Multi-player – Page 2 – Random Geek Child

Detective Holmes… the Cat

That’s right! The cat, the myth, the legend: Purrrlock Holmes! Purrrlock Holmes: Furriarty’s Trail is, you’ll surely have deduced, a deductive reasoning game. The goal is to work together to catch Furriarty before he can escape London, while simultaneously competing to be the best Inspector!

It comes down to a lot of smaller cases, like pulling threads. Each player has an Investigation, stood facing away from them so only their opponents can see. This card, like all the rest, features one of five characters, and one of twelve times. The goal is to guess one or both correctly. Not without evidence, of course! Each turn, you’ll Investigate two cards from your hand, revealing them to the other players, who will tell you if each is a Lead or Dead End. A Lead is a card that has the same Suspect, same Hour, or an adjacent Hour to your Investigation. You also draw and Investigate two cards when you draw a new Investigation, so you always have something to work with!

You may guess once per turn; if you’re right, you take tokens from Furriarty’s trail equal to the aspects you deduced and place them on the Investigation, discarding the Leads and Dead Ends. Note that if you guess both, you must get both right; otherwise, you’re incorrect, and your opponents are disallowed to tell you why. If you guess incorrectly, the Investigation stays open, and you draw no cards this turn. Usually, you end your turn by passing your two remaining cards, then drawing two new ones; instead, you’ll have no choice but to Investigate the cards you’re given next turn. This isn’t always the worst thing – I’ve found that if you’re down to two times and you know the suspect, or vice versa, it’s often worth taking the guess and, if necessary, taking next turn’s guess before you Investigate.

The goal, ultimately, is to catch Furriarty, who functions like a token and moves one spot forward each time everyone’s had a turn, revealing the token he passed. Furriarty is worth three points, while the other tokens range from one to three. Once closing an Investigation snags him, the game is over, and whoever has the most points is Scotland Pound Chief Inspector! If Furriarty reaches the end of the trail, though, and one last round isn’t enough to catch up, Furriarty escapes, everyone loses, and the player with the least points is… Litter Box Inspector. *shudder*

The timing is well-balanced, so it tends to be pretty close. You can call on Holmes for help, once per game, to take an extra guess and a one point penalty. Absolutely worth it, to not get stuck on box duty. And to catch that crook!

Ready to Throw a Meeple Party?

Meeple Party is, in fact, a game in which Meeple throw a party. Who knew? Better yet, it’s cooperative, so you’re all throwing a party together! As parties generally should be.

There are, by default, five Roommates throwing the party. Players each pick one to play and the rest are NPCs. All players can move all Roommates, just like they can move all guests, but certain Surprises will give or take Stress from specific Roommates, which is the only time your specific character matters. The backs of the character tiles double as rooms – those rooms specifically are optional, but there are a certain set required in the house, namely a Kitchen, Living Room, Dining Room, Bathroom, Bedroom, Door, and Outside. Rooms are arranged however the players want.

Each Roommate’s turn starts by welcoming a new Meeple to the party. This means drawing one out of a bag, and then placing them in a room of your choice and activating their effect – each color of Meeple is a different personality type, with can draw Meeple toward them or push them away. The exception is the white Meeple, which cause a Surprise and then disappear back into the bag, to cause more later! In the photo below, we drew The Conga Line as our Surprise – it moves all Meeple in the room with the most to the room with the least, which is how we wound up with five in the Bathroom. You then move a Meeple of your choice to an adjacent room and activate their effect. The goal is meet your Photo criteria!

We’ll get to Photos, but first – Disasters. The difficulty level you chose at the beginning of the game will determine whether you get individual or communal Disasters, or both! Disasters list criteria you must not meet, lest you gain Stress. If all players get three Stress, the party ends prematurely because you blew up and kicked everyone out. If you have individual Disasters, they only trigger on your turn.

