Power Expansion

More stats, filtering and tagging!

The Power expansion combines the previous two expansions: Deep Stats and Tagging into one.

This gives us the ability to create new features that use parts of both these older expansions. A new feature like this will come to the app soon!

What will happen for you?

If you already own the Deep Stats and/or Tagging expansion, you will automatically get the Power expansion, including all features. This can only add options, nothing will be removed.

More information about the Power expansion

You can read about all features here: Power Expansion.

Gladly this is it’s own version of 7 Wonders with the right feel but with Dice to kick it all off. Each player has a map where they can build their Wonder, each of which has a few differences to their playability. You play for victory points as you build your wonder. You also have a pencil and eraser to help keep your playable dice scores etc.
You all start with seven coins and will use them to make up any shortfalls during your game and when the dice are revealed during each round they may have a cost for their use. You start with seven dice in the shaker dice box and as you play, the players change three of them, the grey ones with the wood, stone etc on them are swapped for the black, purple and white dice, so don’t wait around or you are really stuffed with your choice. As you use the dice they stay in play as another player may use them as well. the ability to play Seven Wonders in this way is an eye opener, as it does have a different feel and play to both Seven Wonders proper and Duel,

This is a fun new way to play Seven Wonders and you can order it at: https://www.bgextras.co.uk/7-wonders-games/7-wonders-game/7-wonders-dice

BGI 393 The One About Essen Decompression

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Once more, the SPIEL fair at Essen has come to an end. It’s been a few intense days of looking, meeting, and, of course, playing – for me and 200,000+ other attendees. Even though the fair has expanded to another hall now, tickets for the busiest days (Friday and Saturday) were sold out a week before the event, and I also had the impression that more of the games sold out (at least that was my experience at several booths). Thus, I went home with zero purchases – which is fine! I travelled with a light suitcase on my way back, and I’ll be able to catch up on purchases via the usual local and online vendors.

Something you cannot catch up on, however, is meeting the people who mean something to you. I’ve always enjoyed going to the fair with a friend or two, and over the years, my SPIEL schedule has been enriched by more and more meetings with my fellow friends of board games and history whom I’ve met over the internet. In that regard, this year’s SPIEL has been exceptional: Not only have I gotten to dinner with my Boardgame Historian colleagues (a great way to start off the fair experience with some sparkling conversations on history in board games from a research and museum perspective) and to play a few games with Michal from The Boardgames Chronicle (more on that below) – both are almost traditions by this time – but I (and Michal) also got to meet Grant and Alexander from The Players’ Aid on their very first trip to SPIEL! I think that we all had a blast, and many plans to meet again are already in the making… and maybe play more games together!

Speaking of games: I’ve gotten around to play a grand total of 13 during the two days of the fair (ranging from very short demos to full games). Here are my highlights:

Bohemians (Jasper de Lange, Portal Games)

Bohemians had attracted my attention with its beautiful artwork and its intriguing fin de siècle Paris art scene setting. After giving it a test drive at SPIEL (with Michal, my friend A., and another fairgoer), I can also attest that it has sound mechanics (a mix of long-term deckbuilding and short-term pattern building from the cards in your hand):

You arrange your day as an aspiring artist with activities like “Wander the streets aimlessly” or “Practice a new technique.” The activity cards have symbols on the left and right, which, if matching, give you inspiration. You can imagine that there are some power combos – for example “Get in the mood for composing” and “Compose without stopping” have four matching symbols!

It gets even better if you acquire more inspirational activities (by spending inspiration) or if you don’t do activities alone, but have a muse with you (also to be gotten into your hand by spending inspiration).

In the end, your goal is to make artistic achievements which range from “A mildly positive review in the local newspaper” over “Your family’s quiet acceptance of your new life” to “Establishment dismayed by your work” which – you guessed it – are also acquired by spending inspiration.

As you need quite a lot of inspiration for the achievements (and they get ever more “expensive” as the game progresses), you’ll probably have to arrange for artistic activities in all four slots of the day… which means you cannot work, another (much less exciting) way to spend your time. Every player has a disreputable profession (street musician, beggar, journalist…) which they can use instead of an activity – and, if they do not, they will gain a hardship card into their deck. You know, all the bad things in life that only orderly labor keeps at bay. Abject poverty. Shame. Syphilis.

