to place one of their assassins on Department Card or Target Card to make an assassination attempt. The Department Cards provide several actions, including Clear (discard and refresh the Stationery Supply cards), Draw (draw cards from a player’s deck), Gain (Take a face-up Stationery Supply card), Research (take cards from the Stationery Supply deck, add one to a player’s hand and discard the rest), and Trash (remove a card in your hand from the game). Some Department Cards provide just one of these actions, but others give a mix of them which all must be carried out. Other Department Cards provide a bonus to weapon types during assassination attempts amongst other benefits. This being a worker placement game, it means that it is possible to block access to a Department Card for other players and it does mean that as a turn progresses, there will be fewer Department Cards for a player to put his assassin meeples on, giving him fewer choices. That said, this is offset by the fact that some Department Cards have multiple spaces.

Once a player feels he has enough Stationery Supply cards to hand—there is no hand limit—he can make an assassination attempt. This is not a simple process, as it does require a player to chain his Stationery Supply cards in order to have the greatest effect—learning how to do this effectively is one of the game’s challenges. So Scaring Staples grants ‘Up to 2 Staplers get +2 Attack’, so a player needs to have another two Stapler cards in his hands and they will also have their effects as well as an Attack value. This allows for a certain degree of deck design, player trying to Gain cards from the Stationery Supply that will make a particular card work. In many cases, a player will also be discarding and drawing cards from his deck. In the early stages of the game this may be an issue because a player is unlikely to have particularly powerful cards in his deck, but later in the game, if he has been able to raid the Stationery Supply cards, he will certainly have better cards to draw from. One notable difference from a great many deck building games is that when taken from the Stationary Supply, the cards do not go into a player’s discard pile, but his hand. This means that he can prepare for an assassination attempt on his turn as much he might have to reply upon what is in his deck. If successful, the assassinated Target card goes into the player’s victory pile. Some Target cards provide bonuses in addition to their Bounty value.

After an assassination attempt, whether successful or unsuccessful, an assassin meeple is sent to Security. (He is not arrested, fired, or anything, but can return to work the following day—it appears that Bureaucrat Castle is really keen on its temps working out their period of employment.) The player discards both his hand and the cards played as part of the assassination attempt, draws a new hand of five cards, and continues play. Once everyone has played all of their assassin meeples on a day, it ends, they clock off, and a new day begins with a new Turn Marker card. This continues until the end of the fifth turn—or Friday—when everyone clocks off and the game ends. The player with the most Bounty points gained from assassinated Targets is the winner.

One issue with the game is the Typing Pool Zombies. They sort of provide a catch-up mechanism should another player be running away with number of Targets successfully assassinated. Essentially, they enable another player to make an early assassination attempt at the start of a day in order to gain the benefit of the day’s Turn Marker card. They do provide a powerful bonus, but only if a player can grab it. There is nothing to stop the leading player from grabbing the Turn Marker card bonus early on and so give his assassins a further boost. Now when taken, a Turn Marker card goes into a player’s discard pile—and not his hand like Stationery Supply cards—but it is a powerful bonus when it comes back out to play nonetheless. The problem essentially, is that as a catch-up mechanism, there is no guarantee that it will actually help…

Physically, Temp Worker Assassins is a very nicely presented game. The cards are sturdy enough and their instructions easy to read. The artwork though, especially on the Target Cards is very good—if only it had been bigger! The rulebook is somewhat underwritten, but does include a good example of how an assassination is supposed to work. It would have been nice if the assassin meeples had been a bit more thematic, but you cannot have everything.

Temp Worker Assassins not only has great artwork, but it has a fun theme too. A lot of thought has gone into the names and looks of the Target Cards as well as the name of the various offices and departments at Bureaucrat Castle (you may not have actually worked in some of these locations, but it probably feels as if you have). Once you get the hang of it, a game of Temp Worker Assassins should play faster than the suggested forty minutes—which feels a bit long anyway. This should only take the one play through, but after that, the game’s humour, and the replay value in the variety of the Department and Target cards will bring Temp Worker Assassins back to the table.

To Be Mercenary About It...

