Friday Filler: Split the Hoard

You have persevered. You have made it to the end of the dungeon. The dragon is dead. You survived. Right before you are not only the dragon’s hulking corpse, but also its hoard. Mounds of gold coins and gems and jewels. Then the magical items. What matters now is how you divide the hoard between you. It would not be too difficult normally, but this time, there is a deadline looming. Scavengers are coming to take what they can and they will not take any prisoners. So, you need to pick over the hoard, argue for the best bits, and get out again. And you do not have to entirely honest about it—you can demand it or even steal it too! All of you are savvy enough to get out of the dungeons, but the question is, who is going to get out with the most and the best? As veteran adventurers, you know it is never a good idea to split the party, but splitting the hoard is another matter.

This is the set-up to Split the Hoard. This is the first card game from EN Publishing, known for the ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—and Level Up! roleplaying games. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is intended to be played by between two and five players, aged fourteen and over, and plays in twenty minutes.

Split the Hoard consists of five Player Boards and five Privacy Screens, one-hundred-and-three Hoard cards, twenty Title cards, a Dragon card, the Rulebook, and the Appendices. The five Player Boards depict five classic fantasy archetypes—Cleric, Druid, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard—and grant an ability, mark the three spaces where the player places the Hoard cards representing treasure he has found, and shows the round order. For example, the Warrior’s ability is to win ties for Arms titles and gain a random treasure from the Hoard deck if an Arms treasure is taken from his haul. The spaces on the Player Board where he places treasures up for negotiation are marked with one, two, or three coins. One oddity is that the Player Boards are double-sided, but the same on both sides, where it would have been nice for the illustration of the hero to be of one gender on one side and another on the other, or perhaps a different ability.

The Hoard cards are double-sided. On the back is a Coin and when played face down like this, these Coin cards are used to set the prices for treasures and to purchase treasures. On the front of each Hoard card is the details of a specific treasure. These are divided into five categories—Arcane, Arms, Holy, Natural, and Wealth—corresponding to the five archetypes of the Player Boards. A Treasure card either has a ‘Rank’ or ‘Victory Point’ value. The ‘Rank’ value is totalled in combination with other Treasure cards to determine if a hero is eligible to certain Title card. The ‘Victory Point’ value contributes to a player’s final score at the end of the game. A Treasure card will also have a special ability. For example, the ‘Grimoire’ can be discarded in the Claim phase to allow a player to draw an extra hidden Title card from the Title deck, whilst in the Negotiate phase, the ‘Sword’ can be discarded to allow a player to negotiate for an extra Treasure.

The Title cards are scoring objectives for the game. Each has a victory condition such as “Score if you have the highest combined value of rank cards” for the Archmage or “Score if you possess a Ruby and an Armour” for the Captain. Five of these are the Starting Titles that are visible from the beginning of the game and can be won by anyone. The others are kept secret by the players before being revealed at the end of the game to see if their scoring conditions have been fulfilled.

Penultimately, the ‘Rulebook’ is short at just twenty-pages, but includes examples of play throughout. Lastly, the ‘Appendices’ is almost three times the length of the ‘Rulebook’ and explains how each of the Treasure cards and Title cards work. It is a handy reference that makes it easier to check the specifics of each Treasure card or Title card and it also has examples of the game’s cards in play as well.

At the start of the game, each player receives a random Player Board, a Privacy Screen, a random Title card, and four Coin cards. The five Starting Titles are placed where everyone can see them. The game is played in rounds consisting of three phases—‘Reveal’, ‘Negotiate’, and ‘Claim’. In the ‘Reveal’ phase, the players take it in turns to draw three Treasure cards and arrange them however they want on the one, two, or three slots on their Player Board, one Treasure card per slot. A Player can increase the cost of a Treasure by adding Coin cards from his Haul.

In the ‘Negotiate’ phase, each player lifts his Privacy Screen and reveals the Treasures has picked over from the Hoard. In turn, each player either takes two cards from the Hoard deck as Coin cards (that is, face down) and adds them to his Haul or negotiates for a single Treasure from another player. As long as the active player can pay the cost in Coin cards, determined by the base cost for the slot on another player’s Player Board and any extra Coin cards the player has placed on his Player Board, a player cannot stop the active player from taking a Treasure card. In the phase, ‘Claim’, Coin cards placed on Player Boards to increase Treasure prices are discarded and any Treasures remaining on a Player Board go into their respective player’s Haul. If there are no Treasures on a player’s Player Board, he draws three new Treasure cards and adds them to his Haul.

The heart of the game play for Split the Hoard is all built around a ‘I Cut, You Choose’ mechanic in which each player is deciding upon the value of his Treasure cards he is offering in each round, whilst the other players are deciding whether or not to choose something. Here is where the bluff and speculation come into play, rather than negotiation as such. Indeed, the actual ‘Negotiate’ phase is a misnomer since no actual negotiation. Instead, what a player is trying to do find the Treasure cards he wants on other player’s Player Boards whilst trying to keep hold of these he wants to score with at the end of the game. The obvious way to do that is protect a Treasure card by increasing the price that another player has to pay, but this has its own cost, since a player must invest Coins to raise that price. If the Treasure they are attached to is bought, the player will get the Coins back, but if not, they are lost. This is where the speculation comes into play. Further, a player could actually lure another player into thinking a Treasure with Coin cards attached is actually valuable or something he wants, bluffing the player into thinking that he is denying him a Treasure he wants to keep.

The aim of the game is, of course, for a player to get Treasure cards into his Haul and use them to score points at the end of the game. However, a player can also discard a face-up Treasure card from his Haul to activate its ability. The range from being able to draw more Coins from the Hoard deck, more Titles from the Title deck, take an extra Treasure from another player’s Player Board, move a Treasure from your Player Board to your Haul, and so on, manipulating different parts of the game’s play. Each player must balance the need to keep Treasure cards for the end game’s scoring and using their special abilities. Treasure cards played for their special abilities can be played at any time during the phase indicated on the card, even when it is not a player’s turn.

The game ends when a player cannot draw any cards from the Hoard deck. Each player scores Victory Points for Starting Tile cards and Hidden Title cards whose scoring conditions they fulfilled and then also for Treasure cards. If there is a tie, the winner is the player with the most Coins in his Haul. Here is where the game play gets complex in comparison to the base game play as each player tries to work out his total Rank value from the Treasure cards in his Haul to determine which Title cards he qualifies for. This is the hardest bit of Split the Hoard to learn and teach, but once everyone has the hang of it, game play is fast enough.

Physically, Split the Hoard is very nicely presented. Both ‘Rulebook’ and ‘Appendices’ are well written and provide clear explanations of the various parts of the game. The artwork on the cards is excellent and everything is solid and sturdy. EN Publishing has done an excellent job with the production values on Split the Hoard.

Split the Hoard is a very likeable game, good looking, easy to teach and play, and makes excellent use of its theme. It is a very solid filler that fans of classic fantasy roleplaying will definitely enjoy and a good first game from EN Publishing.

Friday Filler: dnup

If you like Scout, then you will like dnup. It is a card-shedding game, just like Scout, but is smaller, less complicated, easier to teach, and plays faster. It is also from the designer as Scout. The latter, published by Oink Games, was a Spiel des Jahres nominee in 2022 and won the Origins Award for Best Card Game in 2023. It is not an Oink Games title though—and not just because the components fit in the box! Another difference is that there is no semblance of theme with dnup.

dnup—short for ‘Down up’—is published by the Asmodee Group. It is designed to be played by between two and five players, aged eight and up, and can be played in fifteen minutes. The aim of game for each player is to try to empty his hand of cards. This done by playing cards from his hand as sets of the same value that are of a higher value or greater size than the ones on the table. If a player is the first to empty his hand this way in a round, he gains two letters. The next player to empty his hand, gains a single letter. The first player to be able to spell ‘dnup’ with his letters wins the game.

dnup consists of forty cards, five Player Aid cards, sixteen letter tokens, and the rules leaflet. The forty cards are marked with two different numbers. The cards can be turned over so that the upper number can always be read, but the lower number is always upside down and cannot be read as easily. The Player Aid cards show the card distribution at each player count and the actions that a player can take each round. The sixteen letter tokens are used to keep of player score.

