Friday Filler: Temp Worker Assassins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War is never this simple

Launched at UK Games Expo, Red Code is a naval war game from Spanish publisher, Dizemo Entertainment. Designed for two to six players, aged eight and up, Red Code sees two sides go head-to-head in a series of nautical encounters played out over limited terrain. Each side consists of a Submarine, a Destroyer, and an Aircraft Carrier and all three vessels can either be controlled by a single player in a two-player head-to-head game, or assigned so that each player commands one vessel in a multiplayer game. It combines worker placement and card play with simple wargame mechanics, and can be played until one side sinks the other or one side scores enough points by sinking ships.

The game primarily consists of standards-sized cards. The first of these are the map cards, each divided into four spaces. Some of these have islands on them that block movement and line of sight, whilst others have fast currents that grant extra movement.  The map cards are laid out to create the battle area. There is also a single score card, but most of the game’s cards consists of Order cards. These grant extra movement,  better attacks, refreshed crew, and so on.

Each of the ships is a card on its own, with spaces to track damage, crew assignments, and actions or Maneuvres as the game calls them. All three types of vessel have Movement, Repair, Torpedo, and Orders actions—the latter being how a player receives Order cards. Each vessel also has four special actions of its own. For example, the destroyer has Missile, which does one damage to a target two spaces away; Depth Charge, which does two damage to a target one space away; Shield, which cancels the action of another ship three spaces away; and Assault, which does one heavy damage (the equivalent of three standard damage) to a target one space away. Similarly, the aircraft carrier can launch Air Support, Radio Support, and has Medical Equipment and RADAR, whilst the submarine has Immersion, Counter Measure, Heavy Torpedo, and Floating Mine. All of these require a crew member to be assigned to them to activate.

A player’s turn is relatively simple. In the ‘Recover crew’ Phase he places two crew in reserve, recalling them from the order spaces where they had been placed in previous turns. Then in the ‘Management of manoeuvres’ Phase, he can assign any unplaced crew, including these recalled in ‘Recover crew’ Phase on empty Maneuvre spaces and carry the associated Maneuvre. Most require a single crew, but some require two crew. If any Maneuvre has crew on it at the start of the ‘Management of manoeuvres’, that crew cannot act and the associated Manoeuvre cannot be carried out. Each vessel has six crewman. It is also possible to use certain Maneuvres as responses to a player’s Maneuvres, but which ones is not quite clear.

It takes three heavy damage to sink a ship—the equivalent of nine damage. This is the same for the destroyer and the submarine as it is the aircraft carrier. If a simple knock-out style game, sinking a ship means the loss of that vessel, but in Victory Points based game, sinking a vessel scores a player a point whilst the vessel misses a turn and comes back as good as new. Play continues until one side is knocked out or has scored enough points.

Physically, Red Code looks nice, but unfortunately, Red Code suffers from a number of issues, the first of which being the fact that it was originally Spanish and although translated into English, the translation is terrible. So bad that it hinders both understanding how to play the game and the gameplay itself. A simple matter of language localisation would have addressed this issue, though the localisation of board games is a relatively specialised field.

Second and thematically, Red Code pitches the forces of one navy against another, the default indicated by the cards and scoring tokens being the Allies versus the Nazis. Unfortunately, this sets up a number of historical issues. One being that the German Kriegsmarine never deployed an aircraft carrier, but worse, one Order card depicts the use of Kamikaze aeroplanes, which of course were deployed by the Japanese in the Pacific theatre. Similarly, another Order card is called Atomic Bomb, which again was only used in the Pacific theatre and then dropped by the United States Army Air Forces, not by the Navy. Worse, the photograph on the Deserter card looks to be that of Charles de Gaulle—and that is simply offensive.

Third, and sadly, once past the poor English and the uneven theming, Red Code is simply not a good game. It feels plodding when there should be some tension in game from the scenarios it lends itself to—imagine the ‘cat-and-mouse’ hunt as a submarine silently slides into making an attack run on an aircraft carrier protected by a destroyer. Well, that is not present—unfortunately.

Ultimately, Red Code’s design is too simple, its theme is inconsistently applied, and its rules are just not clear enough. Even if these problems can be overcome, Red Code just does not offer enough variety or depth to bear repeat play.

