Charming Chemistry

Compounded: Better Gaming Through Chemistry is a game about chemical research. It is a beautifully appointed, heavily themed game that sees the scientists undertake the roles of scientists competing to complete as many Compounds as possible whilst avoiding the possibility of lab explosions! Originally published through Kickstarter.com by Dice Hate Me Games, it is a set collecting and trading game that can be played through in roughly ninety minutes and is designed to be played by two to five scientists aged thirteen and up.

The theme to Compounded starts with its components. The first is the Scoring Board, which is done as a Periodic Table. It is perhaps a bit fiddly in use once everyone’s scoring counter is on the scoring track, but thematically, it is perfect. Second is its decently written Rulebook, which looks a little like a scuffed and battered chemistry school textbook.

The third are the scientists’ Work Benches. These have spaces for each scientist’s Element Storage Area, Lab Tools gained, and to track the progress of his Discovery, Study, Research, and Lab experiments. Each Experiment can be improved by completing certain Compounds.

Fourth are the game’s Compounds, such as Calcium Oxide, Acetylene, Nitric Acid, and Methanol. Each Compound is a square card marked with a name, its chemical formula, spaces for each of the elements it is comprised of, a spot to place a Claim token, and a scoring value—the latter ranging between three and eight Atomic Points. Others also have icons that grant Lab Tools and improvements to one of a scientist’s Discovery, Study, Research, or Lab experiments when the Compound is completed. Some also have icons indicating that they are flammable and could explode.

Fifth are Compounded’s Lab Key—a wooden key used to determine scientist order and various Lab Tool tokens—Bunsen Burners, Graduated Cylinders, Lab Keys, Pipettes, Safety Goggles, and Journals. Sixth, and lastly, there are the game’s Elements—in ascending order of rarity—Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Calcium, and Sulfur (sic). These are represented by coloured chips of plastic. Again, pleasing on the eye and nicely tactile.

At the start of the game, each scientist receives a Work Bench and the wooden tokens to indicate his progress on the Bench. He also receives a Fire Extinguisher card. If this is filled, it can be used to stop the effects of a Lab Fire or saved until the end of the game for more Atomic Points. Likewise, he also receives a Wild Element that can be used or turned in for Atomic Points. He also receives his initial allotment of Elements. Then, sixteen Compound cards are laid out in a four-by-four grid Research Grid. Initially, these will include the yellow-bordered starting Compounds. The Compound deck is seeded with Lab Fire cards.

Compounded is played in four phases—Discovery, Study, Research, and Lab. In the Discovery phases draws Elements from the black cloth bag included in the game. Initially, each scientist can only draw two Elements and can only store four Elements in his Element Storage Area, but both can be increased by three. Once Elements have been drawn, scientists are free to trade Elements—as well as Lab Tools, promises, and so on.

In the Study phase, each scientist can use his Action tokens to claim Compounds. Once a scientist has claimed a Compound, no other scientist can score from it. Initially a scientist has only the one Action token, but by completing Compounds can increase this number to four. 

During the Research phase, the scientists take turns placing Elements on their claimed and unclaimed Compounds. This involves placing an Element of the right type on the spaces marked on the Compound cards. Initially this is just two, but can be increased to six. If a scientist does not have the Elements he wants, he can now trade in three of one type for one he wants.

Lastly, during the Lab phase, the scientists score Atomic Points for completed Compounds on the Periodic Table and adjust their Experiments if the completed Compounds help improve them. Completed Compounds are replaced from the Compound deck. If a Lab Fire is drawn, Flame Tokens are added to any flammable Compounds that have empty Flame icons on them—typically no more than two on any Compound. Should a flammable Compound gain enough Flame Tokens, the Compound explodes and is removed from the game. Any Elements on the exploding Compound ricochet around the Research Grid and will reappear in empty slots on adjacent Compounds—if they have space for that type of Element. 

A game of Compounded ends with one final round once a scientist has either scored fifty Atomic Points or completed three out of four of his Experiments. The game ends immediately if the Compounds in the Research Grid cannot be refreshed to a maximum of sixteen. The scientist with the most Atomic Points is the winner.

This is for the three to four player standard version of Compounded. Included in the game, is a two-player variant that adds a third ‘dummy’ player named Nobel, his actions being controlled by the lead scientist. Another variant, this for three and more scientists, adds ‘Lab Partners’ Compounds, double-sized Compounds intended to be completed by two scientists, who each receive the Atomic Points and its benefits for completing the Compound. They are much more complex Compounds and require many more Elements.

Although Compounded has very nice and thematically fitting production values, it is not quite perfect. The text on the Lab Benches and elsewhere is too small to read with ease, and the wooden tokens to track each scientist’s Experiments and their Action Tokens are a bit small and difficult to use—as are the Flame Tokens. Nor are the phases—Discovery, Study, Research, and Lab—as obviously named as they could be. In game terms, they are ‘draw Elements’ (Discovery), ‘claim Compounds’ (Study), ‘place Elements’ (Research), and ‘score Compounds and effects’ (Lab), but this is not all that clear on the Lab Benches.

