Friday Faction: Everybody Wins

Board games have got big recently, as just about any newspaper headline on the subject will tell you, so much so that the headline has become a cliché. Yet there is some truth to the headline, for as long as anyone can imagine board games have always been popular, but board games really, really have got popular—and relatively recently. By recently, we mean the last forty years, and definitely the last thirty years as the board game evolved from something played during our childhoods to something that could be played and enjoyed by adults, who happened to be board game devotees. Then from this niche, the playing of board games as a hobby gained wider acceptance and moved into the mainstream to become an acceptable, even normal, pastime. Pioneered by classic titles such as Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride, board games have got big in the last few years. What these three designs have in common is that they all won the Spiel des Jahres, the German ‘Game of the Year Award’ which recognises family-friendly game design and promotes excellent games in the German market. To win the Spiel des Jahres is the equivalent of winning the Oscar for Best Picture. It is a mark of recognition not just for the game itself, but also for the designer and the publisher, and winning the Spiel des Jahres can mean tens of thousands of extra sales as everyone wants to try out the new critically acclaimed game. So, the question is, “What makes a Spiel des Jahres winner a good game?” It is answered some forty or so times by James Wallis in Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made.

Wallis, has of course, already explored the history of board games in the company of Sir Ian Livingstone with Board Games in 100 Moves: 8,000 Years of Play, but in Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made, published by Aconyte Books, he delves into the more recent forty-three years of the hobby to examine and give his opinion upon every one of the Spiel des Jahres winners, from the award’s inception in 1979 to 2022. The majority of them are good, some indifferent, and a few disappointing. Along the way he charts the changes in the hobby over the period as reflected through the awards, although as the author makes clear, this is not an actual history of the Spiel des Jahres award, its jury, and the deliberations it makes each year and the decisions it comes to. Its focus is very much on the games themselves and its tone and style is lighter, more that of a coffee table style book than some dry history. Consequently, this is a book which can be enjoyed by the casual board game player as much as the veteran. Further, the big, bold, bright format means that the book can be put in the hands of someone who does not play board games, and they will not be intimidated by the book itself or the games it showcases.

Everybody Wins is divided up into five colour-coded sections which each explore the different eras of the Spiel des Jahres, including the themes, the changes in design, and trends in the hobby in that time, beginning with ‘Opening Moves’ of 1979 to 1985, and going through ‘The Golden Age’ of 1996 to 2004 and ‘Identity Crisis’ of 2005 to 2015, before finding ‘New Purpose, New Direction’ since 2016. Each section opens with an overview of the period. For example, ‘Opening Moves’ explains how the award came to be founded and what it set out to do, which was to highlight, if not necessarily the best game of the year, then the most interesting, the most playable, and the most fun game of year, which had been published in German in the last year, and in the process, to broaden the acceptance of board games beyond just the hobby. Later eras examine the changing fortunes of the award and game design, for example, ‘The Golden Age’ exploring the effect that Settlers of Catan, winner in 1995, had on both hobby and industry, and how the period would not only see the rise of classic game, but also several heavier, more complicated games would not necessarily appeal to a family audience. Each overview is then followed by the winners for that period, every title receiving an essay that details its background, gameplay, the author’s opinion, and more. Notes give both the publisher and current  availability, plus whether or not the game was a worthy winner and is still worth playing now. The occasional sidebar explains particular rule types or gives a thumbnail portrait of a designer and every entry concludes with a full list of the nominees and winners of the various awards the Spiel des Jahres jury has given out over the years, initially special awards, but more recently the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel awards.

Everybody Wins does not look at the winners of the other two awards that the jury gives out— the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel awards. Neither are quite as important as the Spiel des Jahres, nor do they quite have the same effect on the industry, but where Everybody Wins does come up short is in not looking at the ‘what if’s’ of the Spiel des Jahres. Only once does the author look closely at another nomination for the award, Matt Leacock’s Forbidden Island, a nominee in 2011 when Quirkle won. This is less of an issue when what is regarded as a classic won in a particular year, such as Settlers of Catan in 1995, Dominion in 2009, or Codenames in 2016, but what about in 2002 when the stacking game, Villa Paletti won? Wallis tells the reader that, “In no possible sense was this the game of the year.” It would have been interesting to pull the other nominees out and give them the space to explain why they should have won instead. For example, Puerto Rico and TransAmerica in 2002, but also for Niagara in 2005 and later, Keltis in 2008. Later, Wallis does look at ‘The Ones That Didn’t Win’, but this is only a brief overview, primarily highlighting the commercialism of a game or it not suiting the Spiel des Jahres criteria, but there are games here that do fit those criteria, and would have been worthy winners, such as Pandemic in 2009.