To Bee, Or Not To Bee

Waggle Dance is a game about Bees and the dance they do to make honey. Published by Grublin Games Publishing via Kickstarter, it is a worker placement game designed for two to four players, aged ten and up, in which the workers—or Bees—are simple six-sided dice. Each turn the players roll their dice—or Bees—and then in turn, place them according to the numbers rolled. From one turn to the next, the Bees want to expand their hive, claim and hatch the eggs laid by their Queen, collect nectar, trade eggs and nectar, make honey, and gain orders from the Queen Bee. As the Forebee for their hive, the aim for each player is to expand his hive and get each Honeycomb Tile to produce honey. The first Forebee to do so wins the game.

Each turn is divided into two phases—Day and Night, a Day/Night card being used to indicate which phase. In the Day phase each Forebee rolls his Bees and takes it turn to place them in turn, either on the Forebee’s Hive or the Action Cards. There are seven of these. Four of the Action Cards—’Claim Tile’, ‘Hatch Egg’, ‘Trade’, and ‘Draw a Queen Bee Card’—are marked with six die faces, numbered one through six. When a Bee of the matching number is placed on one of these positions, another cannot be placed there, so it is possible to block other Forebees. There are actually six ‘Claim Nectar’ Action Cards, each corresponding to six different flowers, and like the other Action Cards—’Hatch Egg and Make Honey’ and ‘Move Nectar’, there is no limit to the numbers of Bees that can be placed on them.

To add a new Honeycomb Tile to his Hive, a Forebee must place a Bee on the ‘Claim Tile’ Action Card. To add a new Bee-or ‘Newbee’—a Forebee needs to have both an Egg and a pair of Bees with matching numbers on a Honeycomb tile, and then place a Bee on the ‘Hatch Eg’ Action Card. To get a new Egg, a Bee must be placed on the ‘Claim Egg’ Action Card, the new Egg being added to an empty tile. ‘Claim Nectar’ gives a Forebee the nectar needed to make honey, but only the two Forebees with the most Bees on a flower—there are six flowers—can collect nectar from that flower. A Forebee can swap Eggs or nectar for the nectar of the colour he wants by placing a Bee on the ‘Trade’ Action Card. 

The ‘Make Honey & Move Nectar’ Action Card is the most complex in Waggle Dance. Move Nectar enables a Forebee to move nectar from one tile to another, but needs to have Bees of matching numbers on both the tile the nectar is being moved from and to. Much like the ‘Hatch Egg’ Action Card, the ‘Make Honey’ Action Card requires a pair of Bees with matching numbers on the tile plus four nectar of the same colour. Once done, the tile is turned over to its Honey side. Lastly, the ‘Draw Queen Bee Card’ Action Card lets a Forebee draw Queen Bee Cards, which grant special actions, such as ‘Bounty’ which allows a Forebee to claim extra Nectar, ‘Overtime’ that lets him change number of a rolled Bee, and ‘Alchemy’, which enables him to make Honey using nectar of two different colours.  Each Queen Bee Card can only be used once.

At game start, each Forbee receives six Bees (dice) and three Honeycomb Tiles. The base objective is turn five Honeycomb Tiles into honey, but this can be increased to seven or eight depending upon the desired game length. Whatever the length, turning all of them into Honey first wins the game.

Each turn is divided into Day and Night Phases. In the Day Phase, every Forebee rolls his Bees and assigns them. In the Night Phase, each Action is resolved in strict order of the Action cards. At the end of each turn, the Day/Night card is passed onto the next player, so the first player changes from turn to turn.

The first challenge of Waggle Dance is that a Forebee must work with the Bees he rolled and this can hinder his plans. The second is that the core Action Cards—‘Hatch Egg’ and ‘Make Honey’—need be set up beforehand to work. The third is that the other Forebees face the same challenges and will often hinder each other. What this means is that Waggle Dance is more of a tactical game rather than a strategic one as long range planning is not possible, a Forebee having to reconsider his actions and his plans from one turn to the next. This also means that Waggle Dance is not a complex worker placement game.

Waggle Dance is finely balanced in its actions and play. A forebee needs to keep an eye on the actions of his fellow forebees and to not focus too much on one action over another. For example, it is too easy to concentrate on hatching eggs and gaining more Bees when others are making honey!

Unfortunately there is little actual player interaction in Waggle Dance. Nor is it as good with two players as it is with three or four. Nevertheless, Waggle Dance has much going for it.

Waggle Dance is very nicely presented, with appropriate artwork and even the pips on the dice being honeycomb shaped and having bees instead of ones! Mechanically light and easy, with a charming and engaging theme, Waggle Dance is both suitable for a family audience and the hardened gamer who still wants a challenge.

Whither the Indies?