At the start of a round, each player receives a hand of cards, the number varying depending on the number of players. A player can rearrange the cards in hand at any time. When he receives his hand; when it is not his turn; and when he picks up cards. What he cannot do is rotate his hand. What this means is that he can build sets of cards easily throughout the play of the game. On his turn, a player first discards any set he played the previous turn and takes on action. He can play a set of cards onto the table on front of him; add a card to an opponent’s set; take a set of cards from in front of an opponent; or rotate the cards in his hand. Unlike in Scout, where there is one set of cards on the table, in dnup, each player has a set in front of him. When a set is played, it must be bigger than another set already in front of another player. When it is, the lower set must be returned to its player, who must rotate the returned cards before adding them to his hand. If a player adds a card to an opponent’s hand and it increases the value of the set in comparison to another set, that lowered valued set is returned to its player’s hand. This is a key tactical move as it forces cards back into a player’s hand and they will not be same value because the cards have to be rotated. Similarly, a player can play a low set in the hope that another player will put down a better set and force him to take the cards back into his hand, and rotating them, give him cards with numbers he can use to make better sets. This adds some nice tactical options. Of course, taking cards back into a player’s hand means that he has to rotate them and he has to rearrange them. Sometimes that can be advantageous for a player, sometimes not. When it is not, a player will have to rebuild a set, but the game play is speedy enough that it does not take long.

dnup does include a two-player option. For this, each player has two play areas and can play sets into both areas. This also means that sets in a player’s play areas can conflict with each other, but it also means that a player can use it to his advantage. However, the two-player option is not quite as fun as there is not the same degree of interplay between the players. Thus, dnup plays better with multiple players.

Physically, dnup is very nicely presented. The rules are simple and clear, and the cards are attractive in bright and breezy colours.

dnup is as bright and breezy as it looks. The game is easy to teach and learn, and it plays easy too. This means that it plays well with families and younger players, but there is just enough of an edge to the game that experienced players can play it a bit more cutthroat.

Friday Filler: Lacuna

Lacuna is a very light game that is incredibly fast and easy to learn and quick to play and it also looks good on the table. It is an abstract, highly themed area control game that can be played in ten minutes and set-up again for another go. Published by CYMK, Lacuna is ‘A Cozy Game of Mystical Geometry’ designed for two players, aged eight and over. It stands out for two reasons. The first is the packaging. Lacuna comes as a sturdy tube dotted with flowers in sift pastel shades against a black background. The second is the components. The first of these is the playing surface, a black cloth mat roughly seventy centimetres square, marked with a blank circle in the middle and bordered by different flowers. The second are the game’s wooden tokens, forty-nine flowers divided into seven different shapes and colours. The third are the twelve pawns, six in silver and six in gold, and weighing quite a lot in the hand. The fourth is the tube itself, which serves as a shaker to sprinkle the flowers on the cloth. This is a game that looks good and feels good, but when it is on the table, it is simply pretty.

The idea behind Lacuna is that the players are competing to collect the most flowers from a pond by moonlight. The cloth mat represents the pond and the flower tokens the flowers they are collecting. At the start of the game, the mat is laid out flat and the player who will go first takes a flower token of any colour. This is because the second player will have an advantage in placing his tokens when going last because the first player cannot put a token near his. Then the rest of the flower tokens are placed in the game’s tube and sprinkled onto the cloth, adjust as necessary to ensure that they are not all clumped together. Play proceeds in two phases.

In the first phase, the flowers captured. To do this, a player draws an imaginary line between two flowers of the same colour. If nothing blocks them, he places one of his metal pawns anywhere on that imaginary line between the two flowers and takes the two flowers. This continues until both players have placed all six of their metal pawns.

In the second phase, the players take in turns to collect the remaining flowers. This is determined by the player whose metal pawn is nearest the flowers. If it is unclear whose metal pawn is closer to a flower or group of flowers, the game includes a ruler to determine the exact distance.

Once both phases are complete, the players determine who the winner is. If one player has the most of one colour flower, he wins that colour, and the player who wins the most colours, wins the game. Since there are only seven of each colour, a player only has to win four of a colour to win it, and since there are seven colours, a player only has to win four of them to win the game.

This all sounds a bit simple, even simplistic, and random. Of course, the distribution of the flowers is random, but whilst the mechanics of the play, that is, the placing of the metal pawns, is simple, their placing is not simplistic. There is some nuance to Lacuna. Not necessarily a great deal, but some. And it boils down to this… Where does a player place his metal pawn on the imaginary line between to flowers of the same colour? At one end or in the middle? It all depends on close the metal pawn can be placed to another group of flowers to claim them in the second phase of play. Too close and whilst the player will claim those flowers, the metal token might to far from other flowers to claim them. Too far, and the player might not be able to claim enough of them or any at all because his opponent has a pawn placed closer. After that, Lacuna is a numbers game. Since there are only seven flowers in a colour set, a player only needs to take four of them to hold the majority and claim the point. Consequently, a player cannot simply place his metal pawns at random if he wants to win. He does need to think about the best, or at least, the optimal places, to put them.

Physically, Lacuna is a lovely looking game. It comes in a sturdy tube, the cloth mat is clean and simple, and both the flower tokens and metal pawns are attractive. However, the tube does make the game difficult to store on the shelf along with other board games as much as it does make it stand out. The rulebook is underwritten, not defining quite exactly where the line is drawn between flowers in the game’s first phase. Is it from the middle or any edge? This can matter in play and the players will need to decide on a house rule. The distribution system of using the tube to sprinkle the flower tokens is cute, but there is always the chance that the flower tokens will roll off the table and the players will find themselves on their knees, looking for them on the floor.

Unfortunately, Lacuna is a game that will quickly outstay its welcome. Not because it is a bad game. It is not. Rather, it is charming and simple, and easy to teach and play, but it lacks depth. It is relying upon the attractiveness of its components—and they are very pretty—rather than game play to sell itself. At its worst, Lacuna is slightly fiddly and irksome trying to work out if a line is clear or which is the nearest metal pawn. At its best, Lacuna is cozy and calming, a perfect five or ten minutes between longer, deeper games. Its simplicity and attractiveness make it suitable for play with children and family members who do not play board games, but for veteran board gamer, Lacuna will likely live up to its true meaning.

Friday Filler: 7 Wonders Dice

It is surprising to realise that 7 Wonders is over fifteen years old. Published by Repos Production, it was the 2011 winner and the very first winner of the Spiel des Jahres Kenner spiel des Jahres, the award for the Connoisseur’s Game of the Year. This is not the only award it would win, though its is the most prestigious. It is a civilisation-themed, card-drafting, card development, and hand management game in which each player controls the fate of one the great cities of the Ancient World. Their aim, over the course of three acts, is to create a high scoring city, including building the Ancient Wonder that the city is famous for. The seven are, of course, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, each stage of which provides a mix of bonuses in game and points at the end of the game. 7 Wonders offered multiple ways to score and thus win. Defeat your neighbours with the largest military, being the richest city with the most gold, develop the most advanced science, spread the most culture, and so on. What is particularly notable about 7 Wonders is that because it concerns the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it supports seven players, which is a rarity for most board games. Unlike most civilisation board games, it also plays without a map, and it can be played in thirty minutes—even less with some familiarity. It is also played simultaneously. Lastly, when you play, it feels like you are telling the story of the city; whether you were invaded by a neighbour or retaliated later on, if you built a temple, developed a market, established important and powerful guilds, and so on. Of course, since its original publication, 7 Wonders has had numerous expansions and even a two-player version, but now it has a dice game.