Physically, Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made is lovingly presented, with every entry very nicely illustrated and accompanied with an engaging description. One obvious issue with the presentation is the book’s sidebars. Done in white on colour boxes, the text is not strong enough to read without the aid of good lighting.

The response to Everybody Wins will vary according to how much of a board game player the reader is. If the reader is a veteran, this will send him scurrying back into his collection to pull out titles and try them again, checking them against past plays and the author’s assessment. Or scouring online sellers for the titles that he does not have. The more casual player is more likely to pick and choose from the range of titles discussed in the pages of the book, probably looking for the classics and the titles that the author recommends as worth his time and the reader’s time. Whatever way in which the reader responds to the book, Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made is an entertaining and informative primer on the past four decades of the board game hobby and the winners of its greatest prize.

Friday Filler: MicroMacro: Crime City

The winner of the 2021 Spiel des Jahres award is MicroMacro: Crime City. Published by Edition Spielwiese, it combines crime and detection with elements of storytelling and even a little bit of time travel, all played out co-operatively on a massive map of a city that the players have to search for clues. At its heart the game is Where’s Wally? (or Where’s Waldo?) meets the crime-riddled streets and alleys of downtown Crime City. Designed for one to four players, aged twelve and up, the game has the players searching a big poster map of Crime City, first locating crime scenes and then backtracking the victims as they went about their day and interacted with the other citizens of Crime City.

Open up the box for MicroMacro: Crime City and the first thing that a player finds is a ‘Spoiler Warning’. Given in multiple languages, it warns him not to look at the reverse of the cards, not to open the card packets before instructed to do so, and be sure to read the instructions first. The second is the instructions, and they just run to just four pages. Below that is the City Map, some one-hundred-and-twenty Case Cards, sixteen envelopes, and a magnifying glass. Bar touches of red to highlight text and elements of the game, everything is done in black and white. The City Map is huge. It measures thirty-by-forty-three inches and depicts a European city, bustling with men, women, and anthropomorphic animals going about their very busy lives. This enormous map is drawn in meticulous cartoon detail, but it is not a city that is static. Its citizens can be seen again and again moving about the city and everywhere a player looks he will find someone doing something interesting—being shocked by a painting at an exhibition, buying something from a dodgy street dealer (his trench coat held open to best display his wares), a women shocked by another man opening his trenchcoat, and more. There is so much going on in this map that it is easy to get lost in the details and start imagining who these people are and what their lives are like.

The cards represent the sixteen cases the players have to investigate and solve in MicroMacro: Crime City. These grow in complexity and length and need to be divided into their respective cases and stored in one of the envelopes which comes with the game. Starting with ‘The Top Hat’—the game’s introductory case, each case, whether ‘The Car Accident’, ‘Dead Cat’, ‘Hairy Tales’, or ‘Carnival’, begins with a start card which asks the players to search for the crime scene. Once the victim has been found, the players begin looking for where the victim appears elsewhere nearby on the map, and prompted by the cards, then backtrack through the victim’s day, looking for who he might have encountered and thus might be perpetrator of the crime. Along the way, the players will see the city around their crime victim and the criminal, in the process discovering lives both ordinary and criminal, the latter perhaps, hinting at crimes that the players might have to solve in a future case.

The initial cases in MicroMacro: Crime City are small, but others stretch across the city, forcing the players to extend their search for clues and the perpetrator. Some of the inhabitants of Crime City have nothing to do with the cases in MicroMacro: Crime City, but may appear in MicroMacro: Full House, which together with MicroMacro: Crime City form part of the four titles in the series. Each entry represents a different district and ultimately, there will be cases which can be solved by following the clues across the four districts. It should also be noted that as funny and as anthropomorphic as the artwork is in MicroMacro: Crime City, it does depict a moderately adult world and that means that some of the crime cases and some of the things going on in Crime City may not be suitable for some younger players.