Published by Colin & Ryan Pearson Games, Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game is a card driven, deck building game of dungeon exploration and combat. It is set in the fantasy kingdom of Berelt, long after a war which has left a tradition of mercenary groups undertaking minor missions that the kingdom’s tiny army cannot or will not, such as clearing out an abandoned mansion of goblins or striking down an Orc champion and his demon dog. The members of these groups, the mercenaries, are exactly that, mercenary and sometimes of questionable morals, and if not exactly honourable, then they will at least get the job done and take the money. Nevertheless, mercenaries do live by a code—they cannot strike another, but they can use trickery, steal kills, steal weapons, distract or lie to others, or in fact, do anything that will put them ahead in the competition to be top mercenary! 

Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game can be played co-operatively or semi-co-operatively in competitive mode. The mercenaries fight through room after room, facing monster after monster, the aim being to defeat all of the monsters in an adventure and have at least one mercenary on zero or more Health. In a competitive game, the mercenary with the most ‘MVPs’—acquired from striking, and especially, killing monsters—is determined to be the ‘Most Valuable Player’ and thus wins the game. In a co-operative game, everyone either lives and wins or everyone dies and loses. Since the players are essentially playing against the game, Mercenaries can be played solo, much like the co-operative game and the rules do include alternative player set-ups, such as a two-player game with each player controlling two mercenaries and even a five-player game with four mercenaries and a Deck Master. The latter player gets to play all of the monsters and wins by defeating the mercenaries. 

Designed for between two and four players, Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game takes between ninety and one-hundred-and-twenty minutes to play. The game does not suggest an age limit, but twelve plus would not be an unreasonable guide. 

Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game comes in a large, square, black box. Behind the engaging, almost children’s fantasy book-like cover can be found the ten-page Rule Book, twenty-four-page Adventure Book, four play mats and four score pads, one-hundred-and-forty condition tokens, thirty-six grid cards, one twenty-sided die, and some six hundred or more cards, divided into over eighty different types. The Rule Book contains the rules, using the first adventure in the Adventure Book as a guide and the Adventure Book contains four adventures, plus descriptions of the game’s cards. The play mats have spaces for a mercenary’s deck, discard pile, acquired cards, and so on, including the score pads for recording a mercenary’s current Health and Experience Points. (The score pads can easily be replaced by gaming tokens or counters, which may be easier for some groups to keep track of their mercenaries’ Health and Experience Points.) The various tokens are used to mark if a mercenary has acted, been poisoned or webbed, and so on as well as how many wounds a monster had taken. The grid cards are plain—even bland—and used to mark out the battle area which forms each counter. 

The cards in Mercenaries really fall into four categories. These are Area Feature cards, Skill cards, Ability cards, and Monster cards. The Area Feature cards describe the locations where the mercenaries will be fighting and any possible special effects. For example, the Dart Trap always attacks the First Player for damage and prevents their attacking that turn, whilst in the Dwarven Tavern, all Dwarven monsters have better Health and Melee Attack Values, but worse Defence Values. Skill cards provide the mercenaries’ actions. They start with Basic Melee Attack, Basic Ranged Attack, and Basic Blocking, which plus a Healing Potion, are what each mercenary’s starting deck consists of. Each of these basic cards inflict or stop a point of damage, but a mercenary can play multiple cards of the same type to inflict or stop more damage. In play, the basic Skill cards can be upgraded to advanced versions which inflict or stop more damage, the basic versions of the card being discarded in the process. Depending upon the adventure played, other Skill cards become available, such as Shield Bash or Chain Gauntlet. Ability cards provide other benefits, for example, a Healing Potion restores two Health, a Charge Attack provides extra movement and allows a mercenary to expend cards with Defence Value to increase the damage he does, and Search the Body lets a mercenary scavenge dead monsters to add cards to his deck. Both Skill and Ability cards have an Experience Point cost to purchase. 

The Monster cards range from Goblins and Orcs to Dwarf Gunners and Tiny Spiders. Each has a Health value (how much damage they can take), a Melee Attack Value (how much damage they inflict), a Defence Value (how much damage they stop), an Experience Point value (how much Experience Points they grant to whomever delivered the killing blow), and MVP value (how many MVP they award for being killed). Some also have special abilities, given on their cards and in the Adventure Book. For example, a Spider’s Melee Attack inflicts poison on a mercenary, whilst a Giant Spider’s attacks—both melee and ranged—immobilise a mercenary in a web.


