BGI 376 The One About Diamond Doo-Doo

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BGI 375 The One About “A Panda Goes To Brazil”

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We are really excited to introduce Avatars in BG Stats!

Avatars offer a way, in just three steps, to easily and quickly create a beautiful picture to use as your player icon.

Multiple talented artists created sets of illustrations you can use together with a background colour and a shape to create a unique Avatar for you and other Players in the app.

The Illustrations you can choose from are created by the following 5 talented artists:

• Annika Heller – Instagram: @annikaheller_illustration
• Lili Chin – Website & Shop: doggiedrawings.net
• Lukas Siegmon – Lukas Art Portfolio: lukas.siegmon.net
• Rachel Kremer – Website: RachelKremer.nl
• Rory Muldoon – Website: rorymuldoon.com

Select your own Avatar, (optionally) receive your friends Avatars when they share plays, or create sets of Avatars with the same background colour or shape for different game groups!

With 50 illustrations, 450+ colours and more than 25 shapes you can make each players avatar unique!

Receiving Avatars

On the Matching screen, when you import a play file / QR code, you can choose which avatars to import, so you can use a players own chosen avatar in your app. Or you can keep the avatar you’ve chosen for that player yourself!

Avatars on the Plays list

On the plays list there is an option to show avatars for all players, or just the winner(s).

Plays list: options to show Board/variants

On the Plays list it is now possible to show board/variants for plays. Just like expansions, you can now toggle “Display board/variants” in the gear menu at the top right of the list.

Hungarian

We are very proud that thanks to the hard work of our wonderful volunteers Hungarian becomes the 16th language in BG Stats!

Languages already available are: Chinese (simplified), Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian!

Activating a different language in the app
Go to Settings –> App Settings –> Language

We are very grateful for all our translators for not only translating the app, but also for their continued support with translating new features!

BGI 374 The One About Asmodee Starting to Crowdfund

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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This edition of Off the Shelf is going to look at an odd little game called

oddball Äeronauts is a 2014 two-player game designed by Nigel Pyne, and published by maverick muse. It’s an in-hand game, where you are playing cards in an attempt to get your opponent to discard all of theirs. It has a steampunk theme to it, with two different factions included in the box. The game first caught my attention when it was on Kickstarter, and I got my copy shortly after it actually released. The game is no longer in print – I don’t think the publisher ever put anything else out, other than a sequel in 2015, and they aren’t in operation now.

Each player gets a deck of cards specific to their faction (Pirates or Pendragons). They also get a mercenary and two event cards. The decks are then traded, shuffled, and returned to their original owner. Players hold their deck in hand face up, and flip the bottom three cards face down. The deck is held with the top three cards splayed out as these are the cards available to be played.

In each round, one player is designated as the Leader. That player will choose a suit to lead – Sailing, Guns, or Boarding. These are listed in the upper left corner of the card. The opponent will then choose a suit, which can be the same or different. Players will then choose how many cards they want to play (1-3), and reveal this information simultaneously. Players will then add the main value from the suit they chose (the larger number) and add it to the support value from other cards they played (the smaller number with a +). The higher value wins. The winning suit gives a bonus – Sailing allows a player to recover two cards, which means they flip their first two facedown cards so that they are face up; Guns forces their opponent to discard two additional cards, meaning they are flipped facedown and moved to the bottom of the deck; and Boarding allows the player to recover one while the opponent discards one.

In addition to the Sailing, Guns, and Boarding values, each card has a trick. You can use the trick on your top card, which may give you a bonus for winning, increase the value of certain suits, or other benefits.

When one player has no face up cards remaining in their deck, their opponent wins.

What really makes this game stand apart is that it’s a game you don’t need a table for. It’s just cards, they’re all held in-hand, and this means it’s a game that you can play anywhere. Which is pretty cool. Each player’s deck consists of 29 cards – 26 faction cards, one mercenary, and two events – so they fit pretty well in-hand. The art is all steampunkily stylized, and it’s a good looking game.

The game boils down, basically, to War meets Rock-Paper-Scissors. Even that’s not entirely accurate as it only really bears a passing resemblance to RPS – there are three categories you can choose to fight in, and rather than one always beats another, it’s a case where you just have to compare strengths at that particular time. But still, this means that there is a lot of luck in the game. You can only play with your top three cards, your top card is always your main card, and the next two are always supports. There’s some tactics you can employ, such as trying to manipulate it so a certain card comes on top next, but you’re still at the whim of that initial shuffle. (Incidentally, I do really like how the game instructs you to have the other person shuffle your deck.) The manipulation becomes harder if your opponent is choosing a suit that will cause you to discard if you lose.

I like the flow of the game, where one person leads with a suit, then the other player chooses their response. Especially since the leader is the person who won the last hand, it gives the second player a chance to react to what they’re doing. Maybe tricks could be in play. The use of the term “trick” in the game always makes me think that this is some kind of trick-taking game. It’s not, the tricks are just little rule-breakers you can use to enhance your game. Their inclusion is pretty nice – it gives you something to consider other than just the numbers on your card.

I like the portability of the game, and the fact that it can be played all in your hand. However, in the end, there’s not a lot of strategy. Don’t get me wrong, there is some, but the choices are usually based on how you think you can get the highest score based on what’s in front of you. The game doesn’t require a lot of brain power, which is good, but at the same time, I feel like it should require a bit more than I get. That’s why I’m ranking this fairly low, currently at #43 on my Off the Shelf rankings.

I know I’ve kind of had some radio silence lately, but there’s been a lot going on with work and things. The next post I do will likely be my annual X des Jahres rundown. Thanks for reading!

BGI 373 The One About Zombicide

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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BGI 372 The One About Asmodee 3.0… or is it 4.0… maybe even 5.0?

