Category: Two player

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.

“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.

I wish I could take credit for that witty title, but no, that is actually the name of the game. And – surprise! – it’s about gnomes! The objective is simple – be the richest in gems at the end of the game.

There are several ways to get gems, but they all start by rolling the die and moving your gnome; then, you may choose to play a card. There are three types of cards in Oh Gnome You Don’t: Purple (Actions), Green (Items), and Red (Interrupt, Remedy, or Attack), though Red cards don’t actually have to be played on your own turn. Actions are fairly self-explanatory. For instance, the image below shows the “Mining” action, which lets you roll a die and take that amount in gems. You may notice there’s only one gem in the picture – that’s because it’s blue, which actually has 3-gem value; the key for which gems have what value is posted above the Gem Mine on the board. It’s actually a rule that when collecting from the Gem Mine, you have to collect in the highest denominations possible – this is because there are several cards that let you rob your opponents of a gem of any value (except gold, which is the highest, and usually off-limits).

The more honest way to make an income is to collect items along the way (in other words, you always draw a new card at the end of your turn) and play them, tabling the card in front of you to be sold later at a business. This is important because while you can only play one card per turn, you can sell as many of your tabled cards as you want. There are four businesses on the board, and you don’t need an exact roll to enter them – if you choose to stop, your gnome steps inside and your movement ends immediately. Unless a card has interfered in your affairs, this is the only time when you may neither play nor draw a card; instead, you may exchange your tabled cards for their value in gems and discard them. Note: items have specific businesses at which they are worth more (Ex: Firewood is usually worth 4, but sells for 6 at Gnome Depot) and if you want to hold onto some (but not all) of your items because you know they’ll be worth more later, you absolutely can. You can also choose to sell nothing! Moving into a business may still be a strategic move for you, as while you’re in them is the only time you may “change up” your gems for higher denominations (preferably gold, since those are usually safe).

There is one important exemption to the standard business mechanics, and that would be the last one: the Tinker’s Cart. Here, the value on the item card is disregarded, and the price is bartered by a roll of the die. Any remaining tabled items when you reach the end of the trail are sold for half price, rounding down, so it’s up to you whether you think bartering is worth the risk. There are a couple other places on the board that have special rules, too. The first is the Slug Slime space, which acts sort of like a ladder in Chutes and Ladders – if you land exactly on its start space, you slide right on over to the other side and get to skip the path in between. You can actually see my gnome, Barney (yes, they all have names) at the Slug Slime exit in the photo above. The other spot is the Troll Bridge, where you can either pay to cross the bridge or hazard the path beyond it; these spaces are rife with penalties such as “Roll for gem loss” and “Lose 2 items.” Honestly, if you can afford to take the bridge, I’d advise you do that, though my opponent skipped the dilemma altogether by playing a card that let her teleport to my space… safely past the toll and its alternative.

If you’re playing with the advanced rules, sharing a space isn’t just a way of cheating the troll out of its fee; it’s also an opportunity to brawl! Any gnome sharing a trail space with another player may choose to start a brawl, regardless of whose turn it is or how they got there. All players on that space then look at their brawl deck (numbered from 1 to 10), select their card of choice, and reveal – whoever has the highest card wins the brawl! They also collect the difference in gems from their humiliated opponents. You collect separately from each of them, so if Jud’s player played “6-Shin Kick,” Wayne’s played “3-Nose Tweek,” and Dave’s played “8-Head Butt,” Dave would collect two gems from Jud and five from Wayne. Because there’s nothing that says “friendly competition” like shaking your friends down for loose change! Be careful, though, because once you use a brawl card it’s discarded for the rest of the game, and if you tie (like in the picture below) nobody wins anything! Also: no brawling in businesses. It’s rude to the proprietors.

Scoring is pretty simple. When you reach the Gnome Cottage at the end of the trail, you get a reward dependent on how many folks have already arrived (unless you’re fifth or sixth, in which case there’s a penalty), you can no longer play cards nor be affected by anyone else’s, your hand is discarded and your remaining tabled items are totaled and sold for half price, rounding down. Once everyone has reached the end, whoever has the most gems wins!

In Quetzal, you are an archaeologist with only five days to explore the great city — and you’ve got competition! Here’s how it works:

First, everyone rolls their meeples. No, I’m not kidding – this will determine your team for the round. Any meeples that land dark side up will be adventurers, light side up will be archaeologists, and on their side or standing means they can be either; for each meeple that’s standing, you also get one coin. Your character meeple (as opposed to your team meeples) will always be usable as either color, but you roll it anyways in case it lands upright.