To play the game, Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game requires some set up. This require a player to build separate decks for the Area Feature and Acquisition cards as well as the Monster cards. Each adventure lists the requirements for all three. The Monster card deck requires careful attention as some monsters go into the top half and some into the bottom half. The number of monsters will also vary according to the number of players and the type of game—co-operative or competitive. Lastly, each player receives the same set of starting Skill cards. 

Play takes place on the six-by-six Battle Grid, which represents the battle space for each area. This grid does not vary in shape or size, except for the effects of one or two Area cards. The mercenaries will always start the fight at one end of the grid, the monsters at the other, the monsters with ranged attacks always behind those with melee attacks. At the start of each encounter, an Area Feature card is drawn and its effects applied to the encounter. Between three and five monsters—the number varying according to the number of players and the game type—are drawn and placed, and then the mercenaries are placed. Each player draws six cards from his deck. 

Beginning with the First Player—this changes from one encounter to the next—each player can act. Movement is fairly simple, but does not require cards, whereas attacks, healing, and so on, require the playing of cards. Basic skill cards do damage equal to the number of cards played and net a mercenary an Experience Point for a successful attack as well a retaliatory strike from the monster if it was a melee attack. Damage can be blocked using Blocking cards, again on a one-for-one basis. The advanced versions of these cards inflict or block more damage, whilst Ability cards provide other effects. Played cards go into a player’s discard pile and will be shuffled back into his deck once it has been emptied. Once all of the players have acted, the monsters can move towards the mercenaries and attack. Again, if a player has any Blocking cards, he can use those to reduce damage. After the players have acted, the monsters act. The turn then ends, each player discards any cards he has in his hand and draws six fresh cards. Play then resumes. 

As an encounter progresses and monsters are hit and killed, the mercenaries will acquire Experience Points. Once per turn, a player can use these to purchase a new card. This might be to gain an advanced version of a basic Skill card, in which case, the mercenary must have used the basic Skill to be able to purchase the advanced version. This restriction does not apply to the Ability cards, but it is a nice touch and will push a player to specialise his mercenary in a particular skill set. Play continues like this until all of the monsters have been defeated, all Experience Points have been collected, and a new encounter is prepared with a new Area Feature card. Play continues like this until all of the monsters in a deck have been defeated and the players are successful or the mercenaries are reduced to minus Health and lose the game. 

In play, from one turn to the next, there is no impetus for the players to push towards completing a room. What drives them is the question, “What is the best that I can get out of this round with the cards in my hand?” The players will need to think tactically to optimise their moves. Knowing when to attack, block, back up (out of damage range), or wait becomes an important issue. Should a mercenary simply rush in to strike a monster, but not kill him and so gain an Experience Point, knowing that the monster can retaliate against which the mercenary has little in the way of Blocking cards? Or should he hang back, use a Healing Potion, and wait for a better hand on his next turn? Or should take advantage of the damage already done to a monster by his fellow mercenaries to slip forward, deliver the killing blow, and reap the glory of ‘MVPs’ (and extra Experience Points)? 

Of course, letting a mercenary get ahead of his rivals in terms of ‘MVPs’ and Experience Points is problematic because it both allows the mercenary to improve himself and bring him closer to his being the Most Valuable Player. This is countered by the fact that just a single new card can be added to a player’s deck each turn, but nevertheless, rival mercenaries still may still want to grab as much Experience Points as they can from a monster before someone kills it and takes the prize. In co-operative mode though, play is slightly different since it is driven by the acquisition of Experience Points for all and the chance to upgrade mercenaries rather simply acquiring ‘MVPs’. Here the players will be wanting to balance their Experience Point acquisition rather than simply being mercenary about it. 

Another factor countering a runaway player is that killing monsters and collecting their Experience Points also means adding the monster cards to a player’s deck. As with other deck builders, for example, Waste in Trains, monster cards clog up a player’s deck and when drawn, reduce the number of actions his mercenary can take on a turn. On the one hand, this limits his actions and can act as a balancing mechanism to allow the other players to catch up, but on the other hand, it slows play down in general because there may be whole turns when a player cannot act. Unfortunately, there is no way to move a dead monster from a player’s deck into a victory pile, only the means to bypass it. In effect, as an adventure progresses and more monsters are killed, the game play will slow down, even stall on occasion. 

