Designer: Michael Rieneck, Stefan Stadler

Pillars of the Earth is one of those games that is touted as a classic or a gateway game into the world of designer board games by many. Released in 2006 it comes from that golden age of Euro games period where a tremendous amount of modern game design comes from and while I agree the game is simple enough to be a gateway game, I find it highly unlikely I would introduce this game to brand new would be gamers, there are just far better games than this one to do that with and the theme is a bit of a hard sell. I actually didn’t play the game until it was reprinted not too long ago, In fact, you could say I largely skipped the golden age of Euro games and I’m now kind of going back and playing some of these older games like Pillars of the Earth. This gives me a unique perspective because I have played games that use mechanics that where based on some of these originals. Interestingly enough though, I find that in in some rare cases the so called classics actually play a lot more like modern (recent) releases and Pillars of the Earth is definitely one of those.

Pillars of the Earth is a uniquely designed game and one of those rare Euro games with a theme that fits the mechanics even though being architects of a cathedral in the 12th century is not exactly what I would call an exciting theme, at least it doesn’t sound like it when I describe it. I don’t want to come off sounding negative however as Pillars of the Earth is a very interesting, very well paced and very challenging game and for a Euro game, very thematic.

In Pillars of the Earth you are grand master builders (Architects) in the 12th century contributing to the building a massive construction project (a cathedral). It’s a game based on a book by Ken Follet that you have probably never read as well as a TV show that comes highly recommended and acclaimed that no one has seen. I’m not entirely sure the theme of the book or the show come through, but you certainly feel like the manager of a construction project in the game and in the end that is far more important to the theme than the actual literature it’s based on.

In this worker placement game you compete via management of a variety of resources including workers, gold and various other building resources (wood, stone etc..) on a tight game board with limited spots all in the typical Euro style battle for victory points. This is not the part of the game that makes it unique, though I would point out that from an artistic point of view the game board is nothing short of beautiful and it’s a joy to play on. What does make the game unique is that the game is pleasantly balanced, has a number of random elements (that don’t make the game random) and puts players to tough choices that go beyond simply “where to place the workers”.

In fact, even worker placement itself is two prong as you first choose where to place your “worker units” to collect resources but later you also place your master builders on spots with various beneficial effects. The master builders are put into play using a really clever mechanic of pulling random master builders out of a bag and placing them on a roundel where the player who’s master builder is pulled must decide whether he will pay in gold the fee to put the builder into play, or pass so he can place the builder later in the round for free. This combined with other tough decisions like which resource cards or builder cards you pick all combine to create really an almost overwhelming amount of choices. Each choice has to serve a purpose and be planned, but the random elements to the game like when your master builder will be pulled out of the bag for example and how much he will cost to put into play create tension and management problems you have to solve as you go. It’s quite easy to mismanage yourself or manage yourself into a corner, so while newbie friendly rules wise, the game can be quite unforgiving at times and you can see your victory slipping away from you because of a couple of bad decisions early in the game.

I suppose the issue I have with most worker placement games is that they tend to become kind of predictable, it might explain why I like Lords of Waterdeep and Kingsburg. In Lords of Waterdeep you have quest cards and secret missions on your lords cards that force you to adapt your strategies for each game while in Kingsburg your rolling dice to determine where you CAN go. The randomness in Pillars of the Earth don’t force results upon you but rather put you to tough decisions, unlike Kingsburg for example where the dice limit what you can do as a mechanic. This is the sort of randomness I really like where it can be mitigated a great deal with smart decisions.

In either case the mechanic works very well, it creates tensions, opens paths to strategies and varies each game sufficiently so that you really can’t repeat the same strategies with each play. More than that though Pillars of the Earth has a lot of sections of decisions, the choices aren’t simple and they have long term effects. Which builder and resource cards you claim in one part of the round, which resources you claim with your workers in another part of the round, when to put out your master builders and subsequently where to put them in the last part of the round all form the events of a single round that has lasting effects for this and future rounds. Than you have to deal with the event cards, worry about your limited resources like gold for example all the while trying to squeeze as many points out as you can. There are a lot of moving parts yet the games sequence is fast paced and keeps everyone involved at all times so there is virtually no downtime in the game. You’re constantly making decisions and the game rewards you for those decisions and punishes you for mistakes. The pacing feels just right, the tension is just right and while I prefer the game with 4 players, it plays fine with 3 (skip it as a two player game).

