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: 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.

Viking Orders

Mijnlieff is an award-winning game from Hopwood Games, designed Andy Hopwood, a boardgame designer who lives local to me. Winner of the Best Abstract Game at the UK Games Expo 2010, Mijnlieff is all about controlling your opponent’s turns, forcing where they can play a piece whilst you try and lay the most lines of three. Designed for two players, Mijnlieff has a Viking theme and is essentially a variant of ‘Noughts & Crosses’ or ‘tic tac toe’, but a very clever one at that.

The game consists of four plain playing squares, each marked with four squares, and two sets of eight playing pieces, one white, the other red. The playing squares are usually laid out to create a four-by-four square grid, but other layouts are possible. Each set of playing pieces consists of four tiles – two Straights, two Diagonals, two Pullers, and two Pushers. When played, each tile tells an opponent where he must place his next tile. A Straight tile forces the other player to play a tile orthogonally to the one played; a Diagonal forces him to play a tile diagonally to the one played; a Puller forces him to play a tile adjacent to the one played; and a Pusher forces him to play a tile away rather than adjacent to the tile played. The playing tiles are clearly marked and easy to understand.

Each turn a player places a single tile. If a player cannot place a tile because he is blocked, then he loses a turn. For each line of three tiles – orthogonally or diagonally – that a player can lay, he scores a point. The player with the most points wins the game.

Mijnlieff is a simple game, but it does force a player to think about the consequences of his next move. Not only that, but he needs to think about what his opponent will play and how he can stop him. It is thus much thoughtful a game than the traditional ‘Noughts & Crosses’ or ‘tic tac toe’ and as a consequence takes a little longer to play. It is still a quick game though, and several games can be played in quick succession.

If there is an issue with Mijnlieff, it is that it is only available from Hopwood Games, but the good news is that Astraware has adapted the game as an app available for iOS and Android devices. It is free to download, but to get the very fullest use of the game does require in-game purchases – these include being able to play against more than two opponents at a time and to be able to rearrange the board other than a square. Once downloaded, the tutorial quickly teaches you how to play and then you are off, defeating – or not, one Viking after another, each progressively a more challenging opponent. In addition, you can play against your friends, random opponents, or with an opponent with the device between you. Visually, the game is well presented, there being a satisfying heft and click as the playing tiles are played and a slightly sharp ringing sound as lines are scored.

Either version of Mijnlieff is worth adding to your games collection. Both serve as an excellent, if thoughtful filler game for two players – there being advantages to both versions. It is a clever variation upon a very basic game, the one that we first played when we were children, that in Mijnlieff offers more play and more challenge.