Compounded is not a complex game—in fact anyone who has played Ticket to Ride or Pandemic will have no difficulty in understanding its rules and play, its complexity being light-medium rather than medium. The game is also informative, educating players as to both the nature of the research process and the atomical content of each of Compounded’s compounds. Beyond drawing Elements and new Compound cards, there is very little randomness to the game, though Lab Fires can upset many a scientist’s aim of completing particular Compounds. Compounded’s chemical theme is quite gentle, which when combined with its mechanics, makes the game unthreatening in terms of play. Although Compounded’s theme might be said to be rather dry, it is not ‘pasted on’; rather Compounded fully engages in its chemical theme to create a relatively light and appealing reaction.

Who's Got Zeus?

Sometimes a game just lands in your lap. In my case it was a copy of Zeus on the Loose: A Card Game of Mythic Proportions, a new card counting game from Gamewright. I was on Twitter and Coiled Spring announced a simple competition for the game and I won. Once it dropped through my letterbox, I opened it up and read through the rules, ready to take it along to Afternoon Play, a regular monthly boardgame meet at a coffee shop in the city centre. I got the game out and we played it a couple of times in between longer games, in this case Ghost Stories (a very difficult co-operative game about Chinese monks ridding a town of ghosts and monsters), Railways of the World: The Card Game (laying tracks, connecting cities, and transporting goods using cards rather than lengths of track), and Red Empire (my favourite game of Soviet Politburo Politics). It was agreed that it was indeed a nice little filler. So I will probably take it along next time.

The idea in Zeus on the Loose is that the Greek god has gone missing from Mount Olympus and it up to you to grab him and return him to the summit. This is done by playing numbered cards – bringing the card total to a multiple of ten (ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and so on) means that can grab Zeus and getting to the summit (represented by the card total getting to a hundred or more) with him in tow will win a player the round. In addition, Zeus’ fellow gods – Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hera, Hermes, and Poseidon – will sometimes help you out in your efforts over your competitors. The winner of each round is awarded a letter. The first letter won by a player is a “Z.” On later rounds a player will be awarded the letter “E,” and then a “U,” and then an “S” for winning. The first player to win enough rounds to spell out “ZEUS” wins the game.

Designed for two to five players aged eight and up, Zeus on the Loose consists of sixty cards, a Zeus figure, and a foldout rules leaflet. Two thirds of the cards are numbered between one and ten, whilst the remaining cards depict the various gods and their special abilities. Each player starts with a hand of four cards and can only play one card per turn, which is placed face up on Mount Olympus card pile. If a numbered card the new number is added to the total of the cards so far, the players keeping a running total from turn to turn.

If a player brings the current total to a multiple of ten, he gets to grab Zeus and place the Zeus figure in front of him. If when a player puts a number down and another player has the same number on a card in his hand, he can immediately take his turn by playing the card in his hand. Sometimes this means that other players will miss their turns because turn order continues normally from the interrupting player. For example, the turn order consists of Dan, Geoff, and Paul. If Dan plays a seven card and Paul has a seven card in his hand, he can immediately play it with play order continuing normally – that is, to Dan rather than Geoff who misses his turn.

Alternatively, a player can play a God card. There are eight types of these, each of which provides a particular effect. These either alter the current total value of Mount Olympus, let the player steal Zeus from another player, or a combination of both. Lastly, a player has to draw his hand back up to four cards at the end of his turn or he must play with fewer cards until the end of his next turn.

Physically, Zeus on the Loose, is very nicely put together. The number cards are clear and simple, whilst the God cards are done in an attractive cartoon style. The rules leaflet is easy to read and in addition to the rules, contains a description of each of the Greek Gods that appear in the game.

Like many games from Gamewright, Zeus on the Loose has a strong educational aspect. The most obvious one being the arithmetic necessary to play, but there is also the information about the Greek pantheon in the rules and what it teaches about game play – that you need to pay attention to play well. Otherwise, a player will find himself losing turns as his competitors steal turns from him.

As intended, Zeus on the Loose is a well-designed educational game. Its designers have got the age range about right, making the game suitable for the classroom or for families with children of that age group. Adults will find the game play a little limited, more so if they are practised gamers. Nevertheless, Zeus on the Loose: A Card Game of Mythic Proportions is a nice little game that is great for families and great as a gift for families.