Ideally, activities, muses, achievements, and hardships come together narratively. For example, I had a great day in which my activities linked up and I could meet with not one, but two muses right after another! That gave so much inspiration that I gained an achievement… but as I hadn’t worked, I gained a hardship – hypersexuality! Apparently, I had frolicked a bit too much with the muses.

Bohemians is a nice light deck-builder which should work especially nicely for casual audiences. I had a very good start at the fair with it and have acquired it since.

Neither King Nor God (Uwe Walentin, Sound of Drums)

And now for something completely different! Neither King Nor God takes players to the European power struggle in the Age of Reformation. Four of them will fill the shoes of England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papacy in their quest to spread their trade, conquer new territories, and convert cities to their religion. For this task, they send out courtiers to the great cities of Europe. As the courtiers are placed face down, you know where your rivals sent one to, but not what kind of courtier it is – a merchant to plop down trade barrels, a general to move armies, an assassin to murder or a traitor to take over another courtier?

As the courtier stacks in cities will be resolved only when all courtiers have been placed (top to bottom – so the courtier placed last goes first), there’s a lot of tactical finesse in placement: Do you go where everyone seems to go to partake in the bonanza or do you try to carve out your own little domain in less popular cities? Will you place your merchant first so that he’s on the bottom of a stack and will resolve after any general who could raid his trade barrel placement or do you place him last so he can go before anyone tries to murder him?

That makes for very little downtime and great mirth both in assembling and resolving those courtier stacks. Given that everyone’s victory conditions are secret (to be drawn randomly at the start of the game), there is a lot of guessing and bluffing. However, if no one has fulfilled their victory condition by the time the plague hits Europe, different victory conditions will apply.

Despite its length (three to four hours for a full game), the game plays briskly from the first turn on. And while it is involved, it’s not a complicated game – in fact, as the friendly Sound of Drums guy who had explained the game to the group before us had to demo a game at another table, we successfully self-taught the game from the rulebook!

Neither King Nor God is a pilot for a bigger five-player version that is to be published next year.

Verdun (Ren Multamäki, Dragon Dawn Productions)

I’d been eyeing Verdun for some time now, but never got around to play it. Good thing I could remedy that at SPIEL! As Michal and I randomly bumped into each other at the DDP booth, we could try the game together (each accompanied by a team mate).

Verdun is one of the many “trick-takers with a twist” that are released these days – and definitely one of the better ones! Two or four players (in teams of two) fight the World War I battle of Verdun. Whoever has the initiative selects an objective to attack. If their side – Germany or France – wins the trick by at least the (hidden) strength of the objective, they’ll gain the objective and its victory points. As all players draw from a shared deck of cards, that means that anyone will have both German and French cards in their hand.

That leads to all sides of interesting decisions: If you’re defending as France, are you going to play a French card to try and win the trick? Or are you playing a German one to get rid of it, either hoping that you’ll win anyway, or that the Germans win by so much that another German card doesn’t do them any good?

It gets even trickier when you consider that all cards have skull icons on them, indicating how many negative points they’ll confer on their respective side if they end up in the casualty pile. After every trick, one card per side (sometimes more) ends up as a casualty. If you can sneak in a skull-heavy card of the opponent side, that might undo all the points they’ll gain from winning the objective.

Consequently, scores will likely be negative in the end. Maybe you’ll win a few objectives, maybe not. But certainly, you will have suffered appalling losses. The question is not if you’ll win big, but if your enemy is losing even more painfully than you. The grim logic of the war of attrition on the Western Front.

Our short test game also showed the importance of keeping initiative, so you can attack and at least have the chance to win objectives and offset some of the losses: In the end, France had gained two objectives (Germany none), which, as losses were pretty evenly spread, was enough for victory (-7 to -13).

Verdun is testament to what relatively simple games can do, and how games which stray far from wargame standards (hexes, counters, combat resolution tables…) can capture the essence of a conflict just as well.