In terms of adventures, the four given adventures showcase how different adventures play and how they can be designed. Key to this are the Area Feature cards which essentially flavour and detail each encounter, but not sufficiently enough because this is countered by the abstract nature of the battle grid which sort of flattens the feel of the game. Although some Area Feature cards do possess terrain effects, the game never quite escapes the feel of playing on the grid. Another is that although the design of Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game lends itself to some flexibility and customisation beyond the four adventures—of which four is not quite enough, either in terms of replay value or long-term play—this is not addressed in the game. There is no advice on creating further adventures or indeed on customising mercenaries, so that one mercenary might start out as a ranged combat specialist with Advanced Range Attacks, another a defensive with Advanced Blocking, and so on. Plus, there are no rules for carrying over Experience Points or purchased cards from one adventure to the next. There is nothing to stop a player from doing this, but the rules do not say that you can either. 

In terms of production values, Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game is nicely put together. The Rule Book and Adventure Book are plainly presented, but readable and the play mats, the tokens, and the battle area cards are all done in thick cardboard. The cards themselves are clear and simple and illustrated with some reasonable, if unspectacular artwork. Although the rules are generally well written—they look more complex than they are and anyway, a lot of specific elements of the game are on the cards—their presentation could have been better broken up with some examples of play. 

One obvious issue with the game before even the box is cracked open, is the lack of a blurb on the rear of the box. Without that, the potential player will have no idea what the game is about. Also, the score pads do feel superfluous and essentially could have been better replaced with some counters to put on the play mats. One thing that could have been included with the game is a quick reference guide for each player to what to do on his turn and when. 

Fundamentally, Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game is a game which has not realised its full potential. The obvious flexibility and customisation present in the game is left undeveloped and whilst experienced gamers will be able to design adventures and customise their mercenaries, anyone with less experience will find this a challenge given the lack of guidelines. The lack of roleplaying present in the game means that Mercenaries does not live up to its tag line of ‘RPG Deck Building Game’, essentially all four mercenaries feel the same, their abilities do not carry over from one adventure to the next, and the focus is on the battle grid rather than dungeon or location exploration, combat rather interaction, and so on. Perhaps some personality cards and associated special abilities would have fulfilled the RPG aspect of the game, as otherwise, ‘Tactical Deck Building Game’ would be a more apt tag line. What it feels like is as if the game is missing an extra book—the Advanced Rulebook—which would have covered all of this. 

Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game feels like it should offer something more, but there is sound game play at its core and as an introductory deck building game, it works well enough. Further development may well see Mercenaries – RPG Deck Building Game realise its full potential and become the game that the designers intended.

The Spice Must Flow

Published by Plan B Games, Century: Spice Road is a light, easy board in which the players are spice merchants on the spice road who trade spice back and forth in order to make the right sale. Each merchant begins play with some turmeric and the means to harvest more turmeric as well the ability to trade this turmeric up into other spices—safran, cardamom, and cinnamon. Eventually they will have the right combination of spices to make the right sale and thus acquire gold.

In fact, this is the very light theme to Century: Spice Road, a well-appointed game designed to be played by between two and five players, aged eight and up, which takes no more than forty-five minutes to play. The spice itself is represented by wood cubes, which are in ascending order of scarcity and value are yellow (turmeric), red (safran), green (cardamom), and (brown) cinnamon. The game comes with a plastic bowl for each of the four spices and the four bowls are placed in this specific order of scarcity and value. The game’s cards, all large, with full colour illustrations, and easy to hold in the hand, are divided into two categories. The first category of cards consists of Point Cards, which are purchased with the right combinations of spice and score a player Victory Points. The more difficult the combination of spices a Point Card requires to be purchased, the greater the number of Victory Points it awards a player. The second category of card is the Merchant Cards. These are broken down into further types—Spice Cards generate spice for a player; Upgrade Cards enable a player to change spice into a better spice, for example, turmeric to safran or safran to cardamom; and Trade Cards that enable a player to trade in spice for more or better spice, for example, two turmeric for two safran or one cardamom for two safran.