A Century For Your Family

If you are gamer the likelihood is that you have more than a few gaming books on your shelf. The likelihood is that you will have few books if any about gaming itself on your shelf. There are any number of good reasons for this, but it can be put down to the fact that few such books have been written and to the other fact that most gamers prefer to buy a book about or for their favourite RPG rather than some generic book about various games or gaming in general. I do not fall under the category of “most gamers” in that I have more than a few gaming books on my shelves and elsewhere – in fact I have hundreds. I also have a few books about gaming itself on my shelves – there not being enough to occupy more than the single, quite small shelf – and most of them have been enjoyable reads and some of them have been useful. So I do have copies of Fantasy Roleplaying Games by Doctor J. Eric Holmes and Ian Livingstone’s Dicing with Dragons as well as Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games by Lawrence Schick and Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball’s Things We Think About Games. Each in their own way is a product of their times, but still a good book nevertheless. The latest addition to limited selection is Family Games: The 100 Best from Green Ronin Publishing.

As the title suggests, Family Games: The 100 Best is sequel to the Origins Award winning Hobby Games: The 100 Best, a collection of essays in which the hobby’s crème de la crème – designers, authors, and publishers had the chance to write about the games that they liked, the games that they thought to be clever, and the games that inspired them. The games discussed included RPGs, CCGs, miniatures, wargames, and board games, with contributions from luminaries such as Gary Gygax, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Monte Cook, Greg Costikyan, Marc W. Miller, Alan R. Moon, Sandy Petersen, Greg Stafford, and Martin Wallace amongst many, many others.

Family Games: The 100 Best does exactly the same with many of the authors returning, except that whereas Hobby Games: The 100 Best only delved back fifty years into the history of our hobby – back to the start of our hobby with games such as Gettysburg and Diplomacy, both from Avalon Hill and both dating from the late 1950s – the new volume goes back almost another sixty years to discuss some of the earliest commercially available board games on a widespread basis. Thus we start chronologically with John Wick writing about Pit, released in 1904 by Parker Brothers, before going over many of the great games that have figured in the contributors and readers’ childhoods and beyond to come right up to date with Rob Heinsoo’s contribution about Small World, published by Days of Wonder in 2009. In between appear short essays about a further ninety-eight games, bringing the total to one hundred, though a whole lot more are discussed if you take into account the foreword by Mike Gray (designer of Fortress America and Shogun); the introduction by the book’s editor, James Lowder; Wil Wheaton’s Afterword; and the two appendices. All of the entries though, describe games that can be played and enjoyed by children, by the family, and by non-gamers without the need to memorise lengthy books of rules, without the need to analyse every move in detail, and without too outré a theme.

The same format as Hobby Games: The 100 Best is retained for Family Games: The 100 Best though. Arranged in alphabetical order, each entry is comprised of its name, designer, publisher and year of publication, plus its suggested number of players and age range, followed by the essay itself before ending with a short biography of the essay’s author. Each essay itself includes the background and history for each game, a description of how it is played, suggests some tactics, and gives a chance for each writer to tell you why he thinks his choice of game is worthy of its inclusion here. Rather than tell you in laborious detail what exactly is in Family Games: The 100 Best, I can show you. Or rather Matthew Tarbit can.

What is readily apparent about the selection given in Family Games: The 100 Best is that it is much broader in scope than was Hobby Games: The 100 Best. As its title suggests the majority of its entries are written with the family in mind rather the hobbyist gamer, which means fewer Euro style games and even fewer RPGs. In fact, only three RPGs make an appearance – John Wick’s Cat, Green Ronin Publishing/Firefly Games’ Faery’s Tale Deluxe, and Chaosium, Inc.’s Prince Valiant. All three are very light, and can easily be run with or for older children, hence their inclusion.

The selection is also more American. Titles such as Candy Land, Fortress America, and Game of Life (all three from Milton Bradley), plus the Stat-O-Matic Game Company’s Stat-O-Matic Baseball all point to that. Many children’s classics are included too, such as Battleship (Milton Bradley), the aforementioned Candy Land, Connect Four (Milton Bradley), Mouse Trap (Ideal), Sorry! (Parker Brothers), and Uno (Uno Games/International Games), as are some very traditional classic family games like Clue(do) (Parker Brothers), Monopoly (Parker Brothers), Scrabble (Selchow & Righter), and Yahtzee (E. S. Lowe). These are joined by the adult games Cranium (Cranium, Inc.), Pictionary (Western Publishing Company), Trivial Pursuit (Parker Brothers), and Wits & Wagers (North Star Games LLC). There are of course lots of essays about other games that from the rail game Eurorails (Mayfair Games) and the abstract Blokus (Educational Insights) to the card driven wargame Memoir ‘44 (Days of Wonder) and the modern co-operative Pandemic (Z-man Games).

What is so interesting about Family Games: The 100 Best is that it includes many games that unless I have more children I am unlikely to ever play again, such as Mouse Trap. Similarly, I have no plans to play Trivial Pursuit again either. Yet I read the essays on all of these games, and the others, with interest, because each shed new light on said game such that I might, just might play these games again. Well, maybe not Mouse Trap. Even where I might disagree with the author of essay or with the inclusion of a particular game – and such occurrences were far and few between, the actual essay was itself at least worth reading.

