Has a friend ever recommended something that you thought sounded cool and interesting… and then promptly forgot about? I used to have that problem, and eventually I found a solution: write it down! Whether that was a continuation of my Write It Down principle for story ideas, or inspired by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which “I’ll put it on the list” entails an actual list – or, more likely, both – it’s had a major impact on how I approach new content.
With comprehensive lists come a reduced sense of urgency, more (remembered) options at any given time, and, of course, more ways I can organize those options to best suit my needs. To begin with, I split my lists out by those books/shows/etc. that were directly recommended by friends or family, versus content I’d heard about indirectly that I decided might be interesting. That way, when I got around to something a friend recommended, I’d know who to thank and talk about it with.
After a couple years, I realized the lists – especially the indirect one – were getting inconveniently long, and adding items in the order I heard about them wasn’t making it any easier to navigate. So I subcategorized by medium: what to watch, what to read, what to play, etc. And again, it made life so much easier! If I want to look for new shows to watch, I know exactly where to find them. Some already have side notes about which streaming platforms they’re on, or whether they’re available through our library. I put a tiny bit of work in, each time I find something interesting, and it manifests as a massive convenience later. Cool, right?
I think the point, ultimately, is that how we manage life is a constantly evolving process. What worked before might be an obstacle now. The tools you overcame an obstacle with may need to be improved. But if you have the tools to improve your day-to-day, even a little bit… why not use them?
I gather Rummikub has many variants, but I’m only going to comment on the version I’ve played, for obvious practical reasons. If any of you play by different rules, though, I’d love to hear about it!
The version I’ve played goes like this: everyone draws 14 tiles at random out of the bag, and lays them out on their tray, where only they can see. Your goal is to make sets of 3 or more tiles, in either a consecutive run of the same color, or multiple colors of the same number. The tile selection is effectively two decks of standard playing cards, so there’s two of 1-13, in each of the four colors. There are also two wild tiles, that can be used in place of anything! The goal is to be the first player to empty your tray of tiles.
For your first play, you need to have 30 points of tiles, determined by adding their face values. If you can’t play, you draw another tile from the bag instead; in this fashion, you may find yourself with 26 tiles before you can actually play anything, draw that higher value tile you needed and suddenly clear out half of them! Getting on the board late, then, is not the game-defining disadvantage that it is in so many other games.
Once you’ve made that first play, you no longer have to hit a certain point threshold to play your tiles. Furthermore, you can now use the tiles other people have played to complete your sets, so long as the set they played remains complete! For instance, in the picture, I could take the red 3 from the far right set (which, having 4, 5, and 6, is still a valid run), swap it for the wild tile in the middle, and use it to make a run with… my blue 9 and 10, my yellow 5 and 6, my black 3 and 4, or my black 11 and 13. Or my black and red 13’s… Wild tiles bring a whole host of opportunities! You don’t have to make a new set, either; if you have a stray tile or three that fit an existing line-up, you can just add them on!
All of which is to say, Rummikub requires a lot of strategy and split concentration, to follow the ever-shifting layout of the board, your own tiles, and how to use both to maximum advantage. For a game with such simple mechanics, it’s certainly a challenge!
Because lets be honest, you can never have too many napping cats! Well, photos of napping cats. The ideal amount of the cats themselves depends on how many hands you have to pet them all.
In Cryo, your colony ship has crash-landed on a frozen world, and your only hope is to wake your crew from cryostasis and relocate underground… before the sun sets, and the surface temperature drops from “inhospitable” to “certain death.” Under those circumstances, I expected this to be a cooperative game, but the ship was felled by anonymous sabotage and the crew has split into factions, each only looking out for their own. Which seems massively inefficient when everyone has the same goal right now, that being “don’t die,” but fear makes people irrational enough that I suppose the story checks out.
As for the mechanics, I was definitely impressed! Each player has their own platform for their faction’s materials, which they get by deploying and recalling drones to and from the shared board. To deploy, they take one drone from their platform and place it on an unobstructed dock, which lets them take one of that dock’s adjacent actions. There are many of these, scattered between the four sections of the ship, but the most important are Stasis Control, Resource Space, and Launch. Stasis Control lets you trade up to three organic materials for an equal number of your crew pods, which move from the stasis chambers on the ship segment to the safety of your platform. Launch – the one dock that can hold any number of drones – is how you transport crew pods from your platform to the underground caves, and Resource Space gives you a resource tile to either redeem for that benefit or place in a slot on your platform.
Those slots on your platform are important because of your other choice of action, to recall. When you do this, all of your drones on the board return to open docks on your platform. Each dock has an associated action. These start the game incomplete, with costs and/or rewards undefined. That’s what the resource tiles are for! Once all of an action’s slots are filled, you can activate it whenever you land a drone there, provided you have the resources to pay the cost. Some tiles even have two benefits, or a choice between two benefits, both of which are especially useful to keep!
One of these benefits is the option of drawing or playing a card. The cards are one of my favorite aspects of this game, because they can each be used in not one, not two, but three different ways! Four, actually, if you count scrapping them for materials. Equipping the card as an upgrade acts as a permanent effect, like Automation in the picture, which lets you take an additional platform action when you recall without having to land a drone there. Upgrades are at the top of each card. On the left is a mission, which gives you additional means of scoring points, and the body of the card is a vehicle. Vehicles are necessary to use the Launch dock, and each have a maximum number of crew pods they can store/carry. Some also have special effects! I think it’s pretty ingenious how they laid out the cards to have several mechanics each, and how they line up with the slots of the platform!
The other effect of recalling is resolving incidents, which serve as the ticking clock towards sunset. Each ship section has one face-up incident token; the active player will choose one to resolve. For most of the game, there are only two options: looting and sabotage. Looting gives you an immediate benefit, whether that’s materials, energy, or card actions. Sabotage destroys all crew pods in the lowest-numbered stasis chamber that hasn’t yet been destroyed. In the picture above, all four tokens are sabotage, so the next person to recall had no choice. But because section one of Engineering was already vacated, the explosion went off safely and no crew members were harmed! The last token to refill an incident space is sunset, the resolution of which ends the game.
The other way to end the game is if all of a player’s crew pods are in caverns or destroyed. Either way, it’s time for scoring! Each player scores points for crew pods in caverns and on their platform, upgrades and vehicles, mission conditions, and who has the most crew pods in each cavern. The player with the most points wins!
Cryo has a lot of moving parts, but because the overarching turn mechanics are simple and the board is well laid out, it isn’t overwhelming or hard to keep track of actions. Keeping track of what you have left to do is harder, but it’s definitely worth it!
According to the website, there are also solo rules.