Game set up is simple. Each player receives some spice—the amount varies according to turn order—and the same two Merchant Cards. Each player also has a Merchant Caravan card where he can store his spice. The bowls of space are arranged in ascending order of value and scarcity. Five Point Cards are laid out face up in a row, with the game’s gold coins placed above the first Point Card in the row and its silver coins placed above the second card in the row. Six Merchant Cards are placed in a row below the Point Cards. Each time a Point Card is purchased or Merchant Card is taken, the line of cards is shuffled down and a new card is drawn to replace it.

On a player’s turn, he can take a single action, which can be one of four things. He can play a Merchant Card from his hand. This can be to generate more spice with a spice Card, to improve his spice with an Upgrade Card, or get more and better spice with a Trade Card. He can acquire a Merchant Card from the row. This can be any Merchant Card in the row, but on each of the Merchant Cards to the left of the one he wants to acquire, he must place a spice cube. The leftmost card is always free to take, but as players acquire the Merchant Cards they want to the right of this card, they fill the other cards up with spice and make them attractive options to acquire. He can claim a Point card by paying the right combination of spices. If there is gold or silver coin above the Point Card, the player also gets that. Lastly, he can rest. When a player plays a Merchant Card from his hand, it goes into his discard pile. By resting, a player can take the Merchant cards in his discard pile and put them back in his hand.

A game of Century: Spice Road lasts until one player has claimed his fifth Point Card—sixth in a two or three player game—and the round is completed. The player with the most points from a combination of Point Cards, gold and silver coins, and spice cubes other than turmeric wins the game.

Century: Spice Road is a very simple game and that simplicity gives it some interesting twists. By acquiring Merchant Cards, what each player is doing is building his own deck, but as a deckbuilder, Century: Spice Road is a very, very slow deckbuilder, with just one card being played from one turn to the next. It means that any engine to generate and improve spice a player develops ticks simply round whilst still giving him the flexibility to change his next action, whether that is to acquire a new Merchant Card or change his current objective because another has claimed the Point Card he wanted.

The limited number of possible actions and only having the one action per turn means that a player’s turn is short. Especially if a player spends his downtime working out what he wants to do. Ultimately, this makes a game play quickly and means that it is not a complex game.

Game play of course revolves around the Merchant Cards. Of these, the most popular type of Merchant Cards are the Spice Cards which generate spice and the Upgrade Cards which change spice into better spice. Yet they are not the most prevalent type of Merchant Cards. These are the Trade Cards that enable a player to trade in spice for more or better spice. Whilst some of these do help improve the types of spice a player holds, a great many allow the player to effectively trade down to give him more spice of a more common type. And more spice means that a player has more with which to Upgrade or Trade up. What this also means is that Trading down is as important as Trading up because having more spice gives a player more options and always ensures that he has spice to do things with. 

Physically, Century: Spice Road is handsomely presented. The cards are bright and colourful, the inclusion of plastic bowls to hold the spice cubes is nice, the wooden spice cubes and the gold and the silver coins in metal give the game a pleasing physicality, and the rules are covered on two sides of a smallish sheet of card. They are easy to read and pick up, so Century: Spice Road can be unpacked, the rules read, and a game begun in a surprisingly short amount of time. The simplicity of the rules also makes the game easy to teach.

Now Century: Spice Road has been compared to Splendor, published by Space Cowboys. The comparisons are not unfair, since they have similar mercantile themes and the need to collect resources to then trade up for better resources. Yet Century: Spice Road is not as cutthroat a game, not as tight, and a much more sedate game, even forgiving since it is easier to adjust to the changing strategies and objectives of your players. Whereas in Splendor, the players will often be competing for the same resources. This is not to say that Century: Spice Road cannot be like that—veteran gamers are likely to play it like this than family gamers are—but it is easier and more forgiving.

As easy a game as Century: Spice Road is, there are complexities to the play—the need to Trade down as much as up, for example—that do not quite make it suitable as a gateway game, like Carcassone, Settlers of Catan, or Ticket to Ride. It is not too much more complex than either of those three games, so it is perhaps a game to be played after a gateway game like one of them. 

Century: Spice Road offers solid play and challenges as a slightly longer filler for veteran players, but for a family audience or players looking for a lighter option, it is a thoroughly pleasing and enjoyable game. Either way, Century: Spice Road deserves a place on your gaming shelves and space on your table. 