What is remarkable about Sail to India is that it packs an incredibly big game in tiny box, both in terms of its theme and its sometimes harshly efficient Euro style game play. From the designer of String Railways and the Origins award winning Trains, Hisashi Hayashi, and published by Alderac Entertainment Group as part of its Big in Japan line, it is a game of mercantile exploration and adventurism. Designed for three to four players, aged twelve up, it is a game of resource management and worker placement, that sees the participants attempt to sail to the orient in search of glory and riches.

Sail to India is set during the Age of Discovery. The Mediterranean is under Osman Turk control and the great empire of Portugal seeks trade routes to the East. To do so, its merchants and nobles are dispatching explorers to sail south along the coast of Africa and round the Cabo da Boa Esperança in search of a route to India. Each player must manage his resources, and know when to invest in his ships and technological advances, when to discover new ports and establish facilities, and when to reap the riches and the glory.

Thus Sail to India has big themes, but where a classic board game might come with a big board and counters to represent the ships and various goods and buildings. The little box that is Sail to India does it all with just twenty-eight large cards plus thirteen wooden cubes per player. Of these cards, three are given to each player. These are a Domain card, used to track a player’s wealth, the speed of his ships, and his technology; a Historian card, used to track a player’s Victory Points; and a Reference card. He also receives three cubes to invest in technology, one to track his ships’ speed (initially one, but can be bought up to three), and starting wealth (varies upon starting order). This leaves eight cubes, which essentially represent investments that a player can make as ships, goods, buildings, wealth, and glory (Victory Points).

Of the remaining cards, they form the route to India, consisting of coastal towns along the coast of Africa. Each Coastal Town consists of two buildings—churches, markets, and strongholds—which grant Victory Points when built, trade goods that can be sold for wealth, potential Victory Points at game's end, and the sea. They are laid out in a line, with Lisboa at one end, followed by the coastal towns, of which three start face-up. They are known destinations. The others will be revealed as ships sail further and further round the coast of Africa and beyond until the last, India, is reached. At game's start each player also places one of his cubes as a ship on Lisboa.

On his turn, a player has several options, but can only do two of them. These include employing markers, moving ships, selling trade goods, constructing buildings, acquiring technology, and increasing ship speed. Employing ships means taking a cube from a player’s stock and paying one wealth to turn it into a ship in Lisboa. Moving ships involves a player moving any or all of his ships in any direction, up to his ships’ speed. If he moves his ships into a new coastal town, it is turned over and he earns Victory Points. To sell trade goods, a player moves his ships from the sea into the trade good spaces on the coastal towns. These are sold for wealth and Victory Points, the greater the number of types of good, the greater the reward. The markers for the trade goods are returned to Lisboa. For two wealth, a player can turn a ship into a building which now belongs to that player—churches give two Victory Points; markets only give one, but serve as a permanent trade good; and strongholds also only give one, but also serve as a starting point instead of Lisboa. To acquire technology, a player pays the coast and places a technology marker on the correct space on the technology cards. There are three of these cards, giving a total of twelve technologies. They have various effects, such as Printing Press giving a Victory Point when a technology is acquired, the Factory giving extra wealth when trade goods are sold, or Mission Church giving extra Victory Points for churches built. A technology can only be purchased once. Lastly, a player can increase his ships’ speed, first to two, and then three.

Play lasts an hour. It ends when the last coastal town is turned over and India is discovered, or when two players have run out of cubes. After that, everyone gets another turn and the game ends.

What makes Sail to India challenging is three factors. First, a player only has eight cubes to use as ships, trade goods, buildings, and so on. Second, they are interchangeable—ships can become trade goods which become ships, ships become buildings, and so. Third, a player needs to use some of these cubes to track his wealth and Victory Points, and since the tracks for both only go up to five, if a player earns enough to have six or more wealth or Victory Points, then he needs extra cubes—which have to come from those in play and not from those in stock. If a player has no cubes in play available, then he cannot track this extra wealth or Victory Points. Essentially, keeping track of his wealth and his glory (Victory Points) takes effort as reflected by the need for the extra cubes.

Sail to India is nicely presented. The cards are easy to use, the reference cards are very handy, and the rules clearly written. The artwork is in keeping with the game’s enjoyable theme, which is elegantly implemented in the game play. Similarly elegant is the balance between taking actions and using cubes and using cubes to keep track of a player’s wealth and Victory Points. Above all, Sail to India packs a lot gameplay and choices in quite a small box.