After that, you get to check for Photo opportunities! Everyone has two Photos in hand that they’re trying to take, with either a minimum or exact requirement. Sometimes these clash painfully with Disasters, like when I needed exactly one Flirt and one Jerk in a Bathroom, and also couldn’t have Jerks and Flirts in the same room without incurring Stress.

The good news is, 3, 6, 9, and 12 o’clock on the Clock refresh Disasters! The Clock activates after you check for Photos, and after you move it up one space per Photo you completed this turn. There are a few different effects, some more inconvenient than others. (*cough* laying down Meeple *cough*) (Laying down Meeple can’t be moved until you’ve taken a turn to stand them back up. They’re napping, sick, etc.) You then replace any Photos or Disasters you triggered this turn.

The length of the party is also determined at the beginning of the game; in the (out-of-game) photos, we were playing Casual, or a 12-Photo goal. The objective is to reach the end of the party without completely stressing out!

This one has a colorful and entertaining realism (which is not a word I thought I’d assign to Meeple) and the mix of cards, chosen room arrangements, chosen difficulties (in multiple ways), and optional items and pets (each with their own mechanics) all combine to give Meeple Party a whole lot of replay value! We haven’t played the alternate game modes yet, but I look forward to trying the Hot Tub Party, where you aim to get as many Meeple into the Hot Tub before stressing out.

Ready to Stack Some Penguins?

There’s a kids game with exactly that premise: Penguin! Yep, just Penguin. And it’s easy to learn, as evidenced by the single double-sided sheet of rules.

The even shorter version? Players blindly draw penguins and hide them behind their screen, so only they can see. Everyone takes turns placing a single penguin in play, either next to one that’s already there, or balanced between two, matching the color of at least one of them. Usually the bottom row has a max of eight penguins, but we were playing two-player, so it was seven. A player is out when they can’t play another figure. The round is over when everyone is out.

Now, you’ve heard of highest score, you’ve heard of lowest score, but get ready for: least negative score! That’s right, players score penalties for each penguin they couldn’t place. They also incur a hefty penalty if they knock over the iceberg, but since we were making full use of the wings (slots for the base of penguins above, holding them steady) we didn’t exactly have that problem.

Play until you’ve had as many rounds as you have players, and then award whomever has the least penalties “Monarch of Penguin Stacking”! (That’s not an official part of the game, but you could.)

This one’s really simple, so it may be under-stimulating for an all-adult group, but I imagine it’s good for little ones, and especially for encouraging them to be gentle with piece placement. That, and there is a little strategy in the form of cutting off different color paths, or trying not to.

Time to Go on a Greed Quest!

Sometimes you’re going through the game cabinet, and you realize only one member of the household actually remembers a game (that came out before the other one was born). So, naturally, you have to play it again! For us, (this time,) that game was Greed Quest.

Greed Quest is a competitive dungeon crawl put out by Steve Jackson Games way back in 2004. The overarching mechanics are fairly simple: everyone starts in the first room, going the same way, with their own deck of cards, of which they’ll each play one simultaneously every round. Easy. And somehow still so much chaos.

First off, each of the 12 rooms has a special effect, ranging from the relatively benign (“You may choose whether to keep or discard the first card you draw each turn,” or the one room without an effect) to the challenging – like the room where you can’t draw to refill your hand, and if you can’t get out before your hand empties, you move forward anyways but lose your next turn. Secondly, the cards themselves. Even simple movement is… less simple. Go! cards are a competition, with only the highest value played actually granting movement. Unless someone else played The Meek Shall Inherit, in which case whoever played the lowest value Go! card moves. Note that cards like this don’t directly benefit you, since you’re only playing one card per turn. They just mess with everyone else. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that this game comes from the same company as Munchkin.