I think as far as worker placement games go the tough sell here is the rather bland theme and again, I say bland more because it sounds bland, in practice the game is actually very engaging and interesting, with a theme that really fits the mechanics and kind of settles naturally into the games flow. The hurdle is trying to explain to your friends that a game about 12th century architects building a cathedral can be exciting, strategic and fun. When I describe Lords of Waterdeep for example, I tell them that they will be noble lords of a fantasy city vying for power and control, suffice to say, it’s a much easier sell.

Pillars of the Earth is a very good game, in fact, dare I say it may actually be a better game than Lords of Waterdeep which I consider the premiere worker placement game because it’s a got considerably more depth (in particular if you compare Pillars of the Earth to Lords of Waterdeep without the corruption expansion). It’s more gamey, even if it boasts relatively simple rules depth and I find that the many strategies and approaches to the game, coupled with some of its randomness give this game a very high replay ability value. It may in the future appear on my top 10 list, I like it that much.

I would put this one into the worker placement game for people who want to take a couple steps above the pure worker placement games. Lords of Waterdeep and Kingsburg are good example of very simple and straightforward worker placement games. You put your worker down, collect resources, score points. Rinse and repeat. These games are fun for various reasons and I will happily play them both, but for me, Pillars of the Earth really brings it up a notch above the standard worker placement affair. There is more umpf to it and I really think if you like worker placement games this is one you definitely should not miss.

I highly recommend it.

Designers: Robert Dougherty, Darwin Kastle

In the last few years we have seen an ever increasing amount of deck building and deck drafting games, they are what you might call “All the rage” as far as designer board and card game mechanics go. The popularity of games like Dominion and Thunderstone is undeniable and that’s just the most notable ones, there are certainly plenty of under the radar games out there that are worth mentioning in this category. With its very low price, thumbs up from respected reviewers, high praise from board game geek and science-fiction theme it really was almost an automatic buy for me. The fact that there was a dirt cheap online app version of the game to test drive the game electronically was just icing on the cake. Let’s face it, some publishers know how to promote a game and some don’t, White Wizards Games clearly knows its audience.

Star Realms is actually a very simple game, it makes use of the deck building mechanic that most of us are already familiar with because of games like Dominion but instead of making the game about collecting points in a sort of race, it pits two players against each other in an outright “magic the gathering” like duel. No surprise, given that the two designers of this game are Magic The Gathering designer veterans.

Star Realms is effectively a combat game in which players use and purchase ships to generate gold to purchase new ships and bases and attack power to attack the health known as authority in Star Realms of their opponent. Each round you draw 5 cards from your deck, play the cards, buy cards from the pool of 5 randomly lined up in the center of the table and use whatever attack power you have to deal damage directly to your opponent. Take turns, rinse and repeat until someone runs out of health.

Now like all good card games the cards have all manner of special powers from forcing your opponent to discard cards, drawing more cards, earning you additional health and all manner of other interesting effects. The more powerful the card the more it costs. In addition each card you purchase be it a ship or a base is associated with a faction (one of four) and most of the cards have a primary effect and a secondary effect that triggers when a card of the same faction is played in the same round. For example an Imperial faction fighter has an attack power of 2 and forces your opponent to discard a card, but if another Imperial card is played that fighter deals an additional 2 points of damage.

This triggers lots of strategic options but since only 5 cards are available at a time from a deck of about one hundred, unlike Dominion, there isn’t a fixed strategy you can pre-plan and play, its very dynamic and your always making tough choices round to round. The pace of the game is very fast, you can start and finish a game in 15 to 20 minutes and it doesn’t take up a lot of space so it’s a game you can definitely travel with. This one should definitely go into the camping backpack or in the glove box on a road trip.

There are many twists and turns in this game in particular given its very basic core rules mechanic, in fact, for such a light and easy to teach game its depth is surprising. I was in particularly impressed with the games fluidity and approach-ability, it’s one of those card games you really can teach to anyone and it was very easy to get non-gamers to try it out.

