Medium games – Page 2 – Random Geek Child

Quick, Get Them Out of Cryo!

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.

The Captain is Dead?!

The Captain is Dead is a cooperative board game reminiscent of Star Trek, in which characters of various color-coded skillsets work together to fend off an alien attack and repair the Jump Drive of their starship.

Characters start in the rooms of the ship that correspond to their skillsets. For example, the Teleporter Chief starts in Engineering. Each room (except the hallways) has Systems that provide useful bonuses while operational but can be damaged by Alerts. Alerts represent the damage done by the alien ship and are drawn after each player’s turn; if External Scanners are operational, you have the benefit of getting to see the next couple in advance before they hit! Some of the more inconvenient Alerts are Anomalies, which stay in play and have a continued effect until you research them away: Alien Ships, which join the one attacking you and amplify damages; and Hostile Aliens, which invade the ship and limit movement. And of course, many Alerts knock Systems offline.

Systems are repaired by a combination of Skill cards and actions. Each character has a set number of actions per turn, a rank to determine turn order, and a special ability – the first game, I played the Cyborg, who’s immune to Anomalies. Some of them also have Skill discounts. The Admiral, for example, has 2 Command discounts, so when that player would need to spend Command cards, they subtract 2 from the cost. This kind of spending also applies to Battle Plans and Upgrades. The former is a single-use advantage obtained in the War Room, while the latter are new Systems that can be researched and installed in the Science Lab. These especially are massive game changers! Our favorite was Epinephrine Ventilation, which gives everyone an extra action.

The victory condition is simple: repair the Jump Drive! Unfortunately, there are many ways to lose before you can. If you take damage that would lower your shields past 0%, have to add more Hostile Aliens to your ship than there are Hostile Aliens left, or have to draw an Alert when there are none left to play, the game is over and the crew has lost. In our first game, the one in the photo, we were so focused on fixing Systems we lost track of the Hostile Aliens and were overrun! The second game, though, we managed to get two Upgrades installed early, and rode that advantage to victory. It all depends on your characters and the cards!

Livin’ That Redneck Life

Let me start by noting that I usually ignore the recommended age for games, but the 13+ suggestion for this game – and by extension this post – is reasonable. The humor is a bit off-color, and if your preteens start asking about – or already understand – the Moonshine Chart results, it’s not my fault.

That all said… Redneck Life! Because somebody looked at the Game of Life and decided this version needed to happen. For any of you who aren’t familiar with Life, the basic premise is that you roll, move, resolve the text of the space you land on, and you’re trying to have as much money as possible by the end of the game. Or, in Redneck Life, the most teeth left. In this variation, you start the game with no money, but you also don’t need to have money to purchase things; you may instead choose to take red Check ‘N Scrams, worth $100 of debt each. At the end, every $100 you have can be put into buying new teeth to replace the ones you’ve lost, while every $100 of remaining debt is another tooth gone.

Like in Life, there are a few Stop spaces you’ll land on no matter what you rolled. At the first Stop, you’ll roll for the school grade you completed (and its corresponding career, i.e. if you dropped out after 7th grade you’re a taxidermist) and buy a rig, which will have to fit however many young’ens you accrue, or else you’ll have to buy another. I’ve found it’s cheaper to buy high capacity vehicles to begin with, since you can’t sell them back to the Rig Rodeo if your family outgrows the car. At the other Stops, you will inevitably get married and buy a house, get divorced, and marry again. You’ll have at least one red-headed step kid named “Darryl,” and you could just as easily have six, in which case we like to spell them all differently, just for giggles. There was one game I finished with eleven young’ens total, so like I said, get a big car!

There are many other entertaining features, like the Tobacco and Moonshine Charts, Go Redneckin’ cards, and the hilarious names that abound (my favorites being “Denise” and “DeNephew”), but I’ll let you discover them for yourselves, if you’re so inclined. It’s good for a laugh! Just, as I said, not entirely child appropriate. Rest assured that we had no idea my grandma owned this game until all of her grandkids were old enough to play.

Geez, those are some Loaded Questions!

The game Loaded Questions comes from the same creators as The Worst-Case Scenario Card Game, with a similar concept. When the question is posed, however, instead of everyone guessing how the active player will respond, everyone else responds and the active player has to guess which responses belong to whom!

