Thoughts from The Yellow Meeple:- Azul

Game: Azul

Publisher: Plan B Games

Designer: Michael Kiesling

Year: 2017

Azul is the latest game from Plan B Games, who brought us the hotly anticipated Century Spice Road earlier this year. Century Spice Road was definitely a solid first game from this new offshoot of publisher ZMAN Games/F2Z and their follow up game has also been eagerly awaited due to the eyes on this new publisher, as well as the heavy hitting designer on the box - Michael Kiesling. Azul has a very eye-catching box, but does a good game await you inside?

In Azul you are a tile laying artist, creating your artwork on the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora. Each turn, tiles will be available in one of the factories in the centre of the table. You must take all of the tiles of one type from one factory and the rest of the tiles from that factory are placed in the centre of the table. You may alternatively take all of the tiles of one type from that central pile. You must then place the tiles into a single pattern row on the board - if you have too many tiles then you drop some on the floor. You continue to take turns taking tiles until all tiles have been taken from the factories and centre of the table.

The Game Shelf Previews:- AOX

Game: AOX

Publisher: Half Wing Games

Designer: Chris 'Shep' Shepperson

Year: 2017

AOX is a new game, coming to Kickstarter from UK designer, Chris Shepperson, creator of Package?! - a microgame which funded at the end of 2016. AOX is a traditional abstract game for two players, much like classic games like Chess and Go, but it is a neat package and brings some new twists in the rules that are quite intriguing.

AOX will be Shep's second game and we were lucky enough to receive an early preview copy that we've been playing over the last couple of weeks.

The other 4 colours aren't worth mentioning:- Azul

Game: Azul

Publisher: Plan B Games

Designer: Michael Kiesling

Year: 2017

Azul is a 2-4 player abstract game in which you play as tile layers decorating the Royal Palace of Evora. To do this you will take turns drafting the decorative tiles in order to fill your player boards. Each tiles has a specific location where it must go, and placement matters as certain patterns net you bonus points at the end of the game. But be careful, if you get greedy and take more tiles than you can use you break them and have to lost points.

Each player in Azul gets a player board with a 5x5 grid on it that they must fill as the game goes on. The grid is laid out so that each tile type appears only once in each vertical and horizontal line. Point scoring is reminiscent of Quirkle. When you place a tile on your grid you earn points based on the lines it now forms, both horizontal and vertical if applicable. For example if you had a single tile by itself then you would score 1 point, but if you added a second tile below it then that tile would score 2 points. This scoring mechanic gives the game a good sense of progression as you fill in gaps and score larger and larger points. 

The Game Shelf Reviews:- By Order of The Queen

Game: By Order of The Queen

Publisher: Junk Spirit Games

Designer: David Gerrard

Year: 2017

The Kingdom of Tessandor has been in disarray since the King did not return from battle. You, as representatives of the guilds, have been called upon by the Queen to organise the heroes of the land to defend the borders of the city whilst also catering to the whims of the Queen which might distract you from you tasks. Hopefully you can do so in time before you lose all of the villagers in battles with monsters, or all of the regions of the land are overwhelmed.

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama

Game: Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama

Publisher: Indie Boards and Cards

Designer: Eilif Svensson, Kristian Amundsen Østby

Year: 2017

Kokoro is one of the first Kickstarter games we backed. What attracted us to this Kickstarter project in particular was the meeting of two strong games. At the time we had recently enjoyed Kodama - a great little card placement and set collection gma set in a very whimsical world. Kokoro is a re-theme of an Essen 2016 hit, Avenue, into the universe of Kodama. We didn't get the opportunity to play Avenue, but it received considerable buzz for a small game and Kokoro promised to be a good re-theme with some additional modifications.

Kokoro is a competitive game for 1-8 players. It comes from the genre of roll-and-write games, but mechanically it works with a deck of cards. The game has 5 rounds and in each round you will draw cards from the top of a deck. The cards have 6 different routes on them - 4 different turns, a horizontal and a vertical line. Each player has a grid and must choose where to draw each line segment. Each round you are trying to connect a line back to one of the correct sanctuary - there are 6 sanctuaries and one is active in each of the five rounds.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 13th November - 21st November

Unfortunately we're not finding a lot of time for games at the moment. Amy is working at a local board game cafe, which sometimes means working evenings, giving us less time to play through our 'pile of shame'. However, for once, I don't think we actually added anything new to our shelves this week which is something to be proud of! Our one new arrival this week came from our new collaboration with Board Game Exposure - a reviewer collective in the UK, who are working to promote both new and older board games to a wide audience. We're excited to see what interesting games this collaboration will bring our way and hope to post these reviews on Saturdays each week.