MicroMacro: Crime City requires a big table for its map of Crime City and plenty of good light. This is not a game which can be played without either plenty of light or plenty of space. Although the game comes with one magnifying glass, the addition of another will probably help play too.

Physically, MicroMacro: Crime City is decently produced. The map is done on sturdy paper, though its size does mean it requires careful handling. The fact that it is a paper rather than a mounted map means that having any drinks nearby is inadvisable. The rules are clearly written and easy to understand and the cards are done on decent stock. A nice touch is that there is an extra mini-case on the game’s front cover. This neatly gives the potential purchaser a taste of the game inside.

However, once played, MicroMacro: Crime City has little to no replay value. It does not have the Legacy option of the game being changed through play, but rather each case is essentially a puzzle and once solved is difficult to play again with the same level of anticipation and interest. Finding the crime scene, investigating the clues, and following the lives of both victims and criminals is definitely fun, but once solved… At that point, the best thing to do with MicroMacro: Crime City is either to put it away for the next expansion and wait to see if its crime cases tie in, or really, to let someone else play it who is completely new to the game.

Ultimately there is one question which has to be asked about MicroMacro: Crime City, and that is, “Is it a game?” And the answer is both yes, and no. MicroMacro: Crime City is a game in the sense that it is played, has multiple players, and they are all trying to achieve an objective. In this, it is very much like other detective or crime games, such as Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game or Chronicles of Crime, but on a much simpler level, or the games based on Escape Rooms. Yet MicroMacro: Crime City is not a game so much as a puzzle intended to be solved collectively, and once solved, it cannot be solved again. Further, where a detective or crime novel can be reread to enjoy the story and the deduction again, the simplicity of the game’s design works against any possibility of a replay being enjoyed.

MicroMacro: Crime City is a very simple, but clever design, with its cases built around cartoonish artwork that is witty and engages the players in the lives of the citizens of Crime City. Best played with two or three players, MicroMacro: Crime City is perfect for fans of hidden object games, puzzles, and detective fiction.

A taster of how MicroMacro: Crime City plays can be found here.

Battleships with Words

Codenames is the Spiel des Jahres—or ‘Game of the Year—award winner for 2016 and that is probably enough of a recommendation to try it and add it to your games collection. Published by Czech Games Edition, it is an espionage-themed word game that works as a party game and which can be played by between two and eight players. The players are split into two teams and one person on each team takes the role of their team’s ‘Spymaster’. His mission is to communicate the code names of his spies to his fellow team members; it is their task to understand the clues given by the spymaster and identity the spies. It is designed to be played by players aged fourteen and over and a game should last no more than twenty minutes.

Codenames consists of several decks of cards. These are the Codename cards (double-sided with a word like tube, bugle, Jupiter, palm, and so on); sixteen Agent cards in two colours (red and blue, used to identity Codenames by each side); a red/blue Double-Agent card (used to indicate the starting team); seven Innocent Bystander cards (used to indicate non-Agents); one Assassin card (used to indicate the Assassin who if identified by a team means that the identifying team loses the game); forty Key cards (these determine the location of the Agents, Innocent Bystanders, and Assassin on the grid); plus a rulebook and timer.

To set up the game, twenty-five Codenames are randomly drawn and arranged in a five-by-five grid. A Key card is drawn and shared between the two Spymasters. It shows them where their Agents, Innocent Bystanders, and Assassin are on the grid. On a team’s turn, its Spymaster gives a clue to the rest of his team. This clue consists of one word and one number. The word must be associated with—but not the same as—one or more of the Codename cards in the grid. The number indicates the number of Codename cards that the clue is associated with. So for example, a Spymaster has the following Codenames that need identifying: ‘America’, ‘Cap’, ‘Disease’, ‘Ham’, ‘Horn’, ‘Mail’, ‘Spring’, and ‘Whip’. So the Spymaster decides to give the clue ‘Supersoldier Two’ to indicate ‘America’ and ‘Cap’, hoping that his team knows its superheroes (or movies). 