It goes like this: each card has four categories. When you roll and move, the space you land on will determine which category you read off, unless you land on the wild space and get to choose your own. That question, whatever it is, is what your fellow players will be answering. For instance, in the photo below I picked the No-Brainers category, so the question posed was “What’s the best song you don’t currently have in your music collection?”

When everyone has written their answers, their sheets are handed to the previous roller, who shuffles them and reads them off. The current player will then decide who they think wrote each answer. For each correct match, they get to move forward an additional space! I especially like this game because it can be challenging even among close friends. In a lot of games like these, familiarity is an unmitigable advantage, but what I’ve found with Loaded Questions is like-mindedness just results in extremely similar answers, which makes them difficult to correctly attribute.

The objective is to reach the end of the board, and match at least three players’ answers correctly once you’re there. I’m not sure why that’s a fixed number, as it seems to me that it should vary depending on your number of players… but aside from that the mechanics are sound, the questions are fun, and we had a blast!

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Those famous last words are, as it turns out, an excellent basis for a card game. The Worst-Case Scenario Card Game, to be exact. This game is all about comparing hypothetical bad scenarios and trying to guess how your opponents will rate them from 1 (bad) to 5 (the worst). Since many of these scenarios can kill you, the player to go first is whoever has the worst survival skills.

The active player, entitled “The Victim,” starts their turn by spinning the Victim Wheel – this will affect scoring later. Next, they’ll draw 5 scenario cards from the deck and lay them out face-up in the middle of the play area. For instance, your five scenarios might be “only eat one food for the rest of your life,” “wake up to find tarantulas in your bed,” “snowmobile off a 100-foot drop,” “recurring nightmares for weeks,” and “exposed to high amounts of radiation.” At this point, everyone will grab their numbered chips – color-coded by player, with X’s on the backs – and The Victim will rank the disasters by which they deem the worst, while everyone else will rank the disasters by what they think The Victim deems the worse. This is very much a “how well do you know your friends?” type of game, and it would probably be morbidly fascinating to play with people you don’t know. Yet. Because all good friendships start with uncovering one’s deepest fears, right?

…Alright, maybe not. Regardless, each player places their chips X-side up next to the corresponding cards, ideally with The Victim’s chips on the far side from everyone else’s. Once everyone has placed their chips, The Victim will go through one card at a time, first revealing everyone else’s rankings, then their own. The goal is to match numbers with The Victim! For each successful match, a player gains one point… unless the Victim Wheel landed on Score Your Chips!, in which case each match is worth the number of the rank. Other Victim Wheel effects include Double Up! (all players double their points for the round) and Bad Is Good! (players who match The Victim’s #1 chip get a 1-point bonus). The Victim’s score for the round equals whichever other player scored the highest, including bonuses, and a score sheet is included in the box. In a 3, 4, or 6 player game, there are 12 rounds, while in a 5 player game there are 10, so everyone gets an equal amount of turns being The Victim. And whoever has the most points at the end wins!

Let’s Go On A Brain Quest!

Alright, that’s a rhetorical “let’s,” because this game is definitely designed for people younger than me. But people younger than me exist, so for those of you who are and/or live with such individuals, let me tell you about the Brain Quest board game!

Brain Quest is an educational game aimed at first through sixth graders. Players are seated by age so that the oldest player is on the youngest player’s left, the second oldest is on the oldest’s left, etc. To start the game, the youngest player rolls the die while the player on their left grabs a card from the tray and announces the subject. (The subject of the card is at the top, and cards are folded to have the questions facing outwards while the answers are hidden inside.) Questions are labeled 1-6, but which you answer isn’t determined by your roll. Instead, you must choose a number equal to or greater than your current grade level.

As you might expect, your Reader then reads you the question you chose and you answer it. If you’re right, you get to advance your piece on the board, as many spaces as you rolled on the die plus the difference between the question grade level and your own. (So if you’re a second grader, you rolled a five and correctly answered a fourth grade question, you’ll move seven spaces.) Anyone who’s beyond sixth grade can only answer sixth grade questions, and takes either a -1 on their rolls (if they’re still in junior high) or a -2 if they’re older. Note that even if you get a negative roll, you do not have to move backwards.

