Sweet Victory! – Justin Bell
I’m a huge fan of the ThinkFun catalog. ThinkFun, a puzzle game line in the Ravensburger catalog, has delivered for our family in the past, from Rush Hour Junior to Gravity Maze to Zingo 1-2-3 to the Cold Case games. We still have a number of ThinkFun games on our shelves. Sweet Victory! is the newest release from ThinkFun, and as a standalone puzzle for one person, it’s not bad.
Using a set of tiles set on four plastic pillars, a small deck of cards is used to show each round’s new challenge, which is essentially a way to move the game’s nine tiles into a new combination. With three colors and a number on each tile (1, 2, or 3, across blue, green, and pink tiles), the goal is to get tiles into a new position while only using one hand and a few other minor rules to get everything into position. As a solo, it’s fine.
Unfortunately, Sweet Victory! is a competitive game with no solo mode. In this format, players are racing to complete a card’s challenge first. “There’s not much of a game here,” commented my 11-year-old after our first family play with four players. “But I like playing around with the pieces.” Even after one play, we had seen most of what Sweet Victory! had to offer, and after that first play, neither of the kids wanted to try it a second time. That’s rarified air at the Bell household, where Gravity Maze was literally on the other end of our table because my son can never get enough of that one. Sweet Victory! wasn’t great, but our belief in the ThinkFun catalog is steadfast.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★☆☆☆☆ – Would play again but will cry about it
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Elementra – Kevin Brantley
One of my goals is to cover underrepresented games since it’s difficult for small indie publishers to break into an already well-established market. Elementra is a small game from a small studio based in Hyderabad, India. It’s great to get a chance to check out a title from a region not often represented in the tabletop space.
Elementra is essentially a set collection game with flavors of Rummy and a mix of action cards. Each round, players try to collect a set of three cards in their given element while avoiding disruption from others. Action cards can steal, swap, freeze, and more. There are also four “Supremo” cards that have game-breaking powers, such as swapping your entire hand or scoring with multiple elements.
What starts as a simple and fun concept is quickly bogged down by a confusing ruleset. While I’m understanding that English is likely not the designer’s first language, the number of errors in the single instruction sheet makes the game extremely difficult to follow.
According to the rules, players are supposed to discard a card and then draw, essentially creating an endless loop. “When do I get to build my hand?” asked one player. We paused the game and searched online for clarification. The included QR code for a teach video led to a broken URL, and the only useful resource we found was a playthrough video on BGG. Even that content creator expressed the same frustration, plainly stating, “These rules don’t make sense.”
We carried on using the BGG video’s interpretation of the rules, but even then, no one wanted to play another round to finish the game. The game feels untested and poorly developed. Despite the cute art, there’s not much else here—it’s pure card-draw luck with little enjoyment, and sabotaging opponents doesn’t offer any real advantage.
I’ve been told this is the final version slated for Kickstarter next year. If that’s true, it’s shaping up to be a disaster of a launch.
Ease of entry?:
☆☆☆☆☆ – Gave up. The rules don’t make sense as written.
Would I play it again?:
☆☆☆☆☆ – No chance
Read more articles from Kevin Brantley.
Blitz Creed – Joseph Buszek
I’m always up for trying a quick-playing, card-based wargame, so I was eager to check out Blitz Creed, a small box game heading to Kickstarter soon. This is ostensibly a race to collect 3 sets of country cards from different regions of the world, securing that region. Though the rules are pretty simple and easy to teach, they’ve packed a good deal of strategy into this little box of cards.
On your turn, you make up to 4 moves, two of which can be “Battle” moves–putting a country card into your “Frontline” area, adding a soldier to your “Outpost” area, attacking another country with one of the soldiers from the outpost, or playing a “Regional Strike” card from your hand–and up to two “Dispute” moves, by playing Dispute cards. While the Battle moves are pretty standard card actions, the Dispute cards are the wild cards that break the standard rules, and where the biggest fun of the game comes about.
I love a little unruliness in my card games and this game delivers in that area. The Dispute cards can be as harmless as adding extra cards to your hand to straight-up stealing a country from another player’s secured region. One of my favorites is “Redeployment”, where you choose two random cards from two players’ hands and switch them, not gaining anything directly for yourself, but completely throwing off the strategy of others at the table. These moments reminded me a bit of Cosmic Encounter, where sometimes the chaos created is more enjoyable than actually winning.
The game does have its flaws. Though it plays up to 5, I wouldn’t play again at that count, as it winds up devolving into a match of “bully the leader” that can push the overall game length and overstays its welcome. I also wish there were a little more variety in the Dispute cards, which are the highlight of the game. At 3 or 4 players, though, it really shines and produces a ton of excitement in about a half hour. One of the better war games to bring to the bar or as a good filler game.
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★★★★☆ – Would like to play it again
Read more articles from Joseph Buszek.
Clans of Caledonia: Industria – David McMillan
The long wait is over. After what feels like an eternity, the Clans of Caledonia expansion finally arrived on my doorstep just in time for the holiday weekend. This new expansion adds new game boards, new clans, and several new modules that explore Scotland’s early industrial age. Chief among these are the new Farmer’s Market tiles and the Train board.
The Farmer’s Market tiles take up a space on the game board, and players building next to these have the opportunity to sell one of the two goods printed on the tile for an increased price. Not only does the presence of these tiles create new avenues of generating some much needed cash in the mid-game, but they also prevent anyone from building on the space, as the tiles cannot be removed until at least one of each type of depicted good has been sold to them. In the recent game that I played, I was quickly blocked from expanding in a particular direction due to a Farmer’s Market that hadn’t been traded with.
Losing the ability to expand in Clans of Caledonia can hamper your progress significantly. That’s where the Train board comes in handy. This board features several depots—connected to the others via a system of railroad tracks—as well as a number of milestones which can be claimed if certain requirements are met, and which provide bonus points at the end of the game to players that have claimed them. Each user begins the game with a train, placed onto the board in one of the starting depots. In order to move your train from one depot to another, you must be able to deliver the goods that the target depot is demanding. If you manage to make a delivery, you gain a milestone marker. If you’re able to collect all your milestone markers as well as meet the requirements to claim all the various milestones with them, you unlock your Station marker which you can place as a unit onto the game board for free, but it must be placed in the same space as one of someone else’s unit. In the same game where I found myself blocked by the unused Farmer’s Market, I was able to use my station to expand my reach beyond what, in the base game, would have been an impassable wall. I suddenly went from being a non-viable contender for one of the end game expansion rewards to tying for third place.
This expansion is the stuff of dreams, ramping up the tension in new and exciting ways, while giving players new avenues to explore. I played as one of the new clans, Clan Gordon, who has a heavy focus on wheat production. It was a joy to play, and I am excited for the opportunity to explore the unique aspects the other new clans have to offer. I doubt I will ever play the base game without the expansion again.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from David McMillan.
Qomet – Andrew Lynch
Can we safely describe Gigamic’s Q series as “storied” at this point? I feel like we can. Quarto, Quorridor, and the more recent Qawale are fixtures in board gaming, especially if you leave hobbyist spaces. Grandparents love these games. That’s worth a lot.
Qomet is the newest release. Players take turns moving pieces around the board, attempting to create a square. It’s a pleasant game, comfortably at home with the other Q’s, but it doesn’t manage to evoke a mood of its own. Rather than a standout entry, Qomet blends into the background.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Andrew Lynch.