Third, once you reach The Horde! at the end of the path, you then have to turn around and make it back to the beginning! Which means those cards that grant movement based on where other players are get nice and tricky. Like the Odd Reversal in the photo – “If the winning Go! card is odd, trade rooms with that player after he moves.” The friend who ultimately won this game won because they – previously in room nine, when we were all on the return – swapped places with someone in room three! And as they made it back to room one, the person they’d booted to room nine swapped with someone else in room three. Oh, and room nine is the one where the deck picks your card for you! In short, it’s very much one of those “no lead guarantees victory” games. Chaotic from start to finish!

Come to the Arboretum!

Arboretum is a gorgeous tree-based strategy game that I tried at a friend’s house this week… and completely forgot to take pictures of. Whoops. The basis of the game is that you’re building an arboretum and, eventually, scoring your trees. Or rather… some of them.

Each player starts with seven cards in hand, which will be a constant. On your turn, you’ll draw two cards, play one, and discard another. Each player has their own face-up discard pile, which is important because cards can be drawn from the top of the deck, but also the top of any discard!

Except for your first card, everything played has to be orthogonally adjacent to a tree already in your arboretum. Everyone has their own, so your played cards don’t directly affect each other, but may affect what cards you choose to pick up. More on that later. The goal, ultimately, is to make paths. A path is any set of trees of ascending value that start and end with the same species. (So long as you can draw a line between them, it can be as twisty as you want.) The trees in the middle can be something else, and they can skip numbers, but you get a bonus point for paths that start with a 1, and two for paths that end with an 8! You also get extra points if your path is at least 4 trees long and all the same species.

Your strategy, then, may be informed by what other players are playing, to block advantageous moves. However. There’s another element to scoring. Only one player has the right to score each species! Who is determined by the cards in your hand when the deck runs out. Whoever has the highest sum value of that species in their hand gets to score it – ties are friendly, and if nobody has it then everyone can score. This means you might pick up other players’ favored trees, to prevent them from scoring, but you also need enough of your best types in hand to actually reap the benefits of your work.

Between the spatial logic, planning ahead, ever-shifting discard selection, and scoring intricacies, Arboretum is a deceptively challenging mental exercise hidden behind calming, beautiful art.

Hearthstone: Battlegrounds

Last week, I talked about the first Hearthstone game mode, and I promised more. So here’s part two: Battlegrounds!

Battlegrounds is an 8-player competition where you each pick one of two Heroes (randomly pulled from a broader lineup), start with three Gold, and instead of using your own card collection, you have to buy minions from Bartender Bob. Unless your ability says otherwise, minions cost three Gold apiece, refreshing the selection costs one, and the cost of upgrading your Tavern Tier decreases by one each turn. There are six Tavern Tiers. As you upgrade through them, you unlock higher Tier minions, usually with better abilities. In both traditional and Battlegrounds, you may only have seven minions on your Board at a time; in Battlegrounds, minions sell for one Gold (with exceptions). If you acquire three of the same minion, they combine into a Golden minion with an improved ability, and playing it lets you Discover (pick between three cards) a minion from the Tavern Tier above yours! Each turn, your board of minions will go up against another player’s, attacking mostly at random (except where abilities like Taunt dictate otherwise). If you have minions left after your opponent’s have all been defeated, each surviving minion’s Tavern Tier is added to your own, and the sum is dealt as damage to your opponent. Unlike in traditional Hearthstone, the minions that died last turn also return to your board! This gives you a lot of opportunity to build them up; my favorite minion type for this is Mechs, to which Magnetic minions can bond, allowing you to not only increase their Attack and Health, but also give them additional abilities! Only five of the ten minion types are used in each game, though, so you have to get comfortable with multiple strategies.

Battlegrounds characters start with different amounts of Armor on top of their 30 Health, likely to counterbalance their various abilities, but just like in traditional Hearthstone, when you run out of Health you’re out. If there’s an odd number of players left, the NPC Kel’Thuzad will reanimate someone’s board so that everyone still have a match. The last player standing wins! Battlegrounds takes longer than traditional Heathstone, because while the duration of each turn is set, there is no Fatigue mechanic to limit the length of the game. However, because each turn is a set length, usually much longer than I need to make my decisions, I’ve found Battlegrounds is useful for when I want to work on something in small doses. I can take my turn, get something done, and then take a break while I take my next turn!