I had wondered at first why you’d bother rolling before learning the subject and choosing your question, but having played with fabricated ages for a blog-worthy grasp of the mechanics, I realized that how much the dice weren’t helping encouraged me to go for higher level questions, since I kept rolling ones. Similarly, as answering incorrectly means you don’t move at all, the subject can affect how ambitiously you challenge yourself. The Brain Quest subjects are your usual core classes, English, Math, Science, and Social Studies, plus Grab Bag, which is a random mix of other material. (From the card pictured below, I got stuck with “Mick Jagger is the lead singer in what rock group?” Which I believe is the only question we missed, because while I’ve aged out of the academics, I evidently know nothing about rock. Or Rolling Stones. Whoops.)

There are a few interesting spots on the board as well, accentuating the school theme with a track (move along the track that matches your grade level, and don’t worry! They’re all the same number of spaces), a game of foursquare (go through the spaces in numerical order, just like actual foursquare) and a mud puddle, because recess just be like that sometimes. If you end a movement in the mud, lose one turn. The first person to reach Finish wins!

Find the Clue, Scooby-Doo!

In other words, they made a Scooby-Doo edition of Clue! This is a child-friendly production, so there is no murder – instead there are abductions, and it’s up to Scooby and friends to determine who was abducted, where, with which object. Each player gets a character, who are the show’s five regulars each cosplaying one of the more traditional Clue characters. Well, except for Mrs. White, starring as herself and owner of the haunted house where the abductions have taken place. Each character comes with a special ability that can be activated once per game, indicated by flipping over the character card. For instance, Fred/Mr. Green’s ability is to start two rumors in one turn.

To start, one Location, Item, and Character are hidden in an envelope and the remaining cards are shuffled together before being dealt out evenly between players. Any leftovers? Set them face-up beside the board – those are free clues, so make sure to cross them off! This game is all about process of elimination, and it’s easy to make mistakes if you don’t mark your deduction sheet.

On your turn, you’ll start by rolling the dice – you may move up to as many spaces as the dice indicate, excluding diagonals and keeping in mind the secret passages between opposite corners of the board; they’re extremely useful. If you’ve ended your movement in a room (including choosing not to move at all!) you can start a rumor – a term they use on Fred’s character card, but not in the actual rules, which presumes that you’re familiar enough with regular Clue to know it… but I digress. Your rumor is a speculation on what may have gone down, using the room you’re now in as the where and selecting both a character and an item to be moved into the room with you. (“Who got abducted? Did you get abducted?” they ask, pointing at someone who is standing right there.) If the player to your left has evidence the claim is inaccurate (the card for that person/place/thing) in their hand, they will privately show you so; if not, the responsibility falls to the player on their left, and so on and so forth until you’ve either been shown an evidence card or made it through a whole table of nobody having evidence to share. Which probably means you’re right! Or you intentionally suggested something you have evidence against, to throw them off the trail. Depends on how competitively you’re playing.

The other factor of gameplay is the question mark deck. These are cards that you draw when you roll a question mark on the die, land on a question mark at the end of your movement, or are called into another room thanks to someone’s rumor. Most of these cards are munchies like donuts, complete with helpful abilities to aid in your deductive process! They may, for instance, let you trade the snack for getting to sit in on someone else’s investigation, so you get to see the evidence too. However, there are also eight monsters in the deck; while first seven are harmless and just get set face-up alongside the board, the eighth startles whoever drew it so badly that they’re out of the game – they can no longer take their turn or draw question mark cards when called, but their hand is still theirs and they still get to show evidence cards as they pertain to other players’ rumors. Furthermore, monster eight gets shuffled back into the deck, so it may well be drawn again!

Winning is pretty straightforward: when you think you know which cards are in the envelope, make your way to the middle of the board and guess. But be careful; you only get one try! Your deduction is announced publicly, but only you look inside the envelope. If you’re right, congratulations! You’ve won! If not, put them back without saying what they are. Like the poor soul who drew the eighth monster, you’re now out of the game in every capacity save evidence rotation. Better luck next time!

For our game, I believe we determined that Velma (as Ms. Peacock) was abducted in the Graveyard using the Funland Robot’s Ray Gun. Fun times! Well, except for Velma.

Affliction!