7 Wonders Dice plays both exactly like 7 Wonders and exactly unlike 7 Wonders. Like 7 Wonders, it is designed to played by up to seven players, is played simultaneously, can be played in thirty minutes or less, and player controls the fate of a city home to one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. Unlike 7 Wonders, the game play of 7 Wonders Dice revolves around dice—as the game’s title suggests—and the results are not tracked by cards drafted and played, but by results of dice shaken that are recorded on player city boards. 7 Wonders Dice is actually a ‘Roll & Write’ rather than a straight dice game.

The game consists of ten dice, seven boards, seven dry-erase pencils, seven cloths, one box, scoreboard, three player aids, and a rulebook. All ten dice have different symbols on their faces, matching resources in the game. Seven of the dice—three grey and one each of blue, red, yellow, and green—are the starter dice. The colours match the colour of the cards in 7 Wonders. Thus, blue for culture, red for military, yellow for merchants, and green for science, whilst the grey cards are basic resource cards like the brown cards in 7 Wonders. The black, white, and purple dice are special dice. These only come into play when tracks on the University are completed and actually replace the base dice. The black die is the Spy and enables a player to cross off spaces in the buildings on his board; the white die grants access to the Gallery of Leaders and will help speed up construction; and the purple die allows access to Guild Court.

Each board is divided into two parts. The bottom part represents the city’s economy and is where a player tracks what resources he has access to in the city’s Warehouse and how much money he has in the Gold Reserve. The upper part is the city itself and here there are seven areas. These are the city’s blue-coloured Agora where culture is tracked; yellow-coloured Market where gold is generated; red-coloured Eastern Barracks and Western Barracks from where a player launch attacks against his neighbours and defend against attacks from his neighbours; green University where the special dice are unlocked; and purple Guild Court where a player can gain Victory Points from progress made by his neighbours. In addition, each board for its city’s Wonder and a set of three bonuses that can be gained by completing buildings.

At the start of the game, each player receives a board and a dry-erase pencil. A random player places the starting seven dice in the box. This box is the cleverest part of the game. It comes with a lid and when the lid is on, it looks like, and is called, the Forum. The bottom of the box is divided into four quadrants. These are priced from zero to three and separated by raised ridges. The Forum is shaken in a circular direction and the lid removed. The dice will now be distributed between the four quadrants. The face up symbols on the dice are what is available to buy at the Forum that turn and the value of the quadrant they are in determines how much they will cost to purchase that turn. A player can purchase only one die per turn and more than one player can purchase the same die.

Once each player has decided on the die he wants to purchase, he can one of three things with it. First, he can use it construct a building. Each building has one more or tracks showing what can be built next as well as the cost that has to be paid in addition to the price at the Forum. Construction cost can be offset by resources, but these need to be purchased and marked off in the Warehouse. Once done though, they are permanent and a player will not need to keep purchasing their resource over and over. Second, he can build a stage of his city’s Wonder and gain its benefits. This does not require a die to do so, but simply resources and gold. Third and last, a player can pass instead of selecting a die and receive three coins.

When a player completely fills in a single building and gained its benefits, there is an extra bonus to be gained. Once a player has filled in a total of three buildings and gained all three bonuses, the players are allowed one more turn before the game ends. At the end of the game, each player totals up the number of Victory Points earned from filled in spaces in the buildings across his city. The player with the most Victory Points is the winner. In comparison to 7 Wonders, determining which neighbouring cities defeated each other is slightly more complex, but otherwise scoring is a lot simpler in 7 Wonders Dice.

7 Wonders Dice faces the same problems as 7 Wonders in that it is not easy to teach or learn its nuances. The basics are fine—shake the dice, spend a die, and so on, but initially there is likely to be a lot of hand holding. Further, , the adaptation of 7 Wonders into the ‘Roll & Write’ 7 Wonders Dice has come at a cost. Gone is the interaction between neighbouring players in terms of purchasing resources, and instead, there is the ability of neighbouring players to invest in military defence that reduces the Victory Points gained by neighbour in his military offence. Gone is the ability to tell a story. There is no sense of a city being built, features being added, and it being developed along side the efforts to build the Wonder. This is not helped by the fact that the differences between one city and another are slight. They are there, but nowhere as distinctive as they are in 7 Wonders.

This is not to say that there is sense of progress to the game, more so when one or more of the special dice is purchased and they replace the base game, representing the city needing more sophisticated resources as they do in 7 Wonders. It is relatively slight though. On the plus side, 7 Wonders Dice is compact compared to 7 Wonders and has fewer components, making it easier to set up and play, as well as teach.

Physically, 7 Wonders Dice is a well presented. Everything is of good quality and bright and breezy and the rulebook is well written. Care will be needed to ensure that the boards—both the city boards and the scoreboards—are wiped clean after each play lest they mark permanently.

7 Wonders Dice plays fast and it plays simultaneously, both great features it shares with 7 Wonders. Yet it lacks nuance and the differences between the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that made 7 Wonders so good in the first place, that of developing a civilisation, of attempting to win with different civilisations, of trying out their differing strategies, and ultimately telling a story. 7 Wonders Dice ultimately feels like 7 Wonders-themed game than an actual 7 Wonders game. 7 Wonders Dice is likeable, but not likeable enough to warrant coming back to too often.

Peninsular Peregrinations

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, beginning with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania came with two maps and explored elements more commonly found in traditional train games—stocks and shares in railroad companies and the advance of railway technology. This was followed by Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West, which provided two maps exploring a common theme—telegraphing each player’s intended placement of their trains; then by Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, which focused on borders and connecting them; and lastly, by Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy which examines two ways in which long routes affect game play. Thematically, the next entry in the series is connected by peninsulas.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea gives the Ticket to Ride fan with another Asian map and another European map, both of them depicting peninsulas and offering two new, and quite different ways to play Ticket to Ride. The standard game play remains—draw Destination Tickets and attempt to connect them via various routes between cities using sets of Train Cards that match the route colour, scoring points for both claiming routes completing the Destination Tickets. On each turn a player can still draw two Train Car Cards, either from those face up or from the deck, play Train Car Cards to claim a route, or draw new Destination Tickets. Or not, because in this expansion, there are limits placed upon when a player can draw Destination Tickets, and this is not the only way in which Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea differs from either the base game for Ticket to Ride or other map sets.

Of course, Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea requires the base game for its train pieces and scoring tokens, and both of its maps are designed to be played by between two and five players. The Iberia map includes one-hundred-and-ten Train Car Cards, fifty-four Festival Cards, a Ticket Draft Card, and fifty Destination Ticket Cards. The map itself depicts the Iberian Peninsula, primarily Spain and Portugal, but routes over the Pyrenees into southwestern France and ferry routes across the western Mediterranean to Palma, capital of the Spanish island of Mallorca. There is nothing radical or different about the map. Rather, the game play is different. This begins with the set-up. After the standard number of Train Car Cards are dealt to the players, the fifty-four Festival Cards are shuffled into the deck of Train Car Cards and the Ticket Draft Card is inserted into the combined deck. The players are dealt a total of Destination Ticket Cards. Instead of deciding to keep several of them and discard the rest, each player drafts on passes the remaining Destination Ticket Cards to the player on his left. This is done until each player has six Destination Ticket Cards, at which point, he can chose to discard two. This will mean that a player will get to see most of the Destination Ticket Cards that the other players have rejected and have some idea as what they have kept. There is the luck of the draw in drawing Destination Ticket Cards in any version of Ticket to Ride, but this draft mechanic randomises the draw even further, and it makes it difficult for a player to tailor his Destination Ticket Cards so that they fall along similar routes. Yet, Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea adds an extra twist to this.