This week, they also came out with the Anomalies update, giving each game a special rule like “Only Mechs are in the Tavern” (a favorite of mine) or “Tavern Tier 7 exists. Start with 10 extra Armor.” As you might imagine, these massively impact your strategy, up to and including which Hero you pick!

The cherry on top is Bartender Bob himself. He talks. Sometimes it’s in response to actions or transitions, like “Don’t tell the others – I’m rooting for you” at the start of a combat, and sometimes he’s just making conversation, which is when he’s at his funniest. Some of my favorites include “”Oh, I’ve dealt with the League of Evil. Terrible people. But good tippers!” and “All the best minions come here. I’ve got the spicy pretzel mustard.” There is so much to be said for this game, and still this NPC is genuinely one of my favorite parts.

Don’t Kill Doctor Lucky!

I want him dead, but more importantly I want to be the one to do it! Aaand that right there is the premise of the game Kill Doctor Lucky. Everyone is in Doctor Lucky’s Estate and, with the exception of Doctor Lucky, everyone wants to kill him, and so will foil anyone else’s attempts to do him in first.

Because it’s from Cheapass Games, the board doesn’t come with character tokens, so you’ll have to provide your own. In the pictures below, the centipede is Doctor Lucky. (Also, this is a three-player minimum game, so please ignore the fact that we only played with two.)

Everyone except Doctor Lucky starts in the Drawing Room, labeled with a 0. The Doctor’s starting position is determined randomly by cards. Gameplay is fairly simple – players may either move one space and, if the room they land in has a name, draw a card, or they may use Move and Room cards to move more than that, move Doctor Lucky, and/or attempt a murder. To try to kill Doctor Lucky, you must be alone with him in a room where nobody else has line of sight. Line of sight is determined by drawing a straight line between the doorways so, for instance, anyone in the Winter Garden can see into the Green House, Piazza, and Carriage House, and the latter three can also see into the Hedge Maze, but because of the way the doors are aligned, the Winter Garden does not have line of sight into the Hedge Maze.

If you successfully isolate Doctor Lucky, you may attempt to kill him. Either you’re using your hands for a value of one, or you can play a weapon for its murder value instead! Some weapons are worth more points in corresponding places. Like the Shoe Horn in the photo below, which would normally have been worth two points, but because the attempt took place in the Lancaster Room, it was worth seven!

At this point, the other players go around in order and choose whether or not to play Failure cards. For an attempt to fail, the collective Failure value must equal or exceed the value of the weapon! With the appropriate amount of players, this also incites a bit of gambling on whether you think the other players can foil it without you having to expend cards. I’ve seen games end quickly because of that gambit.

Provided Doctor Lucky isn’t dead and the game isn’t over, your turn ends with Doctor Lucky moving into the next numbered room along his path. Usually play passes clockwise. However, if Doctor Lucky’s movement brings him into a room with a player in it, play immediately skips to that person’s turn. Depending on where the Doctor starts and what everyone else is doing, it is entirely possible for one player to have taken three turns before another takes their first.

Dorkstock runs a life-size Kill Doctor Lucky at GameholeCon, and – having been suckered into being Doctor Lucky before – my personal interpretation is that the Doctor is so oblivious to everyone trying to kill them because they’re busy reading. I too may not notice a cannon going off near my head if I had my nose buried in a book!

Time to Face The Reckoners!

Actually, time to be the Reckoners! The Reckoners board game is based off the Brandon Sanderson series of the same name, following a group of rebels (the Reckoners) as they challenge superpowered megalomaniacs like the Epic Steelheart. Appropriately, it’s a cooperative game, featuring a team of 1-6 players coordinating to defeat Steelheart before he wipes out the population.