Affliction: Salem 1692 is based on an abhorrent event in American history – the Salem Witch Trials. I was worried when we bought this game that it might make light of those events, or perhaps unduly mystify them, but I found that it does neither. Instead, it addresses the true nature of the Trials: various factions exploiting mass hysteria to accuse whoever dared oppose them.

To that end, each player starts the game with both a Faction and a Grievance card. Each Faction has a prominent family that they’re trying to influence into their Circle, and a family they’re trying to arrest, as well as why. Which factions are used in which game depends on the number of players. (Ex: the two-player minimum Salem Village was extremely fundamental in their Puritan beliefs, backed the Putnam family, and targeted the Proctors for their liberal views and financial success. There’s another Salem Village faction for when there’s more players, also backing the Putnams, but targeting the Porters for refusing to pay damages after flooding Village lands.) Unlike your Faction, your Grievance card is hidden, with three Colonists worth extra points if you arrest them, and one Colonist you’ll lose points for if they’re arrested at all.

Everyone also gets a Starting Colonist, but we didn’t realize those were separately marked until halfway through our first game, so the starting colonists in our pictures aren’t actually Starting Colonists. Whoops. Anyhow, the rest of the Starting Colonists are then shuffled back into the Colonist deck (not to be confused with the Prominent Colonist deck), six cards are removed and mixed with Mary Spencer Hill and Increase Mather, and those eight are placed at the very bottom. From the top of both Colonist decks, four cards are flipped face-up; you can tell which row are the Prominent Colonists, not only because the cards’ backs are different, but because their names are color-coded by family. Convenient, right?

Gameplay is a lot like Quetzal (which I’ve posted about here) in that players claim actions with Messenger meeples, one at a time, and then those actions are resolved by their order on the board. So what are the actions? Let’s go in order: first is Meet in Secret, which gains you one Influence Token and lets you place one Accusation Token on any Colonist; we’ll get to these later, but basically Influence is currency, and Accusations make arresting people cheaper. Second (well, third – there are two Meet In Secret spaces) is Exonerate, which lets you remove two Accusation Tokens from any one Colonist… or more tokens, if you’re willing to pay Influence for it. Also serving to protect your interest is – aptly named – the Protection Token, which you can place on any Colonist to protect them from arrest. This action also comes with the First Player Token, meaning next round, you’ll place the first Messenger! Both of these stay put until another action is used to move them.

Next up is Colonist Abilities & Generate Influence! This was definitely my most-claimed space throughout the game, not because it directly achieves victory points, but because it sets so much framework for them. Most straightforwardly, it gains you Influence tokens equal to the amount of Influence Icons on Colonists in your Circle, plus your Faction card for a minimum of 1. Colonist Abilities are a bit more complicated. Every Colonist has some special ability detailed under their illustration, but only some of them activate on this action, those being any with a hammer icon. Don’t worry, though! The reason the others don’t specifically activate now is because they have standing effects! For example, if Thomas Putnam is in your Circle he lets you place an additional Accusation Token whenever you’re accusing. Given that my not-so-Starting Colonist’s ability (action-activated) was to accuse someone… you can see why I liked this space.

Now where things get really interesting: Arrest A Colonist! A Colonist may only be arrested if they have at least one Accusation on them. The price of arresting someone is their Reputation value in Influence tokens, minus one per Accusation on them… hence why accusing is so useful! The exception to the price is if they’re already in someone else’s Circle, in which case there’s a +5 defense bonus to that there sum. All the Colonist’s tokens are cleared and they’re placed to the left of your Faction card in the “Arrested” area, where they’ll remain for the rest of the game. Following this, and closely related, is the Spectral Evidence action, which moves the corresponding green token onto any Colonist of your choice. Nearly the opposite of Protection, this token nixes the +5 defense bonus, the Colonist’s Influence Icon, and their character ability. Fear Tokens are the less potent, more abundant version of this: two Fear on a Colonist blocks their Influence generation, while three blocks their ability. It’s your choice whether you use this action to place two Fear (and gain two Influence) or to remove one.