So, there's only a couple of titles to talk about, but here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

The Long and Winding Road:- Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama

Game: Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama

Publisher: Indie Boards and Cards

Designer: Eilif Svensson, Kristian Amundsen Østby

Year: 2017

Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama is a route-building game for 1-8 players. In it you are tasked with connecting flowers and caterpillars to the sanctuaries of the forest by restoring the ancient paths. But you have to be careful to plan ahead, because if you ever score less than you did in the previous round then you get heavily penalised.

Kokoro’s gameplay is elegantly simple. Each player has a dry erase board with the exact same map layout on it. A sanctuary is revealed which players have to connect the flowers and caterpillars to in order to score. After the sanctuary is revealed a card is drawn. Each card has a line, either a straight up/across or a 90 degree turn in any of four directions. Every player must then draw this line on their map. These cards are either plain or golden, after 4 golden cards are drawn the round ends, players add up their connected items and note down their score. Then a new sanctuary is revealed and gameplay resumes. If you would score less than the previous round then you instead score 0, with a penalty of -5 points at the end of the game for each zero you scored. At the end of the game there is a final scoring for flowers connected to the lion in the bottom right and caterpillars connected to the lady in the top left, then the player with the most points wins.

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Mystic Vale: Mana Storm

Game: Mystic Vale: Mana Storm

Publisher: AEG

Designer: John D. Clair

Year: 2017

Mystic Vale: Mana Storm is the first expansion we've tried for Mystic Vale. Mystic Vale was AEG's first game with the card crafting system where you add to and improve your cards throughout the game, so that you are deck-building, but not actually adding cards to your deck throughout the game. I really enjoyed the system in Mystic Vale, as you can see in my older review, but I've held back from investing in expansions because nothing about them seemed game changing and the price point for a box of cards was very high in comparison to the base game.

Mana Storm makes two or three key changes to the game. Firstly, it adds new cards to all of the decks. Secondly it gives each player a leader card, which becomes one of the ards in your deck and gives you a unique ability which can also be upgraded using mana. Finally, each player has a unique amulet which replaces the double sided mana token, giving you each unique abilities when you spoil and flip the token.

Mana-Mana, Doo-doo do-doo-do:- Mystic Vale: Mana Storm

Game: Mystic Vale: Mana Storm

Publisher: AEG

Designer: John D. Clair

Year: 2017

Mystic Vale is a card crafting game which we previously reviewed in January this year. As a quick refresher, Mystic Vale is a deck building game with a twist, you start with a full deck of sleeved cards. Instead of buying cards for your deck, you buy clear plastic advancements, which slide inside the sleeves adding their powers to the base card. Each card can support up to three advancements, creating an incredibly vast number of unique combinations. I finished my Mystic Vale review by saying that one day the card crafting system would produce a great game, but Mystic Vale wasn't that game.

So, does the Mana Storm expansion change that? Mana Storm brings with it 48 new advancements and 18 new Vale cards for you to play with, but most importantly it introduces leaders and amulets. The new advancements have a strong tendency to be more powerful than the advancements found in the base game, but to balance this out a large number of them have caveats to their function, some require you to collect enough guardian symbols on the card by adding other enhancements before it starts to work, while others simply cost you victory points at the end of the game to balance out their power. It's wonderful to see the guardian symbols being introduced in greater number, making collecting them far more meaningful. The base game didn't really use this mechanic to the fullest, but now you can create a few cards that start neutered, but gain power exponentially as you add more symbols.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 11th November - 12th November

This first impressions blog covers a whole 2-day period! That's because we had the chance to play new games at two different board game cafe's this weekend. We spent Saturday afternoon at  the Ludoquist in Croydon, who are having an amazing first week - so amazing that it's hard to find some table space! Then we spent Sunday at Draughts in London. Both occassions were with friends, so we did a mixture of sharing some games we already know and learning some new, lighter games at the table.