Which type you roll matters because of step two: placing the meeples. You see, while there are several locations on the board, which pieces you can place there are limited by their type. While some places have no such restrictions, some, like the Black Market, will only take one of the two, and others like the Temple Surroundings will take either, but all pieces there have to be the same type. The Temple Surroundings are an example of a bidding location (orange), meaning you can one-up each other’s meeple placements, with the caveat that they all have to be the same type as the pieces first placed there. The other player gets their displaced meeples back to put somewhere else, too, so don’t push the bid too high! Non-bidding locations are either one meeple per space (yellow) or places where multiple players can coexist (green), and vary whether there’s a price in coins to explore there.

So what do these locations do? Coincidentally, that’s step three, activating the locations. The only location that gets activated before this step is the Camp, which activates as soon as you place a meeple there, allowing you to immediately gain 1 coin and reroll one of your unplaced meeples; if it lands standing, you get an additional coin. The rest of the locations activate once all meeples are placed, in the following order: The Stela of Knowledge, The Temple, The Temple Surroundings (a, b, and c), The Black Market, The Village, The Harbor Master’s Office, and finally, The Ships. Each of these has a different effect. For instance, the Temple and its Surroundings allow you to collect the Artifact cards associated with them, which you can later deliver to the Harbor Master’s Office or The Ships for victory points — a complete set is three of the same kind, but there are smaller rewards for two or one.

The other major collectors’ item is Upgrades, which are acquired in The Village. A couple of these activate immediately as one-time bonuses; the rest are equipped as continual benefits. You can see one of each in the photo above — the red X on the left Upgrade indicates that it’s a one-time use (gain 5 coins), and the one on the right allows you to exchange 3 coins for one Discovery point whenever you so choose. As you can see, each player has slots to equip up to two Upgrades at a time, plus a personal Upgrade discard – this is important because Upgrades grant you victory points at the end of the game, regardless of whether they’re equipped.

I mentioned Discovery points – these are signified by the bird symbol, and tracked along the top of the board. When you reach certain points on that path, you get additional bonuses, such as coins (the cross in a circle), victory points (the rising sun symbol), and Upgrades (the crate). Discovery points, victory points, and coins are also bonuses on some of the Artifact cards, redeemed when those cards are delivered.

There are a couple modifications made for a two player game. The most significant of these is the Automaton deck, which simulates a third player by dictating the placement of a third set of meeples. These can be kicked off of bidding spaces the same as any other piece (and won’t be re-placed, because there’s no player to choose its revised placement) but if it’s in a unique (yellow) location that you hoped to visit this round, tough luck. This is especially hampering if it takes one of the higher Temple spaces, because then it has first pick of the Artifacts there… and, of course, it takes the highest value ones first. If its choice is between multiple cards of the same type, it also has a hierarchy of bonuses, which I thought was quite thorough of the creators. Unfortunately, these cards go straight to the discard.

At the end of the round, all empty Artifact and Upgrade spots are refilled, the Plane token is moved one space on the turn track, and if you’re playing with the Automaton, you draw its next placement. If the Plane token is already on the 5th space, the game ends immediately, and scoring happens. Conveniently, most of the scoring has already been tracked over the course of the game, so there are only a few additional points to be doled out. First off, whoever has the First Player marker gains two victory points — this isn’t necessarily whoever went first, mind you, because The Stela of Knowledge location lets you steal the marker, as well as gain a Discovery point. Not bad, right? Especially if you go there on round five, so the other player has no chance to steal it back. Anyways, the other two additional point factors are remaining coins (one victory point per three) and, of course, Upgrades. Whoever has the most victory points wins, or in case of a tie, the most Discovery points!

This game is a lot of fun, and it does a great job of balancing its many mechanics in a way that’s not overwhelming. In the two-player version there are some spaces that don’t get used, and I love that they use covers to make those blend perfectly into the image. Which is just icing on the cake, really, because this board is gorgeous!

There aren’t a ton of games where you have to draw your own board, but in Doodle Dungeon, it’s not just setup — it’s part of the fun!