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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BGI 371 The One About What To Do With a Completed LEGACY Game

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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Enabling Ratings

If you haven’t done so already, you can read how to enable Ratings here: Enabling Personal Ratings

BGI 370 The One About Gaming Resolutions and Gaming Vibes

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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BGI 369 The One About Printing Games in the USA

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Off the Shelf is back with another game off my shelf. This time, we’re looking at the first board game Kickstarter success story…

Alien Frontiers is a 2-4 player game first published in 2010 by Clever Mojo Games, designed by Tory Neimann. It’s a dice placement and resource management game about the colonization of a new planet, with zones named after different classic science fiction authors. When the game launched on Kickstarter in 2010, no other board games had really had any success on the platform. Alien Frontiers made over $14,000 on a goal of $5,000, which is wild by today’s standards. I did not get the game on Kickstarter, but I was aware of it shortly before it started delivering (it was the subject of my third post on this blog). The game has gone through a number of editions since its initial run, with a fifth edition and a big box released in 2017. I don’t know if there are rules changes from edition to edition, but I’ll be talking about my version.

The game is played on a board showing the surface of an alien planet, as seen here:

Each player starts the game with three dice, as well as one fuel token and one ore. On your turn, you’ll roll your dice and then distribute them to various spots around the board.

• You could place any die at the Solar Converter, which will turn a 1-2 into one fuel, a 3-4 into two fuel, and a 5-6 into three.
• You could place any die at the Lunar Mine to get one ore. However, the die you place must be greater than any other die there.
• You could place any die at the Alien Artifact to get rid of all the cards on display and see new ones. However, if the total of dice you place there equals or exceeds 8, you can take a card.
• You could place a pair of dice with the same value at the Orbital Market. This would allow you to convert fuel to ore at a rate of X:1, where X is the number on the dice you placed.
• You could place a pair of dice at the Shipyard, and spend fuel and ore to build a new ship. In other words, you’ll have another die to roll next turn.
• You could play a sequence of three dice (i.e. 1-2-3) at the Raiders’ Outpost. This would allow you to steal any combination of four resources from your opponents, or one card.
• You could place three identical dice at the Colony Constructor and spend three ore to place a colony directly on the planet.
• You could also just place a die at the Colonist Hub to advance a colony towards the end of its track. When it gets there, you can spend a fuel and an ore to place it.
• You could place a 6 at the Terraforming Station. This allows you to place a colony (at the cost of one fuel and one ore) on the planet immediately. However, that die is now lost to you – you’ll have one fewer to role next turn. You can always replace it at the Shipyard.

Each time you land a colony on the planet, you score a point, plus an additional point if you have control over the region you land in. If you ever lose that colony, or lose control, you lose the point. Control over a region gives you a special benefit, and that’s different from region to region.

The game continues until someone has placed all of their colonies. At that point, whoever has the highest score is the winner.

I got my copy of Alien Frontiers in 2011, so that’s the version I know. Future versions upgraded the colonies to be much fancier, but I like the little wooden lumps from the original (as seen in the picture above). The art has always had that retro pulp sci-fi look, and it’s cool that all the regions on the planet are named after influential sci-fi authors – Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, AE van Vogt, and so on. And the components are quite nice – it’s a well produced game.

The theme of colonizing a planet is good. It probably easily could have been an Earth-based colonial theme, though that probably would have proved to be more problematic these days. Since the dice are your “ships”, the theme does fall apart a little bit, but the look of the game really helps sell the theme.

This is a dice placement game, which was a genre that didn’t have too many entries before it – Kingsburg and Alea Iacta Est are the only ones listed prior to 2010 on BGG, with Troyes coming out the same year. There have been a bunch since then, but the mechanism was fairly novel for the time. And it’s still good, though I think it suffers somewhat due to a lack of variety in gameplay. The board is always set, the places you can send your dice is always the same, the regions on the board is always the same. The most variety the game gives you is in the tech cards, but even those feel a little samey after a while.

There are several other mechanisms in play. Resource management is a big one. Area majority comes into play with the planetary regions. And there’s some ladder climbing involved, as you need to beat what another player has placed somewhere in order to claim things – the Lunar Mine and the Raiders’ Outpost, in particular.

The game also has a fairly significant take that factor to it, which tends to leave a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It’s not just blocking spots other players might want to go to – there are ways to steal from them and mess up their plans. The tech cards are a big offender here, especially because they come out randomly. But my biggest problem comes with the Outpost, which is a set spot and allows you to steal all kinds of stuff. You can clog it up with a high straight that other players can’t beat, and when you claim your dice on the next turn, you could potentially end up doing the same thing again.

The scoring system is a little funky, though not really if you think about it. The way it is described is that you’re basically looking at a snapshot of where people are when you look at the scoreboard. It’s a dynamic thing – just because you have points doesn’t mean you will always have those points. Losing colonies and control of regions will bump you back, so you have to keep an eye on things.

It’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not the biggest fan of this game. I really want to be, but this has been the most disappointing game I’ve ever pulled out with people. I think the lack of variety hurts it, and the fairly obvious strategies mixed with the randomness of the dice. It took several games before I found anyone who enjoyed it, and by that time, I wasn’t really feeling it any more.

I will say, however, that I played once with the Factions expansion, and that made a world of difference in the game. It added special player powers, hidden agendas, and new orbital facilities. It made the game a lot more fun. I never got it, however – instead, I just have the basic game, and it’s fine. It’s not one that I’m dying to play, but it’s not bad either. I’m ranking it currently at #40 on my Off the Shelf rankings list.

That’ll do it for today. Thanks for reading!

BGI 368 The One About the Chopping Up of Diamond Comics

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BGI 367 The One About… CMON and Tariffs and Diamond Bankruptcy… Oh My!

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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