When the Ticket Draft Card is drawn from the deck of Train Car Cards, a second draft takes exactly like the first, but going in the opposite direction. This has a player draft six new Destination Ticket Cards and keep four. It forces a player to consider eight new destinations that he has to connect and again they may not fall along similar routes. It also forces a player to marshal his train pieces since he knows will need some in the latter half of the game to complete the new Destination Ticket Cards. This also has another effect, which is to prevent a player from claiming as many routes as he can to speed up the end of the game. Up until this point, the players have not been allowed to draw new Destination Ticket Cards, but the other effect of the Ticket Draft Card is that now they can. However, with eight Destination Ticket Cards in hand, there is going to be less diving for new Destination Ticket Cards in the hope of scoring big.

The other means of scoring that Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea adds is Festival Cards. When drawn from the Train Car Card deck, a Festival Card is placed on the edge of the board nearest to the Festival City mentioned on the Festival Card. Many of the cities have multiple associated Festival Cards and when drawn these placed in a stack. When player claims a Route that connects to a Festival City, he can take all of the available Festival Cards for that city. At the end of the game, a player scores points for each set of Festival Cards he has for each city. This is a set collection mechanic similar to the railroad shares for the Pennsylvania map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania.

Of the two new mechanics in Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea, for the Iberia map, the draft mechanic and the Ticket Draft Card are better than the Festival Cards mechanic. The draft mechanic alters some of the fundamentals of play and forces a player to think in the long term, husbanding his train pieces as important resources not knowing how many he will need towards the end of the game, and knowing that at some point the scoring opportunities are going to get more complicated. The Festival Cards does offer extra scoring opportunities that are easier because a player can claim routes even if they are not on any of his Destination Ticket Cards, but is just a bit busy and adds clutter around the edges of what is a large board.

The South Korea map is noticeably different and has a direct effect on play. This is because instead of the route colours being distributed across the map, they are clumped together in zones. There are a few grey routes as you would expect, but otherwise, all of the red routes are together in a zone, all of the blue routes are together in a zone, and so on. This has an immediate effect upon drawing Train Car Cards, because no matter what colour Train Car Cards a player draws, he is signalling which zone he wants to claim a route in.

In addition to the new map, the South Korea expansion includes fifteen Express Train Cards, forty-four Destination Ticket Cars, a Province Mat, and a province Scoring Card. The first rule that the South Korea expansion adds is the same draft mechanic in the Iberia map, but not the Ticket Draft Card. The second is for the Express Train Cards. Each player is given three of these, marked ‘+1’, ‘+2’, and ‘+3’. Each can be used once per game to either increase the number of Destination Ticket Cards a player can draw or the number of Train Car Cards a player can draw. This will give a player a one-time boost when each is played.

A player has another action that he can do after claiming a route. This is to place an extra train car on the Province Board. The Province Board is marked with several lines matching the colours of the Train Car Card and numbered from one to eight. The Train Car must be placed on both the line corresponding to the colour of the route just claimed and on the number equal to the length of the route just claimed. A player can also expend extra Train Car Cards to claim a higher number. If that number has already been claimed, the Train Car is placed on next free number of a lower value instead. An Express Train Card can also be expended to claim a higher number. At the end of the game, each player totals the combined value for the numbers claimed on each line and is awarded points according to their rank.

The South Korea map is a simpler, more direct map than Iberia. It rewards faster, more efficient play because the competition to claim routes is more open. Players telegraph to each other the zones where they want to claim routes when they draw Train Car Cards of a particular colour and so the race to claim routes within a zone can become tighter. Similarly, there is a race to claim routes because having done so, a player can claim numbers on the Province Mat that will contribute towards their final score. The Express Train Cards do give players a one-off advantage each time they are used, so should not be wasted. Overall, the South Korea map is much more competitive in comparison to many other Ticket to Ride Maps.

In addition, both maps offer something to the wider Ticket to Ride family. The drafting mechanics from the Iberia map could be used with other maps as could the Province Mat from the South Korea map. The drafting mechanic would have a greater effect upon play since it counters common game play elements such as collecting Destination Ticket Cards with roughly the same routes, playing Train Cars in order to speed up the end of the game, and drawing Destination Ticket Cards late in the game to score extra points along already claimed routes. Certainly, it would be interesting to see these rules implemented elsewhere and their effects examined, perhaps in a book dedicated to new rules for Ticket to Ride?

Physically, as you would expect, the production values for Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea are excellent. Everything is of a high quality and both looks good and feels good in the hand. The only item that could have been a better quality is the Province Mat, which is on card and not mounted. It is a pity that there is not room on the South Korea map for it either.

Given that Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea changes the way in which Ticket to Ride is played—the Iberia map in particular with the far reaching, even structural effects of the drafting rules—this is not an expansion for the casual player of Ticket to Ride. Rather it is for the fan of the game who wants to be challenged in new ways and the board game player who wants to be challenged more than the standard play of Ticket to Ride offers. Of the two maps, the Iberia map is the better, but the South Korea map is still good. Ticket to Ride Map Collection 8: Iberia + South Korea continues to offer new ways to play a tried and tested, even venerable format.

Friday Filler: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

The film Rear Window is a classic thriller, regarded as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best. It combines claustrophobia and voyeurism in a murder mystery which plays out from one point of view, that of Professional photojournalist L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies. Following an accident whilst getting a front cover shot, he is confined to a wheelchair with a leg in a cast in his Greenwich Village apartment. With nothing to do and armed with a telephoto lens, he starts watching his neighbours whom he can see through the rear window of his apartment and into theirs. Sitting in the darkness he observes them going about their daily lives and as he becomes more obsessed about them, he suspects that one of them has committed a murder. It is a fantastic set-up for a film and if you have never seen it, you really should. It has parties, knives, bickering, laughing, weeping, music… and a mysterious trunk! In fact, you should definitely see it before playing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, a board game designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games. However, you can play the game without watching it because the set-up is simple and you are not actually playing the role of L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies and his friends, although they do play a part in the game.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is designed to be played by three to five players, aged thirteen and over, and be played in less than an hour. The game is about solving the mystery of what can be seen through the eponymous window. Sometimes it will be murder and sometimes it will be not. One player takes the role of the Director who randomly sets up the mystery (or the murder if the mystery is a murder), whilst the other players are Watchers, who over the course of four days (or rounds), look through their window into the apartments of their four neighbours. However, they know nothing about their neighbours—who they are, what they do, and what they are like—and this constitutes the mystery at the heart of the game (in addition to the murderer, if there is a murderer) that they need to solve by the end of the fourth day. The elements that make up this mystery are represented by Resident and Attribute Tokens. Of course, the Director knows everything, but can only communicate to the Watchers via the cards he plays from his hand. For the Watchers, interpreting these correctly is key to winning the game.

At the end of the game, if there is not a murder, both Watchers and Director win if the Watchers correctly guess all eight spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens behind the Director’s Screen on the Solution Board. Otherwise, they all lose. If there is a murder, the Watchers win if they correctly identify seven or eight of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and the identity of the Murderer. However, if the Watchers only correctly deduce six or seven of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and fail to identify the Murderer, then they lose and the Director wins. Lastly, if the Watchers only work six or fewer of identities of seven or eight of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and fail to work who the Murder is, then again, everyone loses. Thus, depending on the set-up, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is either a co-operative game or a semi-co-operative game.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window comes richly appointed. There are a Director Screen and a Watcher Screen, four Day Boards (one for each round), Solution Board, four Watcher Placards, seventy Window Cards, one-hundred-and-two tiles, forty-five Resident and Attribute Tokens, a Trunk Box, four wooden cubes, and the Rulebook. All of the components are of good quality, but the artwork is exceptional. Instead of using photographs from the film, the game uses painted illustrations which capture the period and feel for the film as well as the likenesses of the main cast on each of the four Watcher Placards. Even the front of the Rulebook replicates the photograph of the Grand Prix accident that L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies shot and which landed him in a wheelchair!