Do I like it? Truth be told, I love it. I’m not sure if its the art work or the mechanics, but the game has an addictive appeal and I suppose for me personally its the same reason I like games like Dominion and Thunderstone. That deck building mechanic is fantastic and its always fun to see it applied to different types of themes. I think being largely a two player game Star Realm is of limited use for me in my collection since I so rarely only have one other player available. In fact these days even 2 to 4 player games come up short, I tend to have 5+ at my table. That said, Star Realms immediately became a permanent addition of what I like to call my “Race For The Galaxy box of space card games” which includes of course Race for the Galaxy but also other space games like the Eve Online CCG. I like card games themed in space and Star Realm certainly earns its stripes as an ideal addition. It fits that “We got 20 minutes, its just the two of us and one of us doesn’t know how to play the game” niche, which is actually contrary to what it sounds like, far more common. Its a game you can teach on the fly, its fun, its got depth, its pretty and its science-fiction. Its what I like to call a “yes” game, as its one of those games when I look to my collection for a game to pull of the shelf it answers yes to a lot of filters that are commonly used.

I’m not sure the game really needs expansions, I have talked about this before but there are a lot of games that are just great the way they are and while I’m sure the expansions are interesting and worthy additions, I don’t see the point, the game is perfect the way it is. To me personally games like Star Realm are great BECAUSE they are simple and expansions always unquestionably complicate games. A good example is Dominion, the base game is a simple to teach, fast and very uncomplicated. Throw in a couple of expansions and it becomes a very complex, very intricate game that takes waaaaay to long.

This game definitely gets the seal of approval from me, don’t hesitate if you’re a scinece-fiction nut looking to find a 2 player game that’s easy to teach but offers plethora of depth for repeated plays.

This particular little Euro released in 2010 to considerable acclaim picking awards like the 2010 Meeple’s Choice Awards, Swiss Gamers Award and International Gamers Award, just to name a few. It’s gotten considerably good support from Board Game Geek sitting pretty on the tail end of the top 20 but more importantly for me personally it came highly recommend by several friends as a really great, fast, yet deep strategic card game.

It’s a game that has been on my “must play” list for nearly five years, that’s quite a bit longer than I like to wait to review a game, but there are so many games these days and only so much time and wallet one can dedicate to gaming. In any case, I finally got to play it, so here is your review of 7 Wonders!

7 Wonders is a strategic card game about building Wonders of the World. In essence it’s a sort of drafting game where you go through 3 ages of ever improving cards constructed into decks representing each age. The cards of each deck in each age are distributed among the players and you effectively pick a card to play into your play area, than pass it to your neighbor. When all the cards have been played the age is over and you move on to the next age, there are three ages in the game. It’s a point scoring game and there are a wide variety of ways to score points, the winner of the game is of course the person who scores the most points at the end of the game. Each card represents some sort of advantageous building or effect, many of which give you access to the all-important resources and gold you need to build the wonders each player has in their player area chosen at random at the start of the game.

There are a number of pretty interesting effects and mechanics that make up the whole of the strategic play and while the pick and pass mechanic is simple, the choices you have to make are not. Simply put, whatever you don’t choose someone else can get, while simultaneously anything you play into your own play area might later help your opponents as many buildings allow players to gain advantages based on what their neighbors have constructed. It’s essentially a tug of war, you build what you need, while trying to deny your opponents what they need and avoiding building things that could help them later on. You want to get your wonder built as quickly as possible as it typically scores you points, earns you money and sometimes has some sort of beneficial game-play effect as well as freeing you up so you can focus on building other advantageous point scoring buildings.

There are other mini effects in the game, for example at the end of each age there is a battle that takes place between you and your neighbors on your right and your left of you. The winner of these battles is the player who raised the bigger military (red cards with combat strength) and you gain points for each victory in increasing values as the ages go up. There are many little “quirks” of point scoring in the game which force you to think about how the game is going on the whole for everyone, so you’re not only concerning yourself about what your building but what your opponents are building and how that compares to you and each other.  Most of the interaction between players comes in this form, which is to say, the interaction is pretty minimal.

This game reminds me a great deal of Race for the Galaxy in that, players are all doing their own thing, but you’re keeping a close eye on what your opponents are doing because their choices can open up strategic options for you. For example a player builds a building that produces wood, so you counter by building a trade building that allows you to buy that wood from them cheaply. With access to an additional wood you might be able to complete a more difficult building later on, which in turn earns you an advantage like earning points off of certain types of cards your other neighbor played. It can get pretty tricky, decisions can be tough and even a single mistake can put you at a big disadvantage. You would think with such a simple mechanic as pick a card and pass, the game would move quickly but people get hung up on tough decisions quite frequently.