The Accusations action is, effectively, both Meet in Secret spaces combined. You get two Influence Tokens and two Accusations (which don’t have to go to the same Colonist, by the way!) at the price of it being the second-to-last action in a round. The final action to resolve is the most important: bringing a Colonist into your Circle. Which is a lot like arresting someone, really, except Accusations don’t bring down the cost (you value their reputation, therefore, you pay full price) and they keep any tokens already on them at the time of their adoption. Also, you now have their abilities at your disposal! Plot wisely! But remember – you may not bring anyone into your Circle who’s marked as an opposing faction (T vs V), just like you can’t arrest members of the family you’re supposed to protect.

Once all Messengers are reclaimed from The Esteemed action board, the two rows of Colonists are refilled. First, shift remaining cards all the way to the right in the row, and if none of the bottom row (common Colonists) have been arrested or brought into a Circle, boot the one on the very end to the bottom of their deck. Then refill all empty spaces. If the Prominent Colonist deck runs out, refill from the normal Colonist deck before refilling the normal Colonist row. The privileged folk demand priority, even if they’re artificially inflating their relevance.

When either Mary Spencer Hill or Increase Mather is drawn, the game ends immediately. Points are tallied as follows: one for each Colonist in your Circle and each Colonist you’ve arrested, one for each Property Icon on Colonists you’ve arrested, two for each successful arrest or adoption of your target families, and then the conditions of your Grievance card as listed. As usual, whoever has the most points wins!

Affliction is especially interesting in that the very strategy that will lead you to victory will also leave you grimly appalled, because “people actually did this. And it got people killed.” It’s both an engaging strategy game and an effective way to emphasize the atrocity of what occurred in Salem, 1692.

Cafe Chaos

Food fight! Created by The Odd 1s Out, Cafe Chaos is a great card game for when you want the wild fun of flinging food at your friends without the chore of having to clean it up afterwards.

First things first: everyone picks a character. Each character comes with their own special character action that will join the three basic actions in making up your initial hand. Whoever ate last also gets the Starting Player marker. Each round, starting from the starting player and going clockwise, each combatant will declare their target by pointing a sauce bottle at them; anything you throw this round will be thrown at them unless actions indicate otherwise – for instance, the Mad Scientist’s special ability, Outsmart, makes all attacks against you instead aimed at your target (unless it’s splash damage, which is unavoidable… but we’ll get to that later).

Once your targets are selected, everyone chooses three actions from their hand and places them face down on their player mat, in order. The way Cafe Chaos works, there are effectively three mini-rounds to each full round of gameplay, and now is when you determine what you’ll be doing for each of them. These actions are not adjustable once you’re past this step, so choose wisely.

If it isn’t the first round of the game, you’ll then interrupt your regularly scheduled chaos for something even more unpredictable – an event card! Whatever the top card of the event deck is, the table must abide by its terms, whether that’s a one-time effect (e.g. School Nurse: the player with the most splat points heals two) or an ongoing effect for the rest of the round, such as Cruel & Unusual Punishment, which mandates that every time you successfully attack someone with Food, you must take one splat point yourself!

Hey, what are splat points? Damage, effectively. We’ll get to that in food fight phase: everyone reveals their first action card (only the first) at the same time, and beginning with the starting player, those actions are resolved. The actions everyone has are Grab, Throw, and Duck. Grab lets you take any one card from the Floor (face-up cards in the middle of the table), or two if they’re both Food. Either way, you immediately draw replacement cards to bring the Floor back up to 5.

There are four types of cards in the deck. The first is bonus actions – you can pick these up using Grab to be used in later rounds, and unlike throwable cards, actions always go back into your hand after being used. Throwable cards are the other three categories: Food (yellow), Toppings (pink), and Conditions (blue). As you might expect, these are what you use for the Throw action. There are several possible combos, but the gist of it is that Food gets thrown, Toppings can either be thrown as Food or used to modify it, and Conditions can be used to modify either of the others, but cannot be thrown on their own – after all, “Scalding” isn’t an object you can hold. The more cards used in your combo, the more splat points you cause your target. These are red tokens that are used to cover the letters of “Cafe Chaos!” at the top of your player mat. If you make an especially epic combo (either one card of each type or one Condition and two Toppings) not only do you do four splat points of damage, but you also heal two of your own!