The team now tries to guess the Codenames from this clue. If the team picks an Innocent Bystander instead of a Codename, its turn ends. If the team picks a Codename belonging to the other team, its turn ends. If the team picks the Assassin instead of a Codename, it has lost and the game is over. A team must make one guess on its turn and can choose to make fewer guesses than the number given by its Spymaster. A team that correctly guesses Codenames equal to the number given by its Spymaster can take an extra guess. This is useful if a team wants to return to a clue given in previous turn.

The first team to identify all of its Codenames wins the game.

At the heart of Codenames are two asymmetrical challenges. For the Spymaster, the challenge is, “Can I give clues to my team members that they will understand?”, whilst for the team members the challenge is, “Can we interpret and understand our Spaymaster’s clues?”. This requires no little thought by both sides, hampered of course, by the timer. 

On the downside, the game’s theme is a bit too light and if you do not like word games, then Codenames is not something that you will necessarily enjoy. If you do like word games, crossword puzzles, and so on, then Codenames’ simple design is both a delight and challenge. The game is also simple enough to work as a party game, but still be challenging without being overwhelming in its mechanics or appearance. The fact that it is a word game means that it is approachable and accessible to a non-gaming audience, a la Scrabble (yet better). Of course, it also works as a good filler game. The high number of Codename cards and Key cards (the latter for determining Codename location on the grid) means a wide variety of Codenames and grid layouts and thus a high replay value.

My gaming group described Codenames as being ‘Word Battleships’. The fact that there is a hidden grid involved and the game involves finding things on said grid and it easy to see the comparison. That said, Codenames is a light and clever game that will challenge groups large and small again and again.

Rootin', Tootin', Shootin', Stealin' Fun!

The winner this year of the Spiel des Jahres is Colt Express published by Ludonaute. It was up against Machi Koro and The Game and has proved to be a surprising winner given that the themes and actions of Colt Express are not necessarily as family friendly as those of other Spiel des Jahres winning games. This is because Colt Express involves robbing a train and punching and shooting each other… Even so, Colt Express is nothing but fun!

Colt Express is a’ Wild West’, programmed Action game in which several rival bandits—Belle, Cheyenne, Django, Doc, Ghost, and Tuco who will do their utmost to outwit, outshoot, out brawl, and out steal each other! It comes with a very striking play area—a three-dimensional cardboard train that the players will move their bandits along, up onto the roof and down again, all the whilst their bandits apprehend loot, and punch and shoot at each other. This is played out over five rounds, each ending with a random event, the winner being the bandit to leave the train with the most loot.

Before the game begins, the full-colour train requires some assembly. Whilst relatively easy, some care needs to be taken less the cardboard is bent or torn. Once assembled, there is just about sufficient space in the box for the train to remain assembled.

During the game, each player controls a single bandit. Each Bandit possesses a special ability. For example, Belle cannot be targeted by a Fire or Punch action if another Bandit can be targeted instead, Cheyenne can steal a purse from another Bandit after carrying out a Punch action, and Tuco can shoot through the carriage roof at another bandit (either in carriage below or on the roof above). Each Bandit also has a corresponding set of ten Action cards and six Bullet cards. Each Action card allows a Bandit to do one thing: Move (from one carriage to the next or all the way along the roof), Floor Change (climb up to or down from the roof), Fire (at a Bandit in an adjacent carriage or next in line of sight on the roof), Punch (a Bandit in or on the same carriage), Robbery (of any loot available in the carriage), or Marshal (move the Marshal to an adjacent carriage). Some Actions have consequences: the victim of a Fire action receives a Bullet card to add to his hand; the victim of a Punch action must drop a loot token; and if the Marshal moves into the same carriage as a Bandit, not only is the Bandit forced to flee to the carriage roof, he gets shot by the Marshal too!

At game’s start, all of the carriages are seeded with Loot tokens (of a random value) and both the Marshal and the Strongbox are placed in the Locomotive. Four Round cards and one Station card—the latter being for the last round—are chosen randomly. Each Round or Station card shows how many turns it has, how many are played in tunnels, and any special events. Lastly, each player shuffles his Bandit’s deck of Action cards and draws six and puts aboard the rear of the train.