Another Flippin' Deckbuilder

From Dominion to Star Realms, ‘deck building’ has become a tried and tested mechanic when it comes to card games—and a mechanic which has been integrated into a number of board game designs. In these designs the players typically begin with the same basic deck of cards which they then use to generate money that can be spent to buy better and more effective cards, typically to defeat their opponents or outscore them with Victory Points. As a mechanic gets used and developed, it not only gets improved, but designers come up with new twists upon the mechanic. So Trains is a deck building game which directs the effects of the cards to building a train network between various Japanese cities. The twist to deckbuilding in Flip City: A Deceptively Simple Microdeckbuilder—and this is the first of a number of twists that the game introduces—is that the players not only generate money from their cards to buy more cards, but they generate money from their cards to flip them—and flip them to their better sides.

Originally a Taiwanese design from Homosapiens Lab, Flip City is published in English by TMG and is a city-building card game in which the players attempt to build the largest city or the happiest city. What holds each back is the unhappiness generated by certain buildings. It can be played by between one and four players—so it includes a solo option—aged eight and up, and has a playing time of no more than fifty minutes. It consists of just eighty-six cards, each double-sided and each being city location or building type that can be upgraded by flipping it over. The second twist to Flip City is that players do not play using hands of cards, but draw from the top of the deck. Since the cards are double-sided, this has a couple of consequences. The first is that a player can always see the type of card which sits on top of his deck and can choose to draw that card or not—though certain card types force a player to draw them. The second is that when a player empties his deck and has to reshuffle it, he has to take care to prevent any of his cards from being flipped because this will change the cards he will have access to.

The game has six base card types. These are the Residential Area which flips to the Apartment; the Convenience Store which flips Shopping Mall; the Factory which flips to the Power Plant; the Central Park which flips to the Station; the Hospital which flips to the Church; and the Office which flips to the Trade Center. (Of these, the Office was originally an optional expansion, but which has incorporated into the game.) Once a card has been flipped to its upgraded side, it can also be flipped back to its basic side. Each card is delightfully illustrated and comes with a cost to purchase, a cost to flip, and an indication of how much money, Unhappiness, and/or Victory Points it generates when played. Each card also has a special ability or effect.

For example, the Residential Area generates one coin and one Unhappiness. It costs one coin to flip over to the Apartment, but when the Residential Area is revealed as being on the top of a player’s deck, its effect is that it must be played. As the Apartment, the card also generates one coin and one Unhappiness, but can be flipped back to the Residential Area at a cost of eight coins. When it is flipped back to the Residential Area, it does not go back into a player’s discard pile, but into a rival’s discard pile.

The Convenience Store costs two coins to purchase, generates a single coin when played, and costs three coins to flip to the Shopping Mall. It provides the victory conditions which when played on a turn, if the player plays a total of eighteen cards, then he wins. As the Shopping Mall, it generates two coins and a Victory Point when played, It costs one coin to flip back to the Convenience Store. Its effect is that if a player’s deck is not empty, he must play an extra card, no matter what it is.

At game start, each player receives the same deck of cards and a general market is placed is formed of Convenience Store, Office, Hospital, Factory, and Central Park cards. Each player’s turn consists of two phases. In the ‘Play cards phase’, a player draws cards from the top of his deck, generating coins, Unhappiness, and/or Victory Points as well as their effects and abilities in the process. This needs to be done card by card, because if a player generates three or more points of Unhappiness, his turn is over, no matter how many Coins and Victory Points he might have generated, and he cannot proceed to the ‘Building phase’. Some cards, like the Church, will increase this limit on the number of Unhappiness points that a player can draw, but with the two-point limit on Unhappiness without the effect of the Church cards, a player will constantly face the challenge of whether or not to draw more cards to get more more Coins or Victory Points or lose his turn because he has too many Unhappiness points. This is made all the more challenging because some cards, like the Residential Area, have to be played or force another card to be played. What this means is that throughout the ‘Play cards phase’, a player will always need to decide whether he wants to push his luck or not.

If a player has cards in his discard pile, he can also Recycle some of them, flipping them over to their other side. This again will generate a player Coins and Victory Points as well as increase the limit on his Unhappiness points.

If a player survives the ‘Play cards phase’, he can spend any Coins gained in the ‘Building phase’. In this phase he can carry out one action, either buying a new card from the general supply and adding it to his discard pile; selecting a card from his discard pile and pay the indicated cost to flip it; or developing a card, buying a card from the general supply and then paying the cost to flip it before adding it to his discard pile. 

