A Nice Cuppa – Andrew Lynch
I love the theme of A Nice Cuppa. Manage your to-do list, your fears, and your anxieties while attempting to sit down and relax with a nice cuppa. Your goal is to get the steps of the process—get a kettle, turn on the stove, select a mug, etc.—into the right order while dealing with all those pesky real world issues, each of which makes it hard for you to keep the cards in their place.
At first, the puzzle of A Nice Cuppa didn’t feel as satisfying as the puzzle in Glass Garden, Button Shy’s other recent solo release. After a few plays, though, there’s something about A Nice Cuppa that invites repeat attempts. It doesn’t feel as deterministic, as controllable. It may well be that A Nice Cuppa isn’t as good a puzzle as Glass Garden, but it’s a more intoxicating brew nonetheless.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★★☆ – Would like to play it again
Read more articles from Andrew Lynch.
Dying Message – Andy Matthews
I’m generally not a fan of deduction style games: Apples to Apples, Coup, Silver, etc., they’re just not “fun” to me because they’re usually a mix of subjective, performative, and often include player elimination. I’m glad that other people enjoy them, but I just usually say no thanks. So when Oink Games sent Dying Message along with my desired media copy of TRND, I gave a small internal sigh. That said, I suspected my two youngest sons would have fun with it, and since at least half of my enjoyment of board games is playing games that other people like, I decided to give that one a try first. And I’m glad we did, because we had a great time.
In Dying Message (which can be played co-operatively or competitively), players receive “handwritten” clues from the “victim” (one of the players) which attempt to point to one of 6 culprits as the murderer. The double-sided clue cards contain arbitrary shapes which appear to be scrawled in blood. The culprit cards, randomly drawn from the deck and placed below 6 letter tiles (A-F) contain a simple mug shot drawing, along with their name, occupation, and a one sentence description of the suspect. In secret the “victim” rolls a 6 sided die with the letters to select the culprit then, with the other players out of the room, proceeds to use the clue cards to illustrate. After they’re done they must give out a death scream which is the indication the other players can return. Oink even includes a small red piece of felt to act as a blood pool.
The game is relatively simple, the 15 random illustrations are usually enough to help finger the murderer, and my sons and I had loads of fun placing the blood pool in sometimes inappropriate places to garner some laughs when the detectives re-entered the room. This isn’t a game I’d usually pick from a lineup, but if you have some time to kill, and enjoy pretending your friends are dead, then give Dying Message a try.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Andy Matthews.
Tycoon: India 1981 – Thomas Wells
Stefan Risthaus’s only standout design, Arkwright, has occupied space in my brain for years. It is one of the more compelling economic simulations in spite of its flaws, and I’m looking forward to a second edition. It has a variant where you can buy stock in other players’ success, which doesn’t really work. Fast forward to Tycoon: India 1981, a unique design from Sidhant Chand, which I backed on Kickstarter several years ago. It takes much of what makes Arkwright unique (the pricing mechanism and the difficulty of capital management) and synthesizes it into a much more accessible package that you can teach in 15 minutes and play in 2-2.5 hours. It is one of the sharper games I’ve played in a long time due to some very punishing auctions, but man oh man it is ever a treat.
I hope that Chand continues to design heavier games because this one was a treat, and kept everyone at the table engaged for its entire runtime. Hopefully it catches on with a wider audience, but if you’re a fan of heavier economic games, give this one a spin.
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from Thomas Wells.
Greenland (Third Edition) – Justin Bell
I took another dive into heavy, thematic Ion Game Design territory with a recent play of the third edition of Greenland, a 2018 release based on the 2014 original designed by Phil Eklund. (The third edition includes components allowing for four players instead of three.) A lot like my plays of Bios: Genesis, Greenland features a very deep, borderline intimidating, series of rules. Here, players take on the roles of tribe leaders who must embark in exploration of both Southern and Northern Greenland in the 11th century, while embarking on all kinds of different tasks (measured by the success of six-sided die rolls) as varied as narwhal hunts, negotiation, technology upgrades, marriages, syphilis, and the colonization of the New World.
For all the rules and varied situations placed upon the players, the game is mechanically a dice chucker, so that became the main point of debate during my three-player game: is the juice worth the squeeze? No matter which edition you play, Greenland has a medium-weight ruleset further bogged down by a couple dozen edge cases (for example, players use a very standard bidding arrangement to settle auctions in the first phase of each round, but the yellow player can match the high bid then win because they have a power that allows them to win ties) and a couple dozen icons that are referenced on the included player aids. While I was able to pick up on these icons and commit them to memory as the one responsible for teaching the game, I got the sense that other players had a harder time internalizing the various rules.
Still, I liked what I saw during this play. And it’s not often that you can play a game where you can barter the hand of your daughter to settle a land dispute, or later lose tribe members to venereal disease. Greenland has an impressive narrative arc for a game where I found myself constantly rolling dice to get triples and add cards to my tableau. The real question: do I have the right network to ensure I can regularly get this game to the table? I don’t think I do, but I wonder how I would feel if I did. Like other Eklund titles (such as High Frontier 4 All and a few of the Pax titles), I find that you are either all the way in or all the way out on his designs.
Ease of entry?
★★☆☆☆ – Not an easy onboard
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
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