Chuồn Chuồn (Ionah Nguyen, Everjoy)

Self-balancing dragonflies (in Vietnamese: Chuồn Chuồn), often made out of bamboo, are popular toys in Vietnam. They have now made their way to the board gaming world in this charming, gorgeous game.

Players will attempt to attract dragonflies of varying sizes and colors to their bamboo trees to match the patterns on their objective cards – for example, to have a small yellow dragonfly on the highest bamboo, a large purple one on the middle, and a small blue one on the lowest. As everyone takes dragonflies from the same pool and there’s only one in each size/color combination, you will soon run out of dragonflies and will have to use the magic cards at your disposal to re-arrange the flies, shake them off someone’s tree, etc.

I found the game enjoyable and its production values outstanding. The finely crafted dragonflies are guaranteed to catch the eyes of observers, which makes the game also great for introducing new players to board gaming (everyone likes pretty things, and everyone likes to place self-balancing dragonflies!).

The game will be released next year.

Rock Hard: 1977 (Jackie Fox, Strohmann Games)

My recommendation for this game comes from Dave who just published his 1000^th post over on his blog Dude! Take Your Turn – a rockstar if ever I saw one!

As I started the fair with a game about aspiring artists, it was most fitting to end it with another about this subject. The single-minded pursuit of artistic achievements which was abuzz in fin de siècle Paris has by 1977 given way to the much wider notion of… victory points! These you may get for a variety of pursuits and objectives, from perfecting your musical skills over becoming addicted to drugs candy to going to bed early.

Rock Hard: 1977 is a worker placement game, just that you only have one worker – yourself, the aspiring rockstar. You’ll divide your activities between day (say, practicing your craft or giving a radio interview), evening (playing gigs), and night (hanging out with the cool kids at the club). Every once in a while, you’ll also have to work your square job as a veterinary assistant, truck driver or what have you. Unlike in Bohemians, that is not a moral corrective on your life, but fulfils the simple economic need of making some money with which you rent those rehearsal studios, pay for your demo tape recording, or buy drugs candy.

Ideally, your skills will improve, you’ll play at ever greater venues, and your royalties will cover the cost of your rockstar needs. We didn’t get quite that far at the fair – I had to catch a train and another of my fellow players a pre-scheduled game. Until then, we had only dipped our feet in the waters of musical glory, but it was a very thematic affair!

Rock Hard: 1977 has been released in English last year already (by Devir), but the fair showed off the new German edition.

What do you think of these games? Anything up your alley? And if you’ve been to SPIEL or would have liked to go – what are your highlights?

This is a very interesting game, from Stonemaier Games, that was an eye opener for all of those that played the game with me.  Do you remember the books from the late 70’s the own adventure ones that were still popular until the 90’s, The ones that you had to chose what to do from a sedate walk to explore or you try a fast run away to escape or several other options, That is basically what this game is. You work co-operatively to try to first survive and then you try to escape together. Let me start more from the beginning of the story.

There is little that the game inventor wanted you to know about this game as it is meant to be an adventure. In fact they said that if you have a part of the story that does not match with you all, that you should discuss it among yourselves and see what feels right.
Here is the basics of the game start. You are travelling through space and there was an accident, You are one of the survivors who grabbed an escape pod each of you has landed at a different location. You each roll two skill dice and depending on your roll you work out where you have landed, there is a chart to work this out. You receive a card for your location then you can choose one of the options on the card in front of you. As you can’t see each others location views but can talk over radio you can describe your view but cannot show each other your cards. You can explain what you are seeing on your card and the choices you have, you just can’t show your card to anyone else.  You can order this at: https://www.bgextras.co.uk/other-games/vantage/vantage

I will say that there are bonus skill tokens you can gain I can recommend getting the wooden replacements for the skill tokens as they are more solid than the cardboard ones and it is the same for the packs of metal coins you can get to replace the cardboard ones with as the clink of metal is so much better when counting out coins. There is also a dual-layered playing mat pack that does make this game that much more compact and I highly recommend them as they are all of higher quality and beautiful for the game feel as they give you the perfect holder for the eight cards that you collect and put around your character card that are also contained in the dual layered  boards.  You can order these at: https://www.bgextras.co.uk/other-games/vantage