At the end of the ‘Building phase’, a player checks to see if he has met either of the winning conditions. This is either having generated eight Victory Points and played a total of eighteen cards including the Conditions.

The rules also include a solo variant. This is played starting with the standard deck of Flip City cards and a limited number of cards in the general supply. At the end of each turn, one card is removed from the general supply. Flipped Apartments are also removed from the game. This acts as a timing mechanism for the game, the player losing if the general supply is emptied of cards.

Physically, Flip City is a well presented game and the rules are nice and clear, the English translation benefiting from a short FAQ too. The graphic design of the cards is excellent, though the players will probably need to refer to the rules to understand what the symbols mean a few times to get the hang of the game’s play. The illustrations on the cards are excellent and when the cards are placed down next to each other they do form a cityscape.

There are perhaps four issues with Flip City. The first is that handling the cards back and forth—shuffling them over and over, going through the discard pile to Recycle cards, and so on—is a bit fiddly. The second is that there is not a great deal of interaction between the players, and what there is, consists of the Apartment being flipped back into a Residential Area and into a rival’s deck. This is the game’s only ‘take that’ element and serves to clog up a player’s deck and increase the likelihood of his having to miss a turn because he is forced to draw cards and generate too much Unhappiness. If a player can generate enough Coins to do this, it can really disadvantage an opponent. The third is that this chance of generating too much Unhappiness and thus end a player’s turn without his acting can also be frustrating, but on the other hand this is at the heart of the game’s push your element and a player should really be keeping track of the number of Residential Area cards he has in his deck and his discard pile. This will give some idea whether or not it is a good idea to push his luck and draw more cards. Fourth, with three or four players, a game of Flip City does become a noticeably longer game, primarily because the players have nothing to do whilst one player goes through his turn. This makes Flip City a bit too long to be a filler. None of these are issues that will stop anyone from playing the game, but they are ones to bear in mind when playing.

Flip City looks small, but it is clever enough to deliver thoughtful and quite deep play with just a few card types. It does this by making the cards double sided, which doubles the number of cards available and by being able to flip back and forth between the two sides, which increases the number of options a player has. Although game play may be a bit fiddly in places, the game never stops giving a player choices, the design is clever, and it really is an interesting twist upon the deckbuilding game. Flip City really does live up to its subtitle of being ‘A Deceptively Simple Microdeckbuilder’.

The Dominion of Trains

Let go on record and simply state that I do not like Dominion. This does not mean that it is a bad game. The 2009 Spiel des Jahres winner from Rio Grande Games is an innovative design, being one the the first deck-building card games, but I find it too mechanical and lacking in theme. So I do not own a copy and rarely play it although I know that it is a popular game. I do though, own and like Trains, a deck-building board game from Hisashi Hayashi, the designer of Sail to India and String Railway, and arguably that is very much like Dominion, both in terms of its design and the fact that each has won an Origins award—Dominion for Best Traditional Card Game in 2008 and Trains for Best Board game in 2013. Fortunately, Trains has a number of features that make it more interesting than Dominion.

Trains is not just a deck-building card game. It is a deck-building board game. The difference being that the players are building their decks to take actions on a board all of which consist of creating their railway networks—laying track and building stations. For in fact, Trains is also an area control game. Designed for two to four players, aged twelve and up, Trains sees the players compete to build the most valuable railway networks in the area surrounding the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka. What this means is that there is direct competition between the players rather than just a race to acquire the most Victory Points.

In terms of set-up, each player receives an identical ten-card deck consisting of three types of card—Normal Trains, which generate money for a player; Lay Rails, used to expand a player’s network and to connect to features on the board that will score him Victory Points; and Station Expansion, which let a player build the Stations in the towns and cities to score Victory Points. On his turn, a player uses a hand of five cards drawn from the deck to carry out actions—generate income, purchase new cards, and use the actions on the cards to do various things, but primarily building his network on the board. Where possible, a player’s cards are used to generate both income and actions and a player is free to make as many purchases as he can afford and take as many actions as he can. Once done, a player’s hand of cards goes into the discard pile. Lastly he then draws a new hand of five cards and thinks about what he will do on his next turn. The latter action—thinking about what he will do on his next turn—is explicitly stated in the rules. As part of the game, it is a welcome addition counter to players prone to ‘analysis paralysis’.

