The Curious Incident of the Rat in the Night-time

Eh up, buckos! I know you've all been anticipating this moment. At least since you clicked on the link and were waiting for the page to load. Maybe even since you saw the notification pop up on facebook! This moment is of course when we look with rose-tinted spectacles, or at least innuendo-laden fondness, at the past Tuesday's gaming. And this week I'll be unfairly reporting on the playing of Sheriff of Nottingham, Chaos in the Old World, Noria and for myself, Quadropolis.

A small part of the East Midlands turned up in the Mash Tun for the players of Sheriff of Nottingham which seems to be a game the goal of which is to embarrass Jamie because he's so awful at it. As I arrived, he was asking about the bread situation, but quickly started laying on the accusations, claiming that Gareth was "good at the talking shit game as well" in an attempt to play hardball that backfired. The main mechanic in question here is Cheat-type one where you can call someone's bluff, either penalising the cheater or being penalised if you're wrong. Jamie had either wrongly called bluff ("stop him! he's got bread!") or wrongly accepted a bluff 8 times in a row, so things were looking pretty good for the Merry Men on his watch. Jamie wasn't the only one with problems though, as James in another round had attempted to bluff while accidentally showing the cards in question to everyone. An omnishambles of medieval proportions.

Jamie examines his hand in order work out
exactly how to cock up his next call...

The Sheriff, to put it politely,
is fond of his food.

Next was a pretty chaotic game in the old world, and pretty debauched at that --- as perhaps it is to be expected for a game featuring the Daemon Prince of pleasure and hedonism, amongst others. The game, allegedly, is drawn on human vellum, though I don't think that would be allowed nowadays. When asked for a run-down the players simply said they were "old gods trying to destroy the world with corruption," which sounds like an average Tuesday to me, NoBoG or otherwise. You can win by completing your dial by achieving your God's particular objectives such as seducing nobles or killing people, or you can just get 50 points by whatever means.

Slaanesh and Skaven, sitting right next
to each other. Who'd have thought?

Slaanesh thinks that the objectives are too hard --- "just let me touch myself!" This was avoided at least in part thanks to there being a Skaven token on the board so "no-one was getting here." We were trying to figure out how this worked and hypothesised that nobody would want to get busy if there were rats around. However Peter then dropped the bombshell on us, declaring, "I do remember nearly squashing a rat during intercourse once." When asked what he was doing his reply was simply, "Well we were having sex, the rat was just walking around." I'd add some kind of witty follow-up to this, but I just don't think I can improve on what's already given to me. Peter did clarify that the rat was a pet.

Paint me like one of your French rats.

Next up was Noria which is a still-unreleased, fairly heavy engine-builder. You have a spinny dial (see photo) which rotates each turn somehow, and what is in the bottom section of the dial on your turn is what determines your actions. This means that you can't just plug away at one section of the mechanics and have to adapt and anticipate the up-coming actions. You can change what's in your dial but you have to sink money into doing so, so you can't do it too much.

Things are Pointed At in Noria.
I wish I'd got a close-up of the spinny dials.

There are lots and lots of bits and locations and I didn't get a complete description, but for example you can go exploring in order to obtain resource generation, and you can do other actions which push up the markers on the main tracks, which is what ends up scoring you points.

So then I built some square towns in Quadropolis. It was my first time and I kind of sucked, especially when I forgot that we were on the last round and based part of my strategy around doing something next round... Anyway, if you've not played before as I hadn't, the object is to build up a town by taking and placing various district cards on your 4x4 town grid. You take them in player order from a shared 5x5 pool by placing one of your four selection cards down. Each is numbered 1-4 and you take the card that distance away from the edge on which you place the selection card, meaning your choices become more restricted as the round progresses. You can only place districts in the row or column corresponding to the card you used. This all adds up to meaning you need to be very careful about which of the selection cards you use to get which district, and in what order since you don't some other bugger to nick your district (there's quite some scope for screwing people over if they have a limited number of viable or possible choices).

My quadropolis after one round. Pretty modest.

The districts themselves are fairly straightforward with some nice interactions: each requires a certain resource to run, and may also produce a resource. Typically districts produce the opposite resource from what they consume, and some synergising districts behave the same, forcing you to diversify. Synergies involve making certain patterns, adjacencies and the like, and you can only do a couple perfectly before running out of space on your 4x4 board. There is definitely enough going on to need a few plays before you really work out some the optimal strategies. It feels similar to Suburbia in a bunch of ways — building a town, obviously, with districts that should be placed in certain configurations obtained from a central pool. In Quadropolis, you have far less freedom with where you place things, though, and the resources are quite different. I feel like the small town board might start get a bit stale after a few plays, but there is an advanced mode with an extra round, a whole extra zone to build on, and new district types.

Finished quadropolis, still pretty modest.
Note the neat gap on the top row which could have
been a park adjacent to three residences.