Once all of the essays are out of the way, our dork and everyone’s dork gets to extol the virtues of being a gamer and in particular, a gamer-dad. Wil Wheaton’s afterword sort of dovetails (in the same way that the dovetail you made back in woodwork class at thirteen sort of dovetails) into the first of the appendices, of which Family Games: The 100 Best is rounded out with two. The first, “Games and Education” by David Millians provides an introduction to using games as part of the education process and to that end comes with several pages of useful references. The second appendix is “Family Games in Hobby Games: The 100 Best” and gives short descriptions of the twenty entries in that volume that can be considered to be family games.

Family Games: The 100 Best is about celebrating not just our hobby, but about celebrating what got you into the hobby. It is about the games that you played as children, that almost every gamer played as a child, and in many cases still does, whether that be with his children or because they are still good games. It is also a book of reviews – and as a reviewer, some day I would love to be able to contribute to a future volume – telling you how good the games you like are and how good the games you liked were, and if enjoyed reading about one game, then the opportunity to read about another game is just two or three pages away. It is also a book to dip into or to pick up, read, and then put down again – it does not need to be read a single sitting. All good reasons why someone who read and liked Hobby Games: The 100 Best will equally enjoy Family Games: The 100 Best.

When Hobby Games: The 100 Best came out, I gave it as a gift, and in all likelihood, I will give this new book as a gift too, but in that there is a difference between the two. I would not give Hobby Games: The 100 Best to a non-gamer as a gift, but I would with Family Games: The 100 Best. The reason being that a non-gamer is more likely to recognise the titles of the games being written about and once he has read about the games that he heard of or played, the likelihood is that he will be curious enough to read about the other games described. Whether that curiosity is enough for him to look for or try those other games is another matter, but in its own way, Family Games: The 100 Best is an excellent primer for playing games, and a potential stepping stone into the hobby.

It ain't Scrabble

I begin with a confession. I do not enjoy playing Scrabble. Considering that I like to write, and I enjoy words and reading, some might find that surprising. I find it all a bit tedious and lacking in substance. Plus from the two recent television programs devoted to the game – the BBC has recently broadcast a small season devoted to the playing of games and games history, playing Scrabble seems to have come down to the sound of the word and learning by rote rather than in understanding and speaking the language. Nevertheless, my dislike of Scrabble does not mean that I will not look at the occasional word game. Thus I picked up a copy of LeCardo.

LeCardo is an English card game designed for two to four players, aged eight and up, published by Leo Marshall Designs. Where Scrabble has the players scoring points by constructing single words, points are scored in LeCardo by constructing one or more compound words or phrases such as “off side” or “wind power.” The constructed compounds can be whole words, be connected by a hyphen, or have spaces between.

The game comes as a deck of fifty-five cards. The cards themselves are done on a light and glossy card stock and are easy to handle. Three of fifty-five cards give the game’s rules while another lists all of the cards in the game along with their score values. The remaining fifty-two cards are all word cards, each marked with a single word, a score value, and an appropriate line art illustration. Each illustration is colour coded according to the card’s score value, so the blue cards (such as “over” or “under”) are all marked with a one; the red cards with a two (like “line” or “work); the orange cards with a three (“by” or “top”); the green cards with a four (“bed” or “word”); and the pink card with a five (“paper”). Note that there is only the one card that is worth five points.

At game’s start, the cards are shuffled and each player receives a hand of seven cards. On his turn a player lays his cards on the table attempting to form compound words. Cards are placed so that the new compounds read left to right or down, but not right to left or up. New cards can be played alongside existing cards so that much like Scrabble, a grid of words is formed. Once a player has played as many cards as he is able to, he adds up the total score from the new compounds that he formed during his turn, refreshes his hand, and play passes to the next player.

All new compound words have to be agreed upon by everyone around the table. Should a new compound be disputed its cards are returned to the player who attempted to place them down.

If a player cannot place any cards, he can instead discard three cards and replace them with new ones from the deck. He also loses his turn. The game ends once all of the cards have been played or when no one can play any cards. The winner is of course the player with the highest score.

The game is designed to last no more than fifteen minutes and with less than four players our games rarely last longer than ten. With four players we found that the game comes with enough cards to last about five or six rounds and no more. A good sized playing surface is required though, as the card grid can spread out a little.

LeCardo is quick and easy, and is what can be described as an intelligent filler game. For younger players it probably has an educational aspect, but even for adults it requires a little thought. I much preferred playing this to Scrabble and the group that I tried it not only liked it, but were happy to play it again. This is recommendation enough for LeCardo to remain on the games shelf downstairs where it can be found and be brought out to play with ease.