Each Round consists of two phases. Once the new Round card is revealed, the ‘Schemin’! phase’ begins, each player taking it in turn to play an Action card onto a pile that forms the Action Deck. These are played openly so each Bandit can see what the other is doing, or face down and hidden if the Round card indicates that the Action cards are to be played in a tunnel. Once the ‘Schemin’! phase’ is over, the ‘Stealin’! phase’ begins. This involves revealing the cards in the Action Deck as played and their associated Bandit carrying their actions if possible. If a Robbery card is revealed and there is no loot in the Bandit’s location, then he cannot pick up any loot. Similarly, if a Punch card is revealed and there is no other Bandit to punch, then no brawling occurs. That said, if an action is possible and a player has choice of how his Bandit carries it out, he can choose how he does it. So if a Punch card is revealed and there are two or more other Bandits in the same location, the brawling Bandit chooses the target; if there is more than one item of loot in a location when a Robbery action is revealed, the Bandit’s player chooses which to take; and so on. At the end of each Round an Event takes place. These include ‘Braking’, when the train slows and forces every Bandit on the roof to move forward one carriage, and ‘Passengers’ Rebellion’, when the passengers shoot any Bandit in a carriage.

Once a Round ends, the players collect up all of their Action cards—played and unplayed—including any Bullet cards from having been shot by rival Bandits or the Marshal and draw new hands of six cards. This can leave a player with more Bullet than Action cards. Bullet cards slow a Bandit down and mean that he cannot act. Should he lacks Action cards, a player can draw three new cards instead of playing one during the ‘Schemin’! phase’.
Colt Express is a game of planning and consequences. During the ‘Schemin’! phase’ players try to work out the best actions to get the most loot, stop their rivals from doing so, or simply shooting their rivals. In the ‘Stealin’! phase’, these Actions will play out as intended, but often do not often survive contact with their rivals. Great when a plan comes together, but funny, if not frustrating when plans are unwittingly thwarted. Plans can be adapted to rival’s actions as most Action cards are played face up, but deduction is required when Action cards are played face down in tunnels.

A game typically begins with a grab for as much loot as possible from the rearward carriages followed by a frantic scramble to grab the Strongbox or stop another Bandit from doing so. All played out to a flurry of punches (to force loot to be dropped) and bullets (to gain the $1000 bonus for the most bullets fired). At game’s end, the Bandit with the most money wins, probably including the $1000 bonus.

Light and accessible enough for casual play, Colt Express’ quick-playing time offsets its frustrating aspects of plans going awry. The game’s ‘Schemin’! phase’ is its heart, forcing players to plan and think about their proposed actions, the mix of openly played Actions and hidden played Actions—the latter played in tunnels, both aiding and thwarting everyone’s planning efforts. Above all, Colt Express combines great theme and great visual appeal with simple fun.

1984: Railway Rivals

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

-oOo-

Back in the early 1990s, TSR held European GenCon at Camber Sands, a windswept holiday camp on England’s south coast, much to the shock and amusement of any visiting American guests. The fact that it was within sight of Dungeness nuclear power station only added to the weirdness—and that became a joke in Shadowrun supplement. It was there that I had my first exposure to Railway Rivals to the sound of designer Jack Jaffe extolling you to come and play Save the President. I joined a game run by David Watts, the designer of Railway Rivals, which was played using a map of Ireland. I certainly did not know that I was playing with the designer and I certainly did not win the game, but I enjoyed playing what was essentially my first exposure to railway games. I thought that the idea of drawing on the map to be novel and clever. This memory was enough a decade later to purchase the Games Workshop version of the game and then two decades on, to purchase the original version that came in the heavy cardboard tube that could hold multiple maps.

Railway Rivals is a very stripped back game. It consists of a single six-sided die, six trains (or simply tokens), and a set of washable felt pens that match the colours of the tokens, but at the heart of the game—its maps. Each depicted a geographical area—Eastern USA, London & Liverpool, Germany, and so on—marked with cities, hills, and rivers on a hex grid. Each map sheet is laminated so that it can be drawn on—and that is the point of the game. Each player was setting out to build or draw his own railway network that connected the cities on the map. Then the players would race their trains over their networks to score money.

