Wool Street – Justin Bell
This is hard to believe, but sometimes a game ends up being…well, too short. Enter Wool Street, a “Mini Card Game” from the folks at Hachette. Players buy and sell wool products in five different colors while trying to influence a market by trying to throw players off the scent of a single piece of hidden intel each player gets before the game begins. Which of the five colors will end the game being worth zero, or possibly even negative, points?
“I’m not sure there’s much game here,” one player in my review commented after we finished our roughly 10-minute play. And, look: the game’s rules are actually provided, in full, on the game’s BGG page, so this game is both mini (as promised on the side of the small box) and short. But I had the same complaint as my friend did: it never feels like anyone gets to make a meaningful choice in Wool Street and everyone knows at least one color worth avoiding as play moves along, so in our game, players constantly moved to sell some of their goods in a single color all game long, and when it became clear that yellow (in our game) was going to end play as the most valuable product, everyone held yellow clothes close to the vest.
Wool Street isn’t great…but it isn’t clear that it ever aspired to be more than average fare.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★☆☆☆☆ – Would play again but will cry about it
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
The Druids of Edora – Justin Bell
Now that I am a member of the voting committee for the International Gamer Awards, I am getting in a few plays of games that I missed during the last 12 months before voting on the “long list” of nominees our jury team has come up with for game of the year awards. One game I missed: The Druids of Edora, Stefan Feld’s latest release from the folks over at alea, Ravensburger’s strategy game arm. The Druids of Edora is Feldian in many of the ways we know and love: there are dice, there are boatloads of points, and there are boatloads of ways to score those points in a timeframe that topped out at 56 minutes for our first three-person game.
But a host of issues keep The Druids of Edora off the Feld top line. I’m very fortunate that there are now plenty of rules videos and playthroughs available for this game, because the rulebook is pretty dense. Every game needs a player aid, and The Druids of Edora is no exception…but somehow, this game was produced without one, although there is a single reference sheet to be passed amongst other players. The graphic design of the board is terrible, and it is very difficult to parse available actions across a table. One of the game’s movement concepts almost can’t be seen without proper lighting in your game room.
All of this is a shame, because there’s a decent game here. Players have a dice pool that is rolled at the start of play, and not again thereafter; these dice are used to claim spaces in shrines, using a movement and payment system that seem to be making up for a simpler alternative. The Druids of Edora looks mainly like an area majority scoring game, but because one can score for a host of other actions, you might not even take 2-3 of the game’s eight available actions. (I should know, because I skipped two actions entirely and won by a decent margin.) The Druids of Edora is pretty loose, so players can do almost anything they want in their pursuit of points and happiness.
Ease of entry?
★★★☆☆ – There were a few questions
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Pondscape – Justin Bell
Designer Tomáš Holek has had a veritable flood of titles hit the market after his now-classic multi-use card strategy game SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence arrived just two years ago. With Pondscape, Holek has given us a quick card drafting game where players have to build out the most valuable 15-card tableau at the table.
Pondscape is a more complex game than it appears at first, with important moments tied to which of the three face-up market cards are drafted because of a secondary mechanic that allows players to dump unwanted cards into a face-down “food” pile. At the end of the day, Pondscape is like many of the Earth / Castle Combo tableau-building games, where card placement positions trigger scoring on other adjacent and tableau-wide cards in a player’s pond. It has the kinds of turns that can be quick, but in the wrong hands can be a bit too thinky for my tastes…I need a card that triggers the scoring for the second card in the third row, but also the card in the row above that, because of the cluster scoring component on both.
Pondscape is a drafting game for a certain kind of player, so if you like games like Castle Combo but wanted something a little longer and more strategic for your card grid tableau, I think Pondscape will be a winner. For me, I’d be happy to play it again as a long filler before other Holek games hit the table, but it’s not a game category I typically seek out.
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Into the Machine – Justin Bell
From time to time, I get the chance to do a first play that is pretty enjoyable…and firmly cements its place as a one-and-done experience. I played a game of Into the Machine with two guys from my review crew recently, and after the experience was over, I was surprised that all of us felt the exact same way: good time, reasonable setup variability, easy teach, plays in under an hour, and it generated enough interest to make all of us say “I don’t think I would play this again, but it was a good time.”
Designer Kasper Lapp (That’s Not a Hat, Magic Maze) has given us a puzzle game that has the look of Robo Rally, at least from its cover…but, Into the Machine is absolutely not a programming game. Instead, players use four types of robot workers—circles, squares, triangles and hexagons—to take actions on tiles aligned across three different rows of the main board. The goal here is to get two or three hex bots across a finish line, in a sort of relay race: circle bots push to the right, and can either be upgraded to triangles or squares at different spaces on the race track. If those circle bots are not upgraded by the time they reach the end of the track, they become a hex bot instead. Hex bots are used to track the win condition, as they have to push back towards the left to reach a series of finish line spaces. Rules regarding moving a certain number of spaces, or catching up to the next bot on the track, add flavor and using the bots of other players to play hopscotch is somewhat interesting.
Into the Machine never reaches “wow”, but the turn-to-turn decisions are certainly fast and finding clever ways to efficiently move bots around using the tile actions and bonus cards was nice and thinky from time to time. The game never overstays its welcome, and the 10-minute sponsored teach video might have been five minutes too long, because the game is so straightforward. Love the player aids here, and it’s a handsome AEG production with nice wooden tokens and a board overlay used to align the length of the race track to the player count. The only reason I could imagine trying Into the Machine again: seeing the game at its full player count of five, to see if the chaos engine of that many players would make the game more or less interesting. I’m excited for someone else in my network to find out.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs – Justin Bell
After doing a demo of Cephalofair’s upcoming title Mercenaries Wanted at Gen Con, the publisher handed me a copy of Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs, the bite-sized version of Gloomhaven released in 2024. Even though I knew about the existence of Buttons & Bugs, it was still quite a thrill to be handed a small box of Gloomhaven game elements that included 20 scenarios, six playable characters, and a host of ways to take on a light RPG experience solo.
Buttons & Bugs delivers, in a package that I will likely throw into the carry-on for my next few trips. The campaign story involves adventurers who have been reduced to the size of housemice (magic, etc.), and must find a way to be returned to their normal size, all the while fighting off baddies big and small. The Gloomhaven combat system—still the best card combat system I’ve ever seen in a game—is on full display here, but smaller, with players in possession of just four double-sided cards that are used to take out 2-4 baddies in each scenario using a modifier system and a simple die roll to resolve effects. Although I have a copy of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion ready to play with my kids, I haven’t played base Gloomhaven in years…so it was fun to jump back in.
On the “Standard” difficulty of Buttons & Bugs, it took me six plays (about 10 minutes per play, so not a huge investment) to get through the first two scenarios, so I’m already thinking about scaling the difficulty down to Easy. I’m a prideful player, but I’m not doing 50 plays of this game to get through 20 scenarios! Still, the combat system and the puzzle of maximizing card actions to work through each scenario’s obstacles, enemies and card effects is getting me excited to work through additional scenarios here. Unlocks include the acquisition of items that can be used in other scenarios, to keep the hooks in a player. Buttons & Bugs is an easy onboard; while I would love to have the experience of setting up a massive play of Frosthaven or Gloomhaven, I’m a man on a time budget and Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs fits the bill.
Ease of entry?
★★★☆☆ – There were a few questions
Would I play it again?
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