Your Manhattan Project

The main problem with The Manhattan Project is its theme. As its name suggests, that theme has to do with the design and building of the atom bomb. For some, this may be in poor taste. Which of course means that any board game or indeed computer game, like say, Civilisation, in which nuclear weapons are deployed and detonated, is in equally poor taste—if not more so. That said, no nuclear weapons are detonated in The Manhattan Project and nobody dies, either through atomisation or radiation poisoning. Some of your workers may get sent to the mines though…

Originally launched on Kickstarter and published by Minion Games, The Manhattan Project is a worker placement game for two to five players, aged thirteen and up. They each take control of a country’s atom bomb project and attempt to build the most effective program. Starting with a few workers and a small amount of money, they train engineers and scientists; construct buildings—universities, factories, mines, and reactors; build up their air forces—bombers and fighters; research bomb designs; and conduct espionage against each other, all in a race to see who can build the biggest bombs (and score the most Victory Points).

All of which is built around a simple mechanic—worker placement. Each turn a player must either place his workers on the board or retrieve them. When placing them, a player must place one worker on the main board, but can place as many workers as he likes on buildings of his own. When retrieving them, he must remove all of those he has placed.

The game revolves around the Main Board. This has spaces for the Building Cards—six initial cards followed by the regular buildings; spaces to place workers to gain money, engineers, scientists, workers, fighters and bombers, and yellow cake—which is turned into Uranium and Plutonium; conduct airstrikes and repair buildings; and fuel tracks to monitor how much Uranium and Plutonium each player has, as well as how many spies he can send to make use of other players’ empty buildings.

Each player has a Player Board. Here he tracks the number of fighters and bombers he has and places any buildings he has purchased. A player also has four labourers, but will gain up to four engineers and four scientists as play progresses. If these are not enough, he can hire contractors, but they will not stay under his control for long.

Initially, each player has limited options. He can only place a single worker—which has to be on the Main Board—and needs not only scientists and engineers, but also buildings of his own if he wants to place more workers on subsequent turns. As the game progresses and he gains more workers and buildings, he will have more options for placing his workers—and even more if he has invested in espionage and can send his workers to the other players’ buildings. A player does not have to place all of his workers on a turn, but he must place one on the Main Board at the very least.

When a player runs out of workers or because he wants to, he can retrieve all of his workers. He can start placing them again on later turns, but part of playing The Manhattan Project is knowing when to retrieve and when to place them. It is a matter of timing, more so when espionage is an option and other players’ buildings are available.

Each building gives its benefit as soon as its requirements are fulfilled. This might be as simple as one or two workers or specific worker types to get their output, which can be more workers (including contractors), money, fighters, bombers, or yellow cake. Alternatively, a reactor might require several engineers and scientists and several pieces of yellow cake in order to produce the Uranium or Plutonium. These have to be placed in one turn rather than added bit by bit.

Eventually a player will want to build a bomb. This works the same as any other building, but requires Uranium or Plutonium as well as engineers and scientists. Once built, a bomb adds to a player’s Victory Point total, but he could also load it onto one of his bombers for more Victory Points. Alternatively, if it was a Plutonium device, a player could implode it. This would destroy the bomb, but any subsequent Plutonium device the player builds will be worth more Victory Points.

Apart from espionage, another way of a player interacting with his rivals is to attack them using his air force. To attack another player, he sends his fighters to attack his target’s fighters and then his bombers to target and damage his rival’s buildings. This stops his rival from using them until they are repaired.

Physically, The Manhattan Project is nicely and engagingly presented in a style that apes the look of government style art of the 1940s. The rulebook is also well written and easy to read and understand.

Unfortunately, The Manhattan Project is not perfect. Arguably, the use of espionage is too powerful—though it is a great way to win—and cannot be blocked or stopped, except by the targeted player placing and keeping his own workers on this buildings for as long as possible. The Air Raid mechanic is either too powerful or not powerful enough, as any attempt to destroy another player’s fighters leaves both sides vulnerable to bombing raids. Lastly, the appearance of the building cards is too random; beyond the first six, any card can appear in any order and this can all too often affect the flow of the game. Less effective buildings will sit on the board because no one wants to buy them, whilst a slew of good buildings will force a flurry of activity to buy as quickly as possible. Perhaps a more structured draw could have been included, so that the buildings get progressively better and better as the game progresses?

Put these issues aside, for this is an excellent game. The game play is very tight, with almost no luck involved. Above all, The Manhattan Project is a pleasing meld of theme with mechanics that reward efficiency.