At the beginning of a game each player receives a train and a pen in a matching colour before rolling for his starting city. Then on his turn a player rolls the die to determine his income which he spends to build, or draw, new track in his network. Most of the maps consist of open plains which are cheap to lay track over, but hills and rivers cost more to cross, as does having to cross or parallel a rival player’s railway line. Money is earned for connecting your network to the cities on the map.

As soon as all cities have been connected, the game’s second phase begins. Races are set up between random cities and the players compete to get there first. Money is awarded to players arriving in first and second place, but must be paid to any railway rival whose track you used as part of your move. This is likely because it is rare for a player to connect to every city on the map. At the end of the game, the player with the most money wins.Once all cities are joined by railway tracks, the second part of the game starts. Players race their trains along the tracks between randomly chosen pairs of cities; just as in real life, players must pay other players to use elements of their track if they do not have a complete route of their own to the current target city. The choice of routes raced is random; each city is used one or more times. Money is awarded to the trains that arrive first and second, and the player with the most money when all routes have been raced is the winner.

By modern standards, Railway Rivals looks simplistic, but that would be an unfair assessment. The laying of the track across a map offers some tactical choice as each player attempts to make the best advantage of his starting position and map’s terrain. Often, this focuses upon certain choke points, typically to cities only accessible via gaps in the surrounding hills that are expensive to build through or to groups of cities, like those of New England.* In such a situation, when it comes to laying track, a player needs to ask himself if it is cheaper to build through the hills or lay track alongside that of his rivals.

*Note that this is typical of most railway games set in the Eastern USA.

Racing the trains in the second phase of course does involve more than a degree of luck, both in terms of rolling for the starting and finishing cities for each race, and rolling movement each turn. Each race will proceed without any complications when a player is travelling over his own network, but should a player need to switch to a rival network to get to a destination, then he needs to pay for the track use. Which loses him money—and thus a potential victory—to his rivals. He can offset this by spending the money he already has to build new track, but again, the cost and any advantage it gains a player needs to be carefully weighed up.

Once all of the races have finished, the players need to total up their money. The player with most is the winner.

Railway Rivals was self-published for many years, but versions have been published by Games Workshop and Queen Games. Despite having won the Spiel des Jahres in 1984,* Railway Rivals is a forgotten classic, having been out of print for almost two decades now. After all, winning the Spiel des Jahres back then did not have the same prestige as it does now, and barring Settlers of Catan, which won in 1995, few winners are remembered from before the rise in popularity of the hobby board game in last fifteen years. Surprisingly it did find a home as a PBEM, or Play-by-E-Mail, game played via fanzines, its simplicity nicely supporting this type of game play. 

*It is unlikely that a game like Railway Rivals would win the Spiel des Jahres today. Arguably though, Railway Rivals was the Ticket to Ride of its day.

Of course, Railway Rivals lacks the sophistication of the modern game. Indeed it looks very plain, but this plainness  suits the simplicity of the game and the simplicity of its game play. In fact the maps are clean, simple, and elegant. The only real complaint about the game is how messy it is—having to wipe a map clean after a game is over is a chore. Yet this write-on, wipe-off feature lies at the game’s heart—prefiguring the crayon games series begun with Empire Builder from Mayfair Games by several years—and makes the game most replayable. Some thirty-five official maps were released for the game, many of them classics in terms of locations for railway games—Germany, New England, France, and so on.

Railway Rivals is all about the maps and getting the chance to draw on them—again and again. Getting to scribble like this has a little of the childhood pleasure to it, but this is a game and a rather charming one at that. Simple and fun, Railway Rivals is not just about lay tracking, but drawing them!

Playing Fireworks Blind

Most co-operative board games have the players working against the clock or the game itself, sometimes with a traitor amongst the players trying to thwart their efforts. Battlestar Galactica, published by Fantasy Flight Games, and Grosso Modo Éditions’ more recent Nosferatu are typical of cooperative games with a traitor mechanic, whilst Z-Man Games’ Pandemic and Indie Cards and Games’ Flash Point: Fire Rescue are typical of co-operative board games without a traitor mechanic. These games have made the co-operative style of play popular and accepted, the board game Pandemic having made the breakthrough in 2008. Most co-operative games revolve around the players attempting to cope with limited information that they all share. In Hanabi, the players must share information about what each other has on their cards, but they will never know exactly what they have on their own cards.