Another aspect of the set-up is that the range of cards available to purchase varies from one game to the next. Every game has the eight default cards available to purchase—Express Train, Limited Express Train, Lay Rails, Station Expansion, Apartment, Tower, Skyscraper, and Waste cards, but the remaining eight are randomly determined from the thirty available. This not only makes play different each time, it also allows the game to be tinkered in terms of options. Want an easier game? Then for example, make sure that the Landfill card is available so that players can use it to get rid of Waste.

The cards are categorised into five colours. Purple cards allow a Station Expansion, whilst green cards are construction cards that either Lay Rails or nullify the extra cost of construction, such as Collaboration, which cuts the cost of building track where another player already has track. It also prevents a player gaining Waste from any construction that turn. Blue cards are train cards. The standard Train cards simply generate a player income, but others grant an action or bonus. For example, a Tourist Train grants a Victory Point every time it is played, whilst an Early Train lets a player put purchased cards on the top of his deck. Yellow cards, like the Tower and the Skyscraper grant Victory Point at game’s end, but do clog up a deck. Red cards are action cards that grant various benefits. For example, the Ironworks generates income for each track laying green card played that turn, whilst Station Crew gives a player the choice drawing another card, gaining income, or returning Waste to the Waste stack.

Most deck-building games have an aspect of their design that clogs up each player's’ deck. Usually, this consists of two types of cards. The first type consist of cards that are less effective as the game progresses, typically being replaced by better and more effective cards. The second type consists of Victory Point cards, purchased towards winning the game, but doing nothing else. Trains has both of these, but takes the concept further with Waste. Every time a player lays track, builds a station, or constructs a building, he earns a Waste card—and a Waste card does nothing except clog up a player’s deck and when drawn, his hand. 

What does Waste mean? Its effect forces a player to balance his hand and deck. It also curbs a player from expanding too quickly. Yet Waste cards do not wholly impede a player—one or two Waste cards in his hand from one turn to the next will not prevent his making purchases, laying track, expanding stations, and taking actions, but any more Waste cards  than that and a player may find himself unable to act. Fortunately, a player can forgo his turn in order to divest his hand of all Waste and there are certain cards that will let him get rid of Waste, such as Landfill.

The obvious aim of the cards is to lay track, but this is primarily a means to an end rather than a means to scoring Victory Points. The main means of scoring Victory Points is by laying track into a city and then building stations. Cities can have between one and three stations, the extra stations after the first being more expensive to build, but scoring a player more  Victory Points. The second means of scoring Victory Points is to lay track to a Remote Location on the edge of the map—typically this involves building through expensive terrain like mountains. The third method is by buying Yellow cards, though this is also expensive.

Once a player has built into an area, it does not mean that another player cannot build  into the same space. It does make it more expensive though, and whilst this serves as a barrier, a player can lay track into an area held by another player to cancel out any potential Victory Points he might gain by building a station there or by laying track into a Remote Location.

Play continues until a player places his last rail cube as track or places the last station, or four piles of the cards available to purchase have been exhausted. Once one of these conditions has been met the game ends and the player with the most Victory Points wins.

Trains is a nicely presented. Both the rules booklet and the cards are easy to read, the double-sided board is clear and functional. The cards themselves are nicely illustrated and do feel good in the hand.

The question is, is Trains really like Dominion? The answer to that would be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. There are many cards that look and feel familiar—such that one gamer I know refuses to play it because it is too alike—but the gameplay is different. It is more streamlined, there is less emphasis on setting up your deck as an ‘engine’ that runs perfectly, and a player needs to balance both his deck and his hand as the game progresses. Trains is easier to learn, both because it is more streamlined and because the theme is more accessible. That theme is nicely implemented both through the cards and the maps, though the latter do offer little in the way of variation between the pair of them. The range of cards available and their random determination each game means that every game is different—and that adds to the replayability.

Trains is not quite an introductory deck-building game—Star Realms might be better at that—but it is not a difficult game to learn by any means. It is a medium-light Euro game, just a step or three on from Ticket to Ride in terms of complexity. Overall, Trains is a very accessible, likeable deck-building that makes much of its theme.