The concept of Doodle Dungeon is that you’re the proud new owner of your very own Dungeon, purchased at a surprisingly affordable price… because, as it turns out, it’s just a cave. Hero season is rapidly approaching, but before you can slay the foolish adventurers, you need to hire your monsters and lay out your traps!

This is the first phase of the game. Trading off the starting player token (pencil sharpener) each turn, players go around the table choosing one of the face-up cards; there will be one more than there are players. The bottom part of the card you pick will determine what you add to your dungeon this turn. Note that if it’s a trap, goblin, orc or dragon, it has to have at least one open space between it and any other trap/monsters. Don’t worry though, you can make sure the hero gets hit by ’em all anyway with… walls! Walls usually come first on the card, which you address from left to right, and also come with set configurations — for example, two adjacent spaces and then a diagonal — but you choose how to orient it. The only other rule of placement is that every non-wall space must be accessible and not completely blocked off. And don’t worry, there are stencils for all of these, so while the faces are at-your-own-risk, the shapes are uniformly recognizable.

There are two other additions during the drawing phase: treasure and improvements. When you get a treasure, you write down its location secretly, on a separate sheet — it doesn’t have to have a monster on those coordinates when you place it, but if by the time you’re scoring there either is no monster there, or the monster is dead, you don’t get the points for having it. How many points it’s worth is determined by improvements, and so are several other important factors. These are at the top of the page, in a series of checkboxes — each box is worth one improvement, and, checked off in order, each new row that you’ve marked is the next level of that stat. This determines the treasure’s value, the trap’s damage, how many cards you have in hand, and each monster’s strength — I’ll get to that part later. First, finish your drawing and place your card face-down next to you. Make sure you’re sure before you do, though! Once you’ve flipped it, all placements are final.

Once you’ve gotten through 14 rounds of drawing, it’s time to draw the hero’s path from entrance to exit. More accurately, time for your neighbor to draw your hero’s path — you didn’t think you got to choose your own, did you? This part is a strategic balancing act — on the one hand, the fastest route to the end will leave the hero with the most remaining hit points, which are -1 point deductions each for your opponent; on the other, they get points for each surviving monster, proportional to its damage level (goblins are 1, orcs are 2, dragons are 3). This is, of course, providing they left you multiple routes, and not a very strongly suggested main path, with a few optional branches (probably where the treasure’s hiding, but is it worth the detour?). The hero can pass over each space a maximum of twice.

Now comes the actual adventure phase. If you’re thinking it took us a while to get here, you are absolutely right, but you’ll find you don’t mind when you get to watch the poor overconfident hero stumble into a dragon on space one, or get forced through that carefully unavoidable corridor of trap after trap. The way this works is simple — on your turn, your hero moves to the next encounter in your dungeon, and either takes the trap damage or fights the monster. How this works is pretty simple – you roll two dice, add that monster’s strength to the sum, and if it’s 20 or higher, the monster survives and the hero takes damage (meddling via cards notwithstanding). If it’s lower than that, the monster dies. This is the time to play Dungeon cards (blue), which mostly affect the outcome of combats.

Where did you get your Dungeon cards, you ask? Well, when you were picking earlier, of course! Those 14 cards that built your dungeon are now your deck, so I suggest you pay attention to all parts of the card when you’re choosing. (We didn’t, the first game, and I was bitterly surprised to discover Bomb cards and their habit of gravitating towards me.) Bombs are an example of Hero cards (red), which you play once your Dungeon phase is complete. These are cards that will help your opponents’ heroes win fights, regain health, and generally be greater nuisances. It is important to note that there is no out-of-turn play in this game, so all screwing over of other players must be done in advance. Once you’ve sabotaged to your heart’s content, you can choose to recycle any card in your hand by placing it at the bottom of your deck; afterwards (or if you didn’t recycle), draw back up to whatever number of cards your checkboxes indicate.

The game continues until everyone’s heroes are dead or have made it all the way through the dungeon, so if you’re already done, you’ll just have to watch and wait. You still technically have a turn, though, so if you have Hero cards you’d like to play, you can! At the end, everyone tallies up their successfully hidden treasure, surviving monsters, and deductions for hero HP (or +5 bonus for a dead one), and whoever has the highest score wins!

It’s a small detail, but I also appreciate how each page is double-sided for multiple uses, and they include both an eraser and a pencil sharpener along with the pencils. All in all, this game is a fun, well-executed balance between creative strategy and sheer dumb luck, and I highly recommend it.