Named for the Japanese word for fireworks, Cocktail Games’ Hanabi was the 2013 Spiel des Jahres Game of the Year Winner. The players are apprentices who are attempting to put on a firework display for the emperor, but have managed to mix up the powders, fuses and rockets. To succeed, they must launch the fireworks in the correct sequence, and if they do, they please not only the emperor, but their master too.

Designed for two to five players, aged eight and up, Hanabi consists of five sets of coloured cards—red, blue, green, white, and white, plus three red tokens and eight blue tokens. Each set consists of ten cards, each containing three cards numbered one, two numbered two, two numbered two, two numbered two, and a single card numbered five. The red tokens are failure tokens, indicating a poorly displayed firework; the blue tokens are clue tokens, used to impart information to another player about the cards in his hands.

A complete firework consists of a single colour that contains cards played in order, from one up through two, three, four, and finally, five. Completing a firework gains the players a blue token; playing a card out of sequence onto a firework, for example, playing a white-4 card onto a white-2 card, would earn the players a red token. If they gain all three red tokens, the game is over.
At game’s start, each player receives a hand of cards, either four or five, depending on the number of players. A player cannot look at his hand, but instead holds them face out so that the other players can seem them. Thus each player can see everyone else’s cards, but not his own.

On his turn, a player can undertake a single action. He can discard card to gain a blue token; he can play a card, either to an ongoing firework or to start one if there is not yet one of that colour; or he can expend a blue token to give a clue; giving clues lies at the heart of Hanabi. To give a clue, a player points to another player’s hand and imparts certain information about that hand. This can be about the cards of a single colour in a player’s hand, such as “You have a green card here” or “You have two white cards here and here”; or about the cards of single number in the player’s hand, such as “You have a three here” or “You have a four here and here”. The clues given must be complete—so if a player has two four cards, the informing player must indicate both of them. If a player discarded a card or played one onto a firework, then he draws a new card.

Play continues until either the players have acquired all three red tokens and thus lost the game; or all five fireworks have been completed in the correct order and the players have scored maximum points, or the deck has been exhausted. In the case of the latter, points are awarded based on the fireworks completed, the top card on each firework adding to the final score. A maximum of twenty-five points can be scored, with scores of between sixteen and twenty-four at least being memorable.

Hanabi is as simple as that. During play, a player is free to arrange his cards how he likes and to an extent can talk about his hand in general terms—only the other players can be specific about his hand and only after having expended a blue token. For a game as simple as Hanabi, it requires a great deal of thought and no little care, because it is a game about memory and deduction, that is remembering where your cards are in your hand and deducing which card to play next from the clues previously given. Essentially though, it is a game about communication and understanding that communication, and about remembering that communication. Get the communication wrong and potential points are lost as the wrong cards are discarded or played onto a firework.

Hanabi is also a filler game, play being expected to last no longer than twenty minutes or so. Unlike more recent filler games, for example, Coup or Love Letter, this one is not combative. Indeed, in comparison to many other co-operative games, Hanabi is benign, the players are not really playing against a game that is set up for them to fail, as in Pandemic or Battlestar Galactica. Even its subject matter is benign, but despite that and its benign mechanics, it is actually more challenging than your average filler game because it is asking the players to think and communicate. Also, where another co-operative bears repeat play by increasing the difficulty level of the game the players have to beat; Hanabi bears repeated play if a group wants to improve its score.

Despite its simplicity, Hanabi is clever because it gives us a new playing experience. One that emphasises communication and deduction to support its co-operative play.

Erect Your Own Palace

Alhambra is a game that regularly ends up on our table, especially if my daughter is visiting. The 2003 winner of the “Spiel des Jahres,” Germany’s top gaming award, and based on the designer’s previous Stimmt So, it is a tile-laying game with resource management aspects and a simple theme. In Granada, 1278, each player directs a team of European and Arabic craftsmen to build the finest and largest version of the Alhambra, Spain’s most beautiful palace. Naturally, each artisan wants to be paid in his native currency.