At the start of the game, the Director randomly draws eight Resident and Attribute Tokens and lays them out on the Solution Board he keeps behind his Director Screen. Any Tokens not used, go into the Trunk—a little cardboard trunk made to like the one used by the murderer in the film! Each day consists of three phases, the ‘Window Phase’, the ‘Deduction Phase’, and the ‘Scoring Phase’. In the ‘Window Phase’, the Director draws eight Window cards and plays them on to the current Day Board to represent what L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies (and the Watchers) can see from his apartment. Each Window card depicts a scene in a neighbouring apartment and shows an array of elements. One can show a woman in a yellow dress about to move a dining chair, there is a meal and a glass on the dining table, whilst on the wall there is a painting of a waterfall and a lake, whilst on another there is a low table upon which stands two full cocktail glasses and a very full jewellery case behind which on the wall is the shadow of two women clasping hands. Notably, there is even one of Hitchcock himself adjusting the hands on a clock that stands on a mantlepiece next to some books, whilst a phonograph plays in the foreground, just like his cameo in the film. There is no text on these cards and both Watchers and Director are free to interpret the images in any way that they like.

Most of the time, Window cards are played face up, but they can be played face down as if the window the Watchers are looking through is closed. The Director will do this if he feels that a Window card cannot impart any clues (or even too many clues if there is a Murderer!). If a Director does not like the Window cards he has drawn, he can use a Cut token to discard and redraw as many as he likes, but this can only be done three times.

In the ‘Deduction Phase’, the Watchers ponder the current Day Board that the Director filled out in the ‘Window Phase’. They can also look at any previous Day Boards as there may be linked clues, but on the current Day Board, after some discussion and deliberation between themselves, they place four Resident Tokens and four Attribute Tokens indicating who they think are involved in the mystery. If there is a murder and the Watchers think they know who the murderer is, then they also add a purple token to indicate that. The Watchers can also use the Watcher Placards, of which there are four, representing the film’s main cast. For example, the L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies Watcher Placard is ‘Hand me the binoculars’ which forces the Director to discard a Window card placed face down and replace it, whilst the Lisa Fremont Watcher Placard is ‘Breaking and Entering’ which enables the Watchers to ask the Director which is the most important feature on a particular Window card.

In the ‘Scoring Phase’, the Director compares the four Resident Tokens and four Attribute Tokens on the current Day Board with those on his Solution Board and marks how many the Watchers have got right.

The play of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is about imparting information that the other players will try and guess correctly, although that will change slightly if there is a murder, in which case the Director needs to impart enough information so that the Watchers can get some details of the solution correct and so avoiding having everyone lose, but not enough that they guess everything, including the identity of the murderer and so win. Not every play through of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window involves a murder, but when it does, it changes the way in which the game is played. The communication is done silently by the Director via the Window cards and since they are randomly drawn each Day, he will not always have the most obvious cards to play. He will thus be trying to play the best Window cards that he can, the ones that he thinks will impart the clues he wants to get across. After that, it is down to the Watchers and their interpretation.

As has already been pointed out, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a very fine looking game. The rulebook itself is very well written and takes the players through the set-up process and the play of the game with ease. There is even advice on how to set up the tray that holds all of the tokens and there is an FAQ at the back. The rules are simple and clearly written.

The film Rear Window is the last film that you would think suitable for a board game adaptation. Yet it works and it works well, it has a fantastic sense of claustrophobia, voyeurism, and potential for the misreading of the situation, just as the film does. Plus, there is that question it constantly asks us, “How well do we know our neighbours?” Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a fine social deduction game that fans of the classic film will love and players of similar games will enjoy.

Friday Filler: The Parks and Recreation Party Game

The deputy director of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Indiana, Leslie Knope, is incredibly enthusiastic about her job, about the good works that government can do, about promoting the town (despite its sometimes less than perfect history), and life in general. Her boss, Ron Swanson, the Parks and Recreation Department director, as a staunch libertarian, believes otherwise and would in fact prefer to shrink the government, including his department. The rest of the department vary in their enthusiasm and attention for their roles in the office, but they have their own projects that they need to complete. Even Ron. This is the set-up for the Parks and Recreation Party Game, based upon the sitcom. It is all about the Waffles. If they Complete Projects, the Parks and Recreation Department employees will earn Waffle Rewards. Sometimes—and more than sometimes—they need the help of their fellow employees, who have to help, and if they take the credit, then all of the Waffles are theirs. The Parks and Recreation Party Game is designed to be played by three to six players and is published by Funko Games.

The Parks and Recreation Party Game is played over several rounds. Each round, a player attempts to complete part of project, with or without the help of another player. If with, the other player must help and cannot act in that round. When a project is completed, the players who helped and are recognised for doing so—that is, they have their tokens on the project—get Waffle Rewards. The Waffle Rewards have numbers on their reverse that are kept hidden until the end of the game. The game ends when ‘Li’l Sebastian’, Pawnee’s much loved celebrity miniature horse, eats the last of his waffles. At which point, the players turn over their Waffle Rewards, count their scores, and the player with highest is the winner.

The Parks and Recreation Party Game consists of six Character Cards, a Project Deck, a ‘To Do’ deck, a ‘Visitor’ deck, a supply of Waffles, and a cute ‘Li’l Sebastian’ figure. The six Character Cards each show a character from the television series—Leslie Knope, Ron Swanson, Donna Meagle, April Ludgate, Andy Dwyer, and Tom Haverford—and is marked with a symbol representing ‘Personnel’, ‘Music’, ‘Catering’, ‘Sponsorship’, ‘Public Support’, and ‘Cut Red Tape’. The ‘To Do’ cards are numbered, show one or two sets of two or three of the aforementioned symbols. They also have quote from the series. The Project Deck consists of large cards which show the type and number of symbols required to complete each part of the project, a bench where the characters can sit to indicate that they have helped complete the project, and symbols that indicate whether ‘Li’l Sebastian’ eats Waffles and moves the game closer to its end or if a new Visitor card has to be drawn. Every Project Deck is illustrated much like the paintings that depict famous scenes in Pawnee history and are hung on the walls of Pawnee City Hall. Visitor Cards are drawn at the start of the round and remain in play until a new Project indicates that a new one is drawn. They represent other characters from the television series visiting the Parks and Recreation Department and grant various effects. For example, the ‘Chris Traeger City Hall Visitor’ card lets every player take a Waffle Reward, except the player with the most Waffle rewards’ and the ‘Tammy Swanson 2 City Hall Visitor’ card forces everyone to play with their hand of ‘To Cards’ in front of them. There are also several tokens for each of the characters, Pawnee Tokens to indicate that part of project has been completed, and Waffle Reward tokens.

At the start of a round, each player, assigned a Character card, has a hand of five ‘To Do’ cards and there will be ‘Project cards’ in play on the table. On a round, each player selects one of the ‘To Do’ cards in their hands and places it face down on the table. These cards are revealed simultaneously and then in order, from the lowest number to the highest. What a player is trying to do is match the symbols and their number on his ‘To Do’ card with those on a ‘Project card’. If he can, the requirement is fulfilled and he gets to place a character marker on the ‘Project card’. If he cannot, he goes round the table and finds a player who has played a ‘To Do’ card with the symbols that he needs and gets that player to help him by using his ‘To Do’ card. If the requirement is fulfilled, both players place their character marker on the ‘Project card’. The player who is asked for this help has no choice in this and the act of helping serves as his action for the round. This is not as bad as it sounds because it gives both players the opportunity to gain Waffle Reward.

Lastly, if no other player can help complete a ‘Project card’, then the acting player can turn to ‘Jerry’ Gergich, the much put upon and gently mocked character in Parks and Recreation. In the Parks and Recreation Party Game, he serves as a wild card and can be used to stand in for any symbol that a player needs. However, he can only be used once in a round.