So that's it for this somewhat belated write-up of board gaming beauty. I suspect we'll all never think about rats in quite the same way from now on. Until next time!

BOO!rd Games

OoooOOOOOooooOOOooooo! Welcome to the spoooOOoooOOokiest NoBloG of the year on account of it being Hallowe'en and stuff. It was on the quieter side of things this Tuesday — you could in fact say it was a little dead. Ho ho. I mean it wasn't actually dead, it was bangin' as always, but allow me some punistic license. Before the games started, Hannah treated us to some spooktably thematic chocolates:

BRING ME THE SKULLS OF MY ENEMIES!
OK, skulls of chocolate will do.

Anyway, I had a little look around in between being made an example of by Lewis (which we shall come to) and saw gamers playing Clank!, Champions of Midgard and Dead of Winter, whilst I played Betrayal at the House on the Hill. I'm surprised and indeed disappointed there was no rule that everyone had to play spooky games!

I suppose a ghost could clank its spooky, ethereal chains, but that's all the link to spookiness there is in this deck-building dungeon explorer. The aim is to steal the dragon's loot and escape using "the power of deck-building." I'm quite skeptical as to how impressed any creature that can breathe actual fire is going to be over how astutely you discard your starting cards but who am I to say? Things I notice on the board include archaeologists and bananas. I assume the archaeologists are not loot, but what about the bananas? I mean it's important to have a source of slow-release sugar when exploring a dungeon, and bananas are, to be fair, yellow, but I was promised gold! This is as bad as when Pocahontas gave the colonists sweetcorn instead of shiny metal.

Clonk!

Also the dragon looks like a seahorse. I'm not sure how much of a challenge stealing loot from a seahorse would be, even though Sam assures me that they are "very protective of their young!" Indeed it turns out you can actually steal dragon eggs, so you're less making off with a dragon's loot as with its afternoon snack and all its children. Harsh.

It's a bloody seahorse.

Next I had a look at the Champions or at least the players of Midgard, where there were actual tons of bits, which apparently were special kickstarter goodies. I've only played it once and didn't even recognise the game because there were so many little pieces. Tim announces, "we're foightin'" in what is claimed to be a Viking accent but which sounds remarkably more local combined with yokel. Aye, the Norfolk Raiders were well known for pillaging up and down the East Anglia coast, all the more effective because they could use their feet instead of oars. Ewan is trying to kill Fenrir Cob (like his brother "corn", not to be accepted as a substitute for gold) but isn't taking any surplus food on the journey, because he is a man who lives life on the edge. Meanwhile Tim is taking his entire party of mighty warriors on a hunting jolly because he wants food. Maybe to kill stuff on expeditions, maybe just to eat. At least the Norfolk Raiders have the gluttony aspect of Viking life down.

In Dead of Winter a player who, for the sake of dignity will remain anonymous, managed to end up in a location with a bitten survivor and get killed by the zombie plague on the first turn. Then he re-drew a rubbish dude and basically hadn't done anything at all by the time I came by. Thankfully Jamie, whose character literally appears to be Doctor Who (the tenth) can restore morale which must have come in handy what with all the bite-y, plague-y, zombie-y death. I actually don't want to know how this happens for I can only assume it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "sonic screwdriver." In spite of my repeated accusations that Jamie is the traitor he professes to believe there isn't one at all. And when I steal his goal card it even says he isn't one, so that must have been a decoy. He's very sneaky.

Looking down (metaphorically) on Dead of Winter

Jamie insisted I document the fact that he
wasn't a traitor.

The crappy replacement survivor

But what about a story of spooks, scares, and Betrayal? The game started normally; we picked our characters (I chose the little girl because I feel she best represents my inner self) and started exploring. I went to the roof (and not at all because the ground floor was at the opposite table — such metagaming is beneath me. Being on the roof, so is most of the game.) Hannah fell down a hole and we were all rapidly finding items. I found a dog. You might think that's cute, but I'm pretty sure that, besides being described as mangy, it was probably riddled with disease and maybe cursed after being in the house so long. It wasn't long though before the Haunt was on and the traitor was revealed!

A cute, innocent little girl. Definitely not grinning
maniacally and out of her tiny mind.

Except... they weren't. Curses — it was a "traitorless" haunt. Except... it wasn't. But the game wasn't ready to reveal the traitor to everyone just yet. What it was ready to reveal was that we all had Saw-style death-collars around our necks and would be getting a little nip/tuck in the neck area if we didn't each soon find a pair of keys to unlock our collars. The traitor even had their own collar, but if we got to the time when it triggered, it would just harmlessly click and only then would they be revealed. The traitor was a little upset that we hadn't helped his mother (or wife, or someone) in a car accident and left her to burn to a crisp. I think I'd be a little put out in that situation as well, but we weren't given an opportunity to discuss healthy ways of grieving with the traitor, so we were stuck. We had to unlock the collars of three honest explorers in order to win, but if we unlocked that of the traitor that was also fine — except they might then just start murdering us with their bare hands, in which case we'd still lose if we didn't have three goodies alive.