I can’t say I was blown away by the game, but card games rarely ever blow me away as the mechanics of card games are often quite toned down compared to board games and 7 Wonders is no exception. I think it’s a clever game and at about 30 to 45 minutes regardless of how many players you have  it’s a pretty fast game with plenty of strategy and tough decisions to be made, all the marks of a good game. There was nothing in the game that stood out for me, either negative or positive that is worth mentioning, though I can understand it’s popularity but as I suspected (and perhaps it is the reason it took so long to get it played) it’s not really my type of game. At least it’s nothing I plan to put into my collection, though I have absolutely no objection to playing it, it’s a fine Euro.

It has quality components and it does avoid some of the designer pacing problems many such card games have, it’s clear the impact of the streamlining movement in board and card games has been used to good effect here. There was much more that could have been added to the game that would have been unnecessary, it’s focused and to the point and that’s what you want out of a solid Euro card game. In fact I found that the expansions seemed to be mostly unnecessary burdens on the game, for example the Leaders expansion added another type of deck that is used in the game and while interesting and certainly not overwhelming, It really didn’t alter the game a whole lot. It just added “one more thing”. I suppose for fans of the game this would make for a good expansion, but I didn’t really see any reason for its addition, it didn’t improve the game in any meaningful way.

It’s become common practice now to use heavy iconography in card games and 7 wonders makes good use of this approach, in fact, having mentioned Race For The Galaxy as a comparison this game had a lot of the same sort of complexities mechanically but the Iconography made it a lot easier to understand than in Race for the Galaxy, which really helped the game a great deal. It’s less of a bear to teach than Race as a result.

The art style is rather bland, in particular given the subject matter which offers a great opportunity to really embellish. I’m not entirely sure the theme came through particularly strong in the mechanics and it got little help from the art, so to me it felt more like a point scoring game with clever mechanics rather than a game about building wonders of the world. In fact the only thing that gives you the impression of “wonders” are the stock player boards with the actual wonder your building, the only place where the art rose out of acceptable into the pretty. Had they taken the opportunity to use the same attention to the art on the cards, you might have squeezed more thematic presence at least visually into the game.

I can only conclude that like many Euro games, I like it enough to not have any objection to playing it but it’s nothing I feel the urge to add to my collection. It’s certainly not as clever as Race For The Galaxy which remains one of the few Euro card games in my collection, but it certainly is a lot easier to teach and learn.

Designer: Vlaada Chvátil

A long time ago there was a really bad movie called Space Truckers, it’s something of a cult classic now, but when I first heard about Galaxy Truckers the board game it instantly reminded me of that movie. In Galaxy Truckers players must construct space worthy ships using whatever spare components they can find and traverse the dangerous galaxy in hopes of delivering cargo to the other side of the galaxy. It’s a humorous, timed game that borders on being more a funny party game than anything you might take seriously. In fact, I’m not entirely sure there is any strategy to it at all, it’s really one of those games that is just for shits and giggles. You build your ship and hope it doesn’t fall apart on you before it reaches the goal line.

The game is broken down into two main phases. The construction phase and the flight phase. During the construction phase players are presented with individual gameboards, outlines of the ship they are going to build and a pile of tiles representing the many random components they can use to build their ships. Components include things like engines, weapons, shields, batteries, cabin quarters, cargo space and things of that nature. Spacy sounding stuff.

When a construction round begins players must as quickly as possible build there ship because a sand timer can be flipped over and started at any time by any player. Hence the faster you can build your ship the more pressure you can put on the other players. Once the timer is flipped and the time runs out the construction is immediately over.

Constructing a functional ship under pressure is a lot harder than it sounds because each component has different types of connectors and you must construct the ship by fitting these different connectors to each other. There are three types of connectors and the square tiles have 4 sides, some sides don’t have any connectors at all. Now during the construction phase you can only grab one tile at a time, but you can grab as many as you like. Each time you want to pick up a new tile you must put the other one down, which in turn makes it available to other players. Hence the more tiles you don’t use the easier you make it for the other players to construct a functional ship. So the trick is to build quickly, efficiently and with as many of the components as you pick up.

Each component has a different function, batteries for example allow you to power different parts of your ships like shields, weapons and engines. You need crew to survive the flight so the more crew cabins you have the better. You need cargo space so that you can collect cargo so that you can earn money (the player with the most money at the end of the round wins). In essence you need a fast ship, well armed, with plenty of crew, well defended by shields with lots of cargo space. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, in fact, most of the time you end up with a half-cocked, lop sided mess that is barely space worthy.