Waffle Rewards are earned once a ‘Project card’ is completed. The player whose character marker is to the left on the completed ‘Project card’ will gain a Waffle Reward which is more likely to have a better scoring value. What this means is that it is better to start a ‘Project card’, that is, ne ‘assigned’ it, rather than work on it latter as the scoring potential is higher. However, some ‘To Do’ cards are ‘Promotions’ and let a player move his character marker to the left, gaining the spot with the higher scoring potential, effectively taking credit for the project despite not being assigned to it. If at the end of a round, a player has been unable to act, most likely because the ‘Project card’ he was planning to work on has been fulfilled, he can discard as many cards from his hand at once and refresh them.

Play continues like this until ‘Li’l Sebastian’ has eaten all of his Waffles. This ends the game and the players turn over all of their Waffle Rewards and add their scores. The player with highest total is the winner.

Physically, the Parks and Recreation Party Game is well presented. The cards use photographs of the characters from the television series and the artwork on the ‘Project’ cards is decent. The rules are clearly written, although they leap straight into set-up without any explanation. The figure of ‘Li’l Sebastian’ is cute.

The Parks and Recreation Party Game does not feel like a party game. It is not particularly social in its play or interaction and there is nothing physical about it. Its character is more amiable than anything else, its forced help mechanic actually giving both players involved the chance to score. That does set up an opportunity for a player to gain a promotion and move his character to a better scoring position, but that is about as sharp as play gets. As much as that feels like the office politics of Parks and Recreation, the game is lacking. The problem is that none of the characters have any character. The personalities of the characters seen on screen are not reflected in the game play. That is, they have no special abilities that match their personality and they feel all the same. In fact, the ‘Visitor’ cards have more personality than the characters and that ultimately, is the undoing of the Parks and Recreation Party Game. Without any variation in the characters and without any special abilities to reflect their personalities from the television series, there is no reason to want to play the Parks and Recreation Party Game more than once because it does not enough variation between games.

The Parks and Recreation Party Game is a game for the Parks and Recreation fan rather than the experienced gamer. There is nothing wrong with that, since not everyone is an experienced gamer. Yet even the Parks and Recreation fan is going to bored of this game fairly quickly, and ultimately, the Parks and Recreation Party Game is a missed opportunity.

Friday Filler: Maskmen

The mini-games from Oink Games pack a lot of game play into small packages. In fact, the publisher’s small boxes have become as much part of its signature trade design as a design challenge for its game designers who have to pack their creations into these small boxes. The result is that the games themselves are easy to fit on the shelf and easy to fit into a pocket or bag to take to the next game session. And another aspect of Oink Games’ designs is that they have been around longer than most gamers realise, much longer than the publisher’s breakout title, Scout, published in 2019 and the Origins Awards Best Card Game Winner and a Spiel des Jahres Nominee in 2022. Maskmen is a much older game, having been published in 2014, and shares some similarities with Scout. In both games, the players must play cards (or pieces) of an equal or higher value of the previous set already played. Of course, both mechanics and theme differ. Scout is a ‘card shedding’ game, whereas Maskmen is ‘ladder climbing’ game and in Scout, the players were trying to have their performers outperform each other in the circus, in Maskmen, the players are promotors trying to have their wrestlers gain dominance over each other and win Lucha libre seasons.

Maskmen is designed to be played by two to six players, aged nine plus, and can be played in twenty minutes. Inside the box are sixty Wrestler Cards, thirty Strength Markers, and twelve Score Markers. The Wrestler Cards represent the six different wrestlers in different colours, ten each. The Strength Markers match the colours of the Wrestler Cards and there are five of each colour. Both Wrestler Cards and Strength Markers depict the masks worn by the luchadores, the masked Mexican wresters, and importantly, the Wrestler Cards are not numbered. The Score Markers are valued ‘+2’, ‘+1’, and ‘-1’, and are awarded at the end of each season for the winner, the runner-up, and the player in last place. The game is played over four rounds or Seasons and the player with the most points at the end of the four is the winner.

At the start of each season, each player is dealt a hand of Wrestler Cards, the amount varying according to the number of players. The first player—initially determined by the most recent person to have viewed a wrestling match, but on subsequent seasons, the player who came last in the previous season—plays one Wrestler Card. This puts the Strength Marker for one luchador into the ring. Subsequently, the players can play their Wrestler Cards in one of two ways. The first is to establish a luchador whose dominance over any luchador has yet to be established. This must be over another luchador and done with one more Wrestler Card than was previous played, up to a maximum of three cards. The other is to play Wrestler Cards on a luchador who is stronger than a previously played luchador. If a player cannot or does not want to play any more Wrestler Cards, he can ‘throw in the towel’ and his participation in the Season is over.

What is important here is that the Wrestler Cards are not numbered and instead, it is the number of Wrestler Cards played on a luchador versus another luchador that establishes the dominance of one over another. The dominance of one luchador over another is tracked using the Strength Markers. These depict the masks of Maskmen’s six luchadores and have little cutouts where each luchador’s mouth and chin are visible. These cutouts match the curve of the top of each luchador’s head, which means they can be stacked up the table to show which one is on top of another and has dominance over the luchadores below him. Once dominance has been established for one luchador over another, it cannot be changed during the season. However, it is not always possible to establish the ladders, or hierarchies, of dominance of every luchador over another and this can lead to the creation of multiple ladders on the table, showing the relationships between some luchadores, but not others.

Ultimately, a season will come to an end when one player has played all of his cards for that season. He wins the season and the ‘+2’ winner’s belt. The runner-up is determined by whomever has the least cards in his hand, and the loser, the one with the most.

Although the aim of every play is to empty his hand, he need not rush to do so. There is scope in Maskmen to be tactical, a player might hold three Wrestler Cards of one colour until it is the right moment to establish a luchador’s dominance rather than rushing them out early, playing smaller numbers of cards to maintain dominance, and so on. It is not too tactical though, just enough to keep a veteran player happy and a casual player intrigued. The game is at its most casual at two players, random at five or six with the cards divided among so many players, and cutthroat at three of four.

The theme of battling luchadores is a way for the players to empty their hands of Wrestler Cards, but whilst quite light, it is a stronger than in Scout. This is because the theme in Scout does not affect or enable the telling of stories, whereas in Maskmen, the theme of one luchador being stronger or better than another is physically depicted in the ladder of masks on the table and players can, if they want, tell the story of how any one luchador performs over a whole season. Plus, over the course of the game, a luchador of one colour might be at the bottom of the hierarchy in one season, only to bounce back in the next season and narratively, fight his way to the top.

Physically, Maskmen is a sturdy tight package. The artwork on the Wrestler Cards and the Strength Markers is striking and simple, whilst the rules pamphlet is easy to read. The stacking of the Strength Markers which show the hierarchy of dominance is not as easy to understand as it could be and the owner of Maskmen should definitely play through a few hands himself to understand how it works before teaching it to others.

Maskmen is a fun little filler, which makes use of an engaging theme to drive its game play. Its basic play is easy to teach (though some elements not quite so much) and it offers some depth beyond that, but not too much, making suitable for family and casual play as well as play by experienced players too.

Friday Filler: Don’t Talk To Strangers

School has finished for the day, but your parents are not going to be home from work for hours yet. As a ‘latchkey kid’ you have to make your own way home or to the library or the pool or the afterschool pep rally, and that would be fine any other day. After all, your parents trust you and they have warned you to be careful of strangers, so you have been successfully making your way home from school for ages and without any problem whatsoever. Not today though! There are proper strangers on the prowl for little kids today. Otherworldly strangers with spindly, hairless green bodies and big black, unblinking eyes. In other words, little green men from outer space ready to abduct the children and whisk them away in their flying saucers. This is the set-up for Don’t Talk To Strangers, which is published by by Cryptozoic Entertainment and is part of the first trilogy of games—along with Let’s Dig for Treasure and Let’s Summon Demons—based on the art of Steven Rhodes, noted for its sly, subversive dig at the social attitudes and fears of the seventies and eighties. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is designed to be played by between one and four players, aged fourteen and up. The aim of the game is for a player to get as many of the thirteen kids under his charge to the homes, pool, park, pep rally, or library where they will be safe—for the most part—whilst avoiding their being abducting and perhaps ensuring that other kids get abducted instead, and ultimately, at the end of the game, score as many points as possible. A game can be played in twenty minutes or more, depending on the number of players. The aim of the game is for a player to get as many of the thirteen kids under his charge to the homes, pool, park, pep rally, or library where they will be safe—for the most part—whilst avoiding their being abducting and perhaps ensuring that other kids get abducted instead, and ultimately, at the end of the game, score as many points as possible.