Designed for two to six players aged eight and up and published by Queen Games, Alhambra’s components are all high quality, just as you would expect for any good Euro game with everything in full colour and done on hard wearing cardboard. This includes each player’s Starter Tile – marked with the famous Lion Fountain, and his Tile Reserve board marked with the game’s scoring information and a space to hold tiles in reserve. The Building Tiles are marked with various gardens, manors, mezzanines, pavilions, royal chambers, and towers, plus a number indicating their cost. Some tiles have walls along one or more of their edges. The Money Deck is divided between four colour-coded currencies in various values: blue coloured Denars, green Dirhams, orange Ducats, and yellow Florins. The Building Market board is the game’s heart and is marked with four spaces to hold tiles, each adjacent to a symbol for one of the four currencies. Also included is a bag to hold the building tiles.

Game set up is slightly complex. The Building Market is seeded with four new Building Tiles and each player receives a handful of Money. Several Money Cards are laid out face up besides the Building Market with the remaining Money Deck being seeded with two Scoring Cards, one about a third of the way through the deck, the second two thirds of the way. Play then begins.

A player can do one of three things on a turn. He can take Money Cards from the face up cards to spend later. He can buy a Building Tile, paying with the correct Money Cards – both in terms of currency and value, indicated by the symbol on the Building Market. A purchased tile can be added to the player’s Alhambra, or placed on the Reserve Board. The third thing that a player can do on his turn is redesign his Alhambra using his tiles in reserve.

The “exact” price does not have to be paid when purchasing a Building Tile – a player can pay more and often will if it gains him a Building Tile that will make a fine addition to his Alhambra. If the “exact” amount is paid for the Building Tile, another turn is gained! This extra allows the player to buy another Building Tile, take more Money Cards, or rearrange the tiles in his Alhambra. If the player uses this extra turn to buy another Building Tile and pays the “exact” amount, then again, he receives another turn. He can only do this as long as he has the exact amounts each time and until the fourth Building Tile on the Market has been bought.

Tiles are placed to according to simple, but strict rules. They must align correctly, and adjoining sides must match, including those tiles with walls. An Alhambra’s design can be as sprawling or as compact as a player wants. In general, cheaper tiles are more difficult to add to an Alhambra, while Building Tiles types that are worth more during the scoring rounds, such as the towers and gardens are more expensive. Scoring takes place when each of the two Scoring Cards are drawn and then at a game’s end. Points are awarded for having the most of each building type, plus the longest wall. The player with the most points is the winner and thus has the finest Alhambra.

Alhambra offers simple tactics, but difficult decisions. Does a player buy and lay the Building Tiles needed to score, paying over their value in the process? Does he take Money Cards to have the exact amount needed to gain those oh so important extra actions, and for how long does he keep taking Money Cards when his rivals could be snapping up decent Building Tiles? Of course, buying up a Building Tile denies it to a rival player, but sometimes a Building Tile will remain on the Building Market as no one wants it. In this way, it also prevents other – hopefully better Building Tiles from being pulled from the bag and added to the Building Market.

Dominated by the strong random elements of Building Tile and Money Card drawing, Alhambra lacks any real interactive element, participants almost playing self-contained puzzle games and coming together only at the Building Market. Yet the wait between turns is never very long even if they can be frustrating as other players grab better Building Tiles and Money Cards before you can, though one of the several expansions for the game – The Vizier’s Favour – adds a means by which a player can interrupt play to take his turn out of order. One potential issue with the game is with number of players. With just two players the rules recommend that a third dummy player be added, but in our experience this added a degree of the cumbrous to play; while game play is a little slow with five players.

Alhambra is a good family game, but it is not quite the gateway game, the type of game that you would get out to introduce new players to the hobby. It sits somewhere slightly beyond such entry level games as Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, mainly because it moves player interaction away from any kind of a board in the traditional sense.

Despite a lack an interactive element, Alhambra is still pleasing to play, in turns frustrating and gratifying as fortunes can change within a turn or two. The nicely spaced scoring rounds also allow players to catch up with their rivals. Beautifully and cleverly designed, Alhambra is a light and enjoyable game that is easy to learn and a pleasure to play.