That’s more complicated than it sounds, naturally. Steelheart has a lot of lackeys hanging about the city making life difficult, and whenever you defeat one, another takes their place. You have to defeat them, though, as left unchecked these Epics will devastate both the population and your efforts at defeating their boss.

The short version is this: players each have a character ability and dice, and each turn everyone rolls up to three times to determine their actions for the round. These include wiping out Enforcement (which accelerate the rate at which Epics grow more destructive), containing Epic abilities (the ways that they’re destructive), researching Epics’ weaknesses (to lower their health or, if they have a prime invincibility, to render them mortal), attacking Epics, and acquiring Plan Tokens or money. Plan Tokens act as wild dice, and dice in general are also used to move between parts of the city and take down barricades. The Reckoners will take their actions, cash in the rewards for any Epics they’ve killed, and purchase nifty gadgets to make their jobs easier. The Epics, in turn, will repopulate the vacant City Districts and activate their abilities, including Steelheart’s, who then moves to a random location. This is especially inconvenient, as you have to be in the same City District as an Epic to affect them. Steelheart also has a prime invincibility, so you have to research his weakness before you can deal him any damage.

The first time we played this, it wound up being a slow and calculated damage race between Steelheart’s health and the remaining population, won only barely. The second and third times, the damage part proved to be our strength. It helped that we played with Megan, whose character ability is turning one containment die into three attacks, and helped even more when we got her an Equipment Card that turned one anti-Enforcement die into three containments. In the picture below, she had the potential to do twenty-seven damage in one turn, or more if she used her Plan Tokens. Yeah… Steelheart didn’t stand a chance.

If you can’t tell by the fact that I’ve played it repeatedly, I adore this game. I loved the books, and to see them adapted so well into a board game I can play with my fellow fans is perpetually exciting! It’s heavy in both strategy and luck, and no matter what difficulty you play it at, a plan well-executed is always something to celebrate.

Dizios!

Don’t worry, Dizios shouldn’t actually make you dizzy. It’s effectively the spiral tie-dye version of dominoes! Because of the spiral, each corner of the square tile has a color, allowing up to two colors per side. Like in dominoes, the tile has to match whatever it’s adjacent to!

Each time you play a tile, you score points based on the dot value of the tiles next to it. For example, if you nestled your tile between two three-dot tiles, you’d score six points! As usual, you can’t move tiles around once they’ve been played. The game ends once you’ve played the whole deck (or as much of it as you can, before no tiles can legally be placed anymore), and the player with the most points wins. And even if you lose, you made something pretty! The aesthetic is one of my favorite parts about Dizios, honestly. It looks fun!

Manga Manga

Manga Manga functions similarly to Crazy Ates or Uno, but with manga-style art and a few unique twists.

The first is that play is simultaneous, making gameplay faster and substantially more chaotic. You do, however, have to wait until someone else has played a card before you can play again. The second twist is that, unlike in the other games where you can match by color or number, there’s only one criterion to match by. Each Combatant has its own color and symbol… and the color and symbol of which to play next. Rainbow Dragons act as the wild card, playable at any time and allowing whoever played it to pick the next Combatant.

Players race to empty their entire hand, and the first to succeed draws a face-down Victory Disk. If the Dragon on the disk is “glowing” it’s worth two points, while regular Dragon Spheres are worth one. In a game with three or more players, the person with the most cards left in hand would draw a Consolation Disk, providing some advantage they could redeem it for later. We were playing with two players though, where there are no Consolation Disks, you can play immediately after yourself (lest it become a turn-based game), and players may draw new cards to increase their options. No matter how many players you have, the game lasts for nine rounds, after which the player with the most points wins!

I got a little distracted deciding who each Combatant reminds me of, because I’m a dork like that. For instance, I think the purple character resembles Hunter from The Owl House!

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