And then there’s Duck, which is fairly self-explanatory – you’re avoiding thrown Food and its accompanying splatter. This only works on thrown Food, though, and only on attacks that have Food at all. For more thorough defenses, look to the character and bonus actions, like Outsmart, but beware that many cards do splash damage (blue splatter rather than red, though the tokens are the same) which cannot be ducked, caught, or otherwise avoided. It’s also worth noting that anyone attacking with Food does not have to decide what Food they’re attacking with until it’s their turn, at which point, since everyone revealed at once, they already know if their target is ducking. (If you have a card to throw, you still have to throw one, but you don’t have to waste your combo on someone it’ll miss. Thrown cards get discarded.)

As you might expect, the next step is to rinse and repeat with actions two and three, after which, you’ll check for victory. More accurately, check for crushing defeat – once someone has all ten letters of “Cafe Chaos!” covered in splat tokens (yes, they count the exclamation point), the game is over, and whoever has the least splat damage wins. (Less laundry to do, huzzah!) If nobody’s hit that limit yet, pass the Starting Player marker clockwise and start picking new targets!

Because of the 10-point end-of-game, there’s a 9 Point Rule that says once you’re at nine points, you’re immune to damage from yourself or from events; in other words, it has to be another player that knocks you out. There’s also no hand limit, and a guide for if you want to mix unused character actions into the deck. Apparently the ratio of actions to Toppings to Conditions to Food should be 1:1:1:4. Feel free to use that information for strategic purposes.

While the many different actions can make this game seem complicated, it’s not hard to get the hang of. If there’s anything you’re still confused by, though, there’s a reference section in the rules with more thorough explanations for all the actions and events, including some of the expansion packs! All in all, Cafe Chaos is fun, it’s goofy, and it’s exceptionally well thought-out.

Making Sense Is For The Sane

“You are an intrepid researcher, unearthing words man was not meant to spell.” Well isn’t that a promising description? For a more mechanics-based synopsis, I’d say Unspeakable Words is a bit like Scrabble, but with cards instead of tiles, less spatial awareness, and more sanity loss.

Here’s how it works: each player starts with five sanity tokens (Cthulhu pawns) and a hand of seven cards. Most cards are letters, assigned a corresponding Lovecraftian monster and a point value based on the number of angles the letter has. For instance, U is for Ubb, and worth 0 points. (Sorry Ubb! It’s not your fault.) On your turn, you may make any common English word of three or more letters using cards from your hand. The total value of the word (the sum of the letters’ values) is added to your score, and the word is written down – it may not be used again by any player for the rest of the game. Additionally, you must roll a sanity check. Roll the d20 – if the roll is equal to or higher than the value of the word, you lose one Cthulhu pawn. (Exception: a roll of 20 is always a success, even if the value of the word is higher.) The results of your sanity check do not affect whether you get to score points for the word, and you always draw back up to seven cards at the end of your turn.

You may notice in the image above that there are a few nuances. The first of these is non-letter cards: I don’t know how many of these are unique to the Deluxe version, which is what we have, but they’re quite useful and shake up gameplay a bit. For instance, you can discard the Yellow Sign card to reroll your sanity check. Another point you have have noticed is that “cx[w]” is definitely not a word, which brings me back to the title of this post! If you have only one sanity token left, you’re officially unhinged, and as it turns out, “unhinged folk can believe anything is a word.” In other words (many), you can now score any word from as many letters as you want, regardless of whether it actually exists in the English lexicon. Convenient, right? Don’t get too ambitious with your nonsense, though – if a player loses all their Cthulhu pawns, they’re out of the game.

For those of us (‘us’ being used very loosely here) who still have enough sanity we’re bound to conventional vocabulary, there may be times we just can’t make a word. And that’s ok! Instead of playing a word that turn, you’d just discard your entire hand without scoring and redraw. In fact, two of the optional rules build on this mechanic, the more benign being Psychotherapy: if you’re playing with this rule, then when a player discards their hand, they may roll against its total value and, if they roll higher than that amount, regain a sanity token. Another option is the Chewx rule, which stipulates that single-sanity players must provide a definition for their gibberish words.

Whatever modifications you’re playing with, the goal of the game is to be the first to reach 100 points without going completely insane. There’s a catch, though. If your word would put you over the victory condition, you must succeed your sanity roll; otherwise, you score no points that turn. You also still take the standard consequence for failing the roll, which means even if your opponents are way ahead of you, there’s a chance you’ll win anyways by being the last one with sanity.

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