Once everyone has constructed their ships its time for the race to begin. During the flight phase players will be using a deck of cards representing different hazards along their flight. Each turn a card is flipped over and players must deal with whatever horrific things space throws as them. This might be asteroids, pirates, abandoned stations, trade planets, events like disease outbreaks and all manner of things all designed to blow you out of your sky. You can use your weapons and shields to protect yourself, race to the front using your engines and pick up cargo with your cargo bays.

During your flight your ship is going to get hit by all manner of things (guns, asteroids etc..). As it does, pieces of your ship will break off (components). In order to complete the race your ship must survive, reach its destination and have at least one crew member when you get there. Largely the flight phase is kind of out of your hands, most of the things just “happen” to you and you can only hope that you did a good enough job during the construction phase that your ship will survive the hazards.

Galaxy Trucker is actually a pretty hilarious game, you naturally want to make sure the people who are going to play it with are in the right mood. If you’re looking for a serious strategy game, this isn’t it. This is a game you play for the sheer fun of it, almost like you would a dexterity game or a party game. This game has a lot of really great moments between the race to construct your ship and the race to the finish line. It falls in the same line as games like Formula D or Robo-Rally, the sort of thing you play just to have some laughs.

I really like this one, in fact, I was quite surprised how much praise it given it’s rather silly and random nature. Most of my gaming groups are at least semiserious and very few silly games hit the table, but this one has crept into our consciousness. It’s a very family friendly, really a great family board game night in a box.

Highly recommended if you want to break up the seriousness in your gaming group with a bit of silly fun.

Designers: Andrea Chiarvesio & Luca Iennaco

Euro games are hit and miss with me, that’s no secret if you read this blog, but I had heard about Kingsburg repeatedly from a number of sources, each more reputable than the next that Kingsburg was a really great game. I took the plunge this month, so here is your review.

Kingsburg is a game in which players take on the roles of governors who must gather resources, construct buildings and protect their investment. Most of the elements of this are fairly abstract, this is a very Euro game and largely handled through an interesting take on the worker placement mechanic.

In Kingsburg, the game is broken down into 5 years, during which you have different seasons in which to act. Various events transpire but you are largely doing worker placement to gain resources and then constructing advantageous buildings all while scoring points. The worker placement mechanic is represented by 18 of members of the kings court (including the king and queen herself). During each season players will roll 3 (sometimes more) six sided dice and use those dice to purchase the favor of one or more of the members of the kings court. Doing so, earns you the benefit of that noblemen and of course as all worker placement games, blocks other players from claiming that spot.

For example if you roll a 3, 5 and 6, you could secure a higher member of the court for the full amount 14, or you could split the dice up and take several lower positions perhaps a 6 and 8 (3+5). The various buildings you construct during later phases can allow you to manipulate the dice results, there are ways to get additional dice and various other benefits all forming a pretty wide variety of strategies for this ultimately pretty simple worker placement game. There are other elements including raising armies to face the threat that comes at the end of each winter, ways to manipulate turn order and a few other little moving parts.

Ultimately though like most worker placement games it’s all about smart use of your workers, resource management and finding openings to score points since naturally the player with the most points at the end of the year wins the game.

I’ve got a few worker placement games under my belt now, including my favorite, Lords of Waterdeep. I really think Kingsburg stands out compared to most of the worker placement games I have played thanks to interesting inclusion of the dice into the mix, the many ways you manipulate the games positions and I in particular liked the fact that there was a lot more player interaction (which lacks in a lot of worker placement games). The board is really tight, in particular in a 4 or 5 player game so there is pretty stiff competition and the games are very clutch.

I’m not sure that the game did a particular great job of presenting the theme, though the theme itself is pretty vague. I think Kingsburg art helped it a great deal to make it aesthetically pleasing and the game board itself is incredibly functional with easy to read iconography.

I’m not entirely sure I can say I love Kingsburg, I think it’s a fine game, but it has not dethroned Lords of Waterdeep for me. It’s a pretty quick game and I like that and unlike Lords of Waterdeep, it plays quite well with just 3 players. My understanding is that the expansions is well worth getting though I’m not sure I like the base game enough to actually pick it up. I don’t have any particular beef with it, but like many Euro designs, Kingsburg lands in a kind of neutral area for me. It’s got a great spin on an already established mechanic, its production quality is high and I find it appeals a lot more to kids thanks to this art style and randomness of the dice mechanic. I think given the option I would still rather play Lords of Waterdeep but Kingsburg is not an altogether shabby alternative, though it certainly didn’t blow me away.