Don’t Talk To Strangers consists of an eleven by seven-and-a-half-inch, double-sided board, a deck of one hundred cards, ten Stranger Tokens, fifty-two Kid Tokens, one Flying Saucer Coin, and a twelve-page mini-rulebook. The board shows the various homes, other locations, streets, bus stops, and Stranger spaces surrounding the kid’s school. Most locations in the board will score a player points at the end of the game, from the seven points of North End Mansion to the single point of the Library or spots in the South Pool. In addition, some locations grant extra benefits if a player has a kid there. For each kid in the Library, a player will increase his hand size by one, whilst for each kid in the South Park, he can increase the number of kids he has in place. The Stranger spaces are where the Strangers will land when a ‘Stranger Sighting’ card is played. Any Kid on a Stranger space when this occurs is abducted and out of the game and the presence of the Stranger on the Stranger space blocks movement through that space. The board is double-sided, the ‘Board B’ having a more complex layout and more Stranger spaces.

Most of the game’s cards are movement cards. For example, ‘Skateboard’ allows a player to move a Kid three spaces; ‘School Bus’ enables him to move a kid between any two Bus Stops; and ‘Hop the Fence’ lets him move a kid one space, but this can effectively be through a wall! A ‘Stranger Sighting’ means that a Stranger has been spotted and has to be added to the board on a ‘Stranger Spot’, whilst a ‘Saucer’ card forces a player to target a kid on the board, who can be from anywhere on the board, including those on a scoring space. He then flips the Flying Saucer Coin and if it lands ‘Saucer’ face up, the Kid is abducted out the game.

The game begins with each player having three cards and a Kid on the ‘Start’ space which is the school. On his turn, a player can do one of two things. One is to add a Kid to the ‘Start’ space, the other is to play a card. A player can only have one Kid in play. A Kid on a scoring location does not count towards this limit and a player can increase the number by gettinga Kid to the South Park location. Most of the time a player will play a card, move a Kid, and draw back up to his hand. However, if a ‘Stranger Sighting’ or a ‘Saucer’ card, he must play them immediately and resolve their effects. It is possible for a player to draw multiple ‘Stranger Sighting’ or ‘Saucer’ cards depending how the deck has been shuffled.

The continues until one player has managed to get all of his Kids to scoring locations, but very much more likely, all of the Stranger location cards have been filled—ten on ‘Board A’, eight on the more difficult ‘Board B’. At this point, each player totals the score he has from the Kids he has on scoring locations, and the player with highest score wins.

None of this game play is very challenging—if at all nor does it offer very in the way of variation. This makes the game better suited to a younger audience or a family audience, whilst the lack of variation means that more experienced players are unlikely to want to play it again.

Physically, Don’t Talk To Strangers is well presented. The rulebook is short and easy to read, and includes an example of play as well as explanations of what the various cards do. The artwork, with its bright, bold colours, is excellent, Steve Rhodes’ illustrations are excellent.

Don’t Talk To Strangers is underwhelming, both in terms of its limited game play and its humour. One of the pleasures of the games in this line is Steve Rhodes’ illustrations which are invariably sly and subversive. Not so in this game where only one card stood out, which is ‘New Step-Dad’ card which enables a player to move any Kid, including that of an opponent, from a Home or Mansion location to an empty Home or Mansion location, so changing their score valuable at game’s end. This has a witty element of social commentary that will hit home for some players—whether children or adults of a certain age—and which the other cards in the game lack.

At best, Don’t Talk To Strangers is an average filler game, at worst, the one in a gamer’s library which completes his collection of all six Steve Rhodes-themed games from Cryptozoic Entertainment. It is certainly far from the best in the series.

Friday Filler: Flip 7

Flip 7 is a simple, push your luck card game. It is easy to learn and easy to teach and it plays fast. It also suitable for families, and if truth be told, it is really simple. Yet there is a tension to the game play that really can keep the players on the edge of their seat from one turn to the next. Published by The Op Games—responsible for the highly pleasurable Tacta—it is a designed for play by three to seven players, aged eight and up, and a game can be played though in roughly fifteen to twenty-five minutes. The aim of the game is to be the first person to score two hundred points. Points are scored based on the total value of the cards a player has in front of him. Each turn, a player receives a card from the Dealer and turns it over, adding it to the cards he has in front of him. If he receives a card with the same value as a card he already has, he is bust and out of the round, scoring nothing, but if a player receives seven cards that do not match, he scores a ‘Flip 7’, and is awarded bonus points.

Flip 7 comes in a bright and breezy box which contains just ninety-four cards and a rules leaflet. Eighty-one of these cards consist of numbers ranging from zero to twelve. The number of cards with each value is equal to value on the cards. Thus, there are ten cards marked with ten, seven cards marked with seven, three cards marked with three, and so on. The exception to this is, of course, the card marked with zero, of which there is just the one.

The other cards are Action cards and Modifier cards. There are three types of Action card. ‘Flip Three!’ forces a player accept and flip three more cards, whilst ‘Freeze!’ forces a player to end his participation in the round and bank the total score. When he receives a ‘Flip Three!’ or ‘Freeze!’ Action card, a player can play them on himself, but he can also play them on another player. A ‘Second Chance!’ Action card must be kept by the player who receives it and comes into play when he receives a duplicate value card, in which case both the ‘Second Chance!’ card and the duplicate value are discarded. A player can only use one ‘Second Chance!’ per round and if he receives a second, must give it to another player. The Modifier cards range in value from ‘+2’ to ‘+10’ and also include a ‘×2’ card. These do not count to the ‘Flip 7’ bonus, but will alter a player’s score for the round.

Set-up and play are simple. The cards are shuffled, and one person is designated the dealer, who in turn deals out a single card to each player and they place the cards in front of them or resolve any Action card. Each turn a player can decide to ‘Hit’ and receive another card or ‘Stay’ and not receive any further cards, ending his participation in the round. If a player receives a card whose value is equal to a card that he already he has, he is ‘bust’, which ends the round for him with no score. Play continues until all of the players have either gone ‘bust’ or decided to ‘Stay’, which ends the round. A round will end if a player achieves a ‘Flip 7’. The game continues until a player has scored two hundred points.

The risk and the push-your-luck aspect of Flip 7 lies in both the value of the cards and the number of them in the deck. Higher value cards score more points, of course, but there are more of them the higher the value, and thus there is a greater chance of a player receiving a duplicate card and being forced to go ‘bust’. So, a player wants the higher value cards for their scoring value, but is constantly wary of receiving duplicate cards and scoring no points at all. Conversely, the lower value cards will score fewer points, but there are fewer of them and the chance of a duplicate is lower. From the start of a round the player is aware of the number and values of the cards in the deck and as a round progresses, the cards his rival players have in front of them will also indicate how many cards there are left in the deck and what their values are going to be.

The tension between the desire to score points and the increasing possibility of going ‘bust’ and scoring no points is made that much more sharper because everyone can see what cards everyone else has in play. So, they can see how close they are to going ‘bust’ and feel that tension too. Is that player going to go ‘bust’ or is he going to be lucky and receive another card that pushes him one step further closer to a ‘Flip 7’? The luck of the draw can go the other way, of course, and a player might find himself going ‘bust’ after receiving just two or three cards! Further, as the rounds progress and the total scores rise, the tension also goes up as players attempt to catch up with their rivals—and the thing is, with the right cards and perhaps a Modifier card to two, it is entirely possible.