It was a busy weekend, so here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 5th November - 10th November

Today we're had our second ever Kickstarter delivery. Unlike our first Kickstarter (Gloomhaven) I was really happy to be able to get this one straight to the table! By lunchtime today we had already played Kokoro twice - more than a lot of games on our shelves have ever been played! This week we've also started to look at our small number of Essen games and an old classic to round off the week of new games.

Here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

Thoughts from Yellow Meeple:- Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Game: Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Designer: Brad Andres, Erik Dahlman, Nate French

Year: 2017

The Legend of the Five Rings is a re-boot of an old collectible card game into Fantasy Flight's living card game (LCG) model. In a living card game, you are still encouraged to buy additional content and customise your decks, but you kow exactly what you're getting inside every expansion box. Core sets, like this game just released are the starting point and should include enough for you to play a full game and they are, of course, designed to get you hooked. We have not been hooked into any licing card game franchise so far, having tried Android Netrunner and The Lord of the Rings, so is Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game one that will grab our attention and open our wallets?

Legend of the Five Rings is an asymmetric, 2-player card game. You each pick a faction and in the base set you'll receive two pre-made decks - a dynasty deck and a conflict deck. Your dynasty deck contains people and holdings who you use to start conflicts or defend from conflicts, whilst your conflict deck contains a mixture of items, events and weaker people who you can pull out as a surpise to use during conflicts. Each player has four provinces and a stronghold and your goal is to be the first player to break 3 out of 4 of the other players provices and break their stronghold.

Collect 100 for a 1-up:- Legend of the Five Rings

Game: Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Designer: Brad Andres, Erik Dahlman, Nate French

Year: 2017

Legend of the Five Rings is a 2-player living card game (LCG) in which you take control of one of seven clans and attempt to conquer another clan through the combination of political intrigue and outright brute force. Legend of the Five Rings uses two decks for each side as well as a series of provinces which you must take over before you can finally conquer your opponents stronghold and win the game. However you must be careful, if you fight too shamefully you will be dishonored and unable to win.

Legend of the Five Rings works in a round based system, each round you get a certain amount of fate, the game's currency. This can be spent at the start of the round to recruit troops from your dynasty deck, or held back to pay for surprise cards from your conflict deck. Next both players will bid honor in order to draw from their conflict cards. Honor represents a secondary way to win or lose the game, if you run out then your armies are demoralized and shamed enough to abandon you. Similarly if your opponent reaches 25 they will instantly win. To bid honor you select a number from 1 to 5 on a dial, then both players reveal their dials simultaneously. The number you select dictates the number of conflict cards you can draw that turn, while the difference between your number and your opponents results in honor being given to them/taken from them.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 30th October - 4th November

This week has been very exciting in terms of new deliveries. Our three Essen preorders arrived from Thirsty Meeples, I decided to order the three new EXIT games from Kosmos and review copies of When I Dream and the new expansion for Mystic Vale also turned up on our doorstep. We have so many games to play, as well as keeping on top of our campaigns of Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and having friend over to continue Mechs vs. Minions or Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle. 

There's a lot going on, so here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Flatline

Game: Flatline

Publisher: Renegade Game Studios

Designer: Kane Klenko

Year: 2017

Flatline is a sequel to Renegade’s hit game Fuse, where you were working to defuse a bomb. Unfortunately you failed at that game and now Flatline reflects the consequences for your ship. Flatline is a game of real-time dice rolling where you need to work together quickly to make the right dice combinations to treat your patients, deal with emergencies and buy yourself time to ensure that you complete all of your tasks before the power runs out. We’ve had a great track record with real-time cooperative games. XCOM: The Board Game is definitely our favourite, but the only one we’ve tried and not enjoyed is Bomb Squad. In that context, how does Flatline fare?

In Flatline, each player has a set number of customized dice, showing 6 different symbols. Each turn there is a one minute timed phase where everyone simultaneously rolls their dice and then you try to use the faces to complete tasks on the board. At any one time there are 4 receptacles on the board representing your patients and on each will be a number of tasks where the right dice must be placed – sometimes by one person and sometimes by a specific combination of people. Once all tasks on a patient are completed, that patient is replaced with a new one until you complete all patients and win the game.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 23rd - 29th October

After a week away hunting for new board game cafes and board game stores in the north of England, we came home to 3 new board game arrivals. In the following days two amazing parcels arrived - our Kickstarter pledge for Gloomhaven was the first excitement, followed by our preorder of Pandemic Legacy Season 2 which stole all of the limelight! 

We've got a lot of new games to play, so, here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;