Physically, Flip 7 is nicely put together. The cards are big, bright, and easy to understand, whatever the age of the player. The rules are also clearly written and include scoring examples for the Modifier cards as well.

Flip 7 is really no more complex than Vingt-et-un or Blackjack, though of course, without the gambling aspect. It is a really simple game to play and understand, one that constantly asks a player to push his luck and wonder if another card is worth the risk. Flip 7 is a real filler of a game that just sometimes can be a real thriller of a game.

Friday Filler: Tacta

Tacta, published by The Op Games, is a game of connecting cards and covering them up, of twisting them and flipping to make the right connections, and ultimately, trying to be the one with most dots visible. The game play is incredibly simple to play and teach, but it can get slightly complex when trying to find the right place to place the cards. The playing time is about twenty minutes, it can be played on any size surface—even odd ones if there is other stuff on the table, and it is designed to be played by two to six players, aged seven and over. Quite simply, Tacta is a great filler game with decent replay value because of its simplicity.

What really stands out about Tacta are its cards. There are one-hundred-and-eight of these, double-sided and matt black except for the neon markings that line the edge of the cards and the various shapes that appear to be cut into the blackness of the cards—triangles, squares, and rectangles. Some of these are marked with dots and some are simple outlines. The look of the cards is simple, but amazing, almost as if they have burst out of the film, Tron. The cards are divided into six decks—coloured blue, green, orange, pink, purple, and red—of eighteen cards each and each deck is identical.

The aim of the game is simple and that is to have the most dots visible from your colour cards. Do that and a player wins. To do that, each player will be placing one card on his turn. This can be from the top or bottom of the deck—the cards are double-sided, and the card drawn must be placed so that one of its features, whether a triangle, square, or rectangle, covers up a feature on a card belonging to another player. Ideally this should with the dots showing and if it covers up another player’s feature with dots, then all the better, but a blank feature will still cover another player’s feature with dots and prevent them from being adding to that player’s final score. A player will also be thinking about how he can protect the features with dots on his cards from being covered over by the other players, so that there is defensive element to placement as well. There are few limits on card placement, the primary being that a card cannot cover another card when played and cannot connect to features that do not perfectly match.

Set-up itself is simple. Each player receives a deck and shuffles it, holding it in hand so that card can be drawn from the top and bottom of the deck rather being fanned out. The starting card is placed in the middle of the table. It has a simple white grid on it that allows any shape to be played onto it. After that, the players take it in turns to draw and play cards, the play area quickly filling with the cards in a tightly packed and connected sprawl. At the end of the game, everyone counts up the number of dots that are visible on their cards and the player with the highest total wins.

The core game play of Tacta is simple and easy to explain. However, this is not the only way to play and the game includes five alternate ways. There is an option for shorter playing time by removing cards from each player’s deck, playing as teams—dividing each deck between two players, and even a real time version in which everyone tries to empty their deck first and trigger scoring before anyone else can. This works well for larger groups. There is also a version where players share decks, but only score from their own colour, so they are trying to sabotage the player holding the other half of their deck, whilst still trying to score with what they have their own. The team play, free play, and sabotage play are the most out of the alternatives given.

Physically, Tacta is very black, from the box to the rulebook, all highlighted in the game’s neon colours. The rulebook is very easy to read and the cards simple to use, each deck also being marked with a symbol for the colour blind.

Tacta is a great filler. It is simple and easy to learn and teach, so is family friendly, but it can get cutthroat too as players aggressively hunt for their opponents’ dots to cover. Lastly, its stark neon on black design really gives it a presence on the table.

Friday Filler: Rafter Five

Everyone has agreed that the best way of getting off the island is to build a raft. However, nobody can agree on the best way to build a raft, or even how to build a raft. Whilst everyone has also agreed that the best way to get off the island with their treasure is the raft, the raft is so rickety that it is in danger of collapsing and dumping everyone into the sea. Fortunately, there are no sharks, but when you fall into the sea, it is everyone for themselves as they try to rescue their treasure. It is perfectly possible to rescue your own treasure, but not the treasures belonging to your fellow raft builders, and if you lose their treasure, they will get mad at you and throw you off the raft! This is the set-up for Rafter Five, a fast-playing dexterity game for one to six players, ages seven and up. Published by Oink Games—best known for the games Scout and Deep Sea Rescue—Rafter Five is a game that uses all of its components, including the box lid and base, looks great on the table, plays in twenty minutes or so (but probably faster depending on the dexterity of the players), and surprisingly for an Oink Games title, is not a squeeze to get back in the box!

Rafter Five consists of five Rafters, forty-two Treasure Chests, six Penalty Boards, one Raft Card, forty-two Lumber Cards, and the rules leaflet. The Rafters are the game’s meeples, ones that the players will move around from one turn to the next. They are much larger than standard meeples and vary in size and shape, tall, fat, thin, short, and really help to give the game much of its character. Plus, they feel good in the hand. The Treasure Chests come in six colours, so that each player has a set of seven. The Penalty Boards also come in six colours to match the Treasure Chests and have five slots marked with an ‘X’. If a player’s Penalty Board is filled up with the Treasure Chests of the other players, he loses and is out of the game. The Raft card forms the base for the players’ raft, whilst the Lumber Cards are slightly wavey lengths of card, marked with the sea on one side and wood on the other.

Set up is simple. The game’s box is turned upside down, placed in the centre of the table, and the lid to the box is placed on top, also upside down. The Raft Card is put on top of the lid, as are all five Rafters. Each player receives the Penalty Board and Treasure Chests of his colour. In two- and three-player games, each player will be given Penalty Boards and Treasure Chests of multiple colours.

The aim of Rafter Five is to build as big a raft as possible, whilst loading it up with treasure, without it collapsing. When it does collapse, the player who caused the collapse receives all of the Treasure Chests tipped into the sea. He keeps his own Treasure Chests to place again, but Treasure Chests belonging to the other players must be put onto his Penalty Board. If a player accrues five Treasure Chests belonging to other players on his Penalty Board, the game ends, and he is the loser, whilst everyone else wins! The game also ends when there are no more Lumber cards to place or all of the players have put their Treasure Chests on the raft. In either case, the player with the most Treasure Chests belonging to other players on his Penalty Board is the loser and everyone else wins.

On his turn, a player does three things. He picks up a single Rafter from the raft and then a Lumber Card. He must then place the Lumber Card on the raft and the Rafter on top of that. The Lumber Card must be placed so that part of it is on top of another Lumber Card on the raft (except on the first turn, when a player is free to place the Lumber card how he wants). Lastly, he put one of his Treasure Chests anywhere on the Lumber Card he just placed.

Rafter Five is as simple as that, but the longer a game goes on and the more that Lumber Cards and Treasure Cards are added, the more precarious the splay of the Lumber cards that make up the poorly constructed raft grows. The Rafters are the balancing factor, acting as a counterweight to lengths of Lumber Card hanging over the edge of the raft with their Treasure Chests perched precariously on their lengths. Picking the right one can the key to a tense, but safe turn, but pick the wrong one and everything goes tumbling into the sea! Placing a Treasure Chest where it is more likely to tip into the sea, such as at the end of a Lumber Card, dangling over the edge, is a legitimate move, but this highlights the key aspect to Rafter Five. Most dexterity games are about placing one thing or removing one thing to a stack. Rafter Five is about placing three—the Rafter, the Lumber Card, and the Treasure Chest!

Physically, Rafter Five is very nicely presented and packaged. The components are of good quality and the Rafter pieces are nice and sturdy in the hand, and ever so cute! The simplicity of the game means that the rules are easy to read and grasp.

Rafter Five does include a solo-mode, but it is more of a stacking puzzle than a game, so consequently less interesting. That said, the game plays well at whatever player count, with four or five being about right, and it is suited to play by the family, being very easy to teach and learn. Rafter Five is a great filler game, easy to learn, quick to play, but full of tension that grows and grows as more Lumber Cards are added to the raft.