The first round of potential beheadings passed without incident (the likelihood of anyone ending up shorter increasing each round) and by the third we had already unlocked two of the collars (most importantly, we had unlocked mine, my trusty/mangy dog having retrieved the second one. The other key turned out to be inside me but by this point, my little girl character was skilled enough at abdominal surgery to extract it with barely a scar remaining) Unfortunately as we carried on looking for more keys, Hannah's fate, and that of another player whose name I've forgotten (sorry) wasn't so rosy and with a snap their necks were veritably cleft in twain. And there was much lamenting. Not least because now there were only two people left with collars and we basically needed to guess who was the traitor to win. Things weren't looking so good though when, next round, Lewis' collar fell harmlessly to the ground instead of severing his neck, whereupon he decided to head to the remaining collared player and start wailing on him with an axe, leaving him within an inch of his life. Things went from bad to worse when he tried to leave the room but was molested by an animated corpse. In his weakened state, he succumbed to the zombie's attacks, and Lewis was victorious.

As is now the law, since Hallowe'en is over, all blog posts from now until February will be Christmas-themed. Bye!

We Now Return to our Regular Program.

Cough cough cough hello? Oh, eurh, ah! I remember this thing. Let's see if I can remember what to do. I think we played some games at the pub, possibly drank some beer, then we went home, the end. How'd I do?

Pffff OK fine. We played many games, some of which were Takenoko, Cyclades, Vikings Gone Wild, Evolution and Arctic Scavengers. And also a bunch of other ones that I was far too lazy and having far too much fun to write about.

The first of the aforementioned games, Takenoko, looks like a sort of Chinese Catan, but instead of a robber, there's a panda. Damn thievin' pandas. Somehow I've managed to miss out on playing this NoBoG perennial, so the players gave me the lowdown. The aim is to complete objectives, the first person to complete a few getting a bonus, the winner then being determined based on number of points gained from objectives.

Hexes + Sticks = Catan, I will accept no
disagreement. Fite me.

Ominous hand of doom casts a doom-laden
shadow over panda-thief of doom.

Objective cards of two kinds

Objectives can take one of three forms: having certain formations of irrigated tiles, certain amounts and heights of bamboo or making the pandathief eat certain bamboos. All of thse different things are accomplished through actions which you can take two of per turn. You have to take two different ones, so it's a good idea to take different goals so that you can work towards more than one each turn. It's difficult to purposefully screw people over because you never know what their goals are. Lewis shows me everything in an excited manner, and when I come back around there's looaads of bamboo growing. Maybe the Panda got full?

The bamboo grows taller.

Box art modelled by Lewis

Bonus card modelled by Lewis

Then I cycled over to a table playing Cyclades. (I didn't actually, that would be weird inside.) Cyclades is "World Domination slash Island Hopping," apparently — though I'm not sure if that's the kind of island hopping that Caledonian Macbrayne offers between the various Hebrides. You're fighting over fruit or "prosperity croissants" as the players call them (I'm not sure whether that's down to overactive imaginations or this is a colourfully named part of the CalMac breakfast option). They are actually cornucopiae and supposed to represent revenue but to be fair to the philistines they do look a bit like croissants. So the croissants give you money (they do always seem to go quickly at Tesco) which you then offer to the cash-grubbing Gods of ancient Greece. Whoever offers the most money to a particular God gets to take the corresponding action, such as obtaining or moving boats (Poseidon), getting or moving troops (Ares) and so on. If you lose the auctions you can always fall back on Apollo who'll get you more baked crescents. Another thing you can do with the Gods is summon awesome-looking mythical beasts like krakens and all sorts, though for some inexplicable reason no-one had done that yet. I mean, if I had been playing then who cares what the best tactics were, I'd be summoning myself a kraken at the very first opportunity!

Island Hopping: not just for MacArthur!

Gods to whom you can tribute money.

Three warriors defending a
prosperity croissant

Cthulhu wakes! Whoops, wrong mythology.

The objective of the whole thing is to get buildings and merge them into metropolises. The nice thing (depending on which end of it you're on) is that you can let someone else build the metropolises and then walk in and nick them. Easy peasy! Though apparently you have to actually win the fight before the guys on the island just give up the city — so much effort!

Wild-eyed from playing Vikings Gone Wild, Hannah declared that she had been drinking all the beer. Specifically she is "a very aggressive drunk Viking." In fact they've got so wild that James has fudged the win conditions so that they could carry on playing for longer! Crazy!Wild! As an excuse, Hannah said they were "having too much fun," though I suspect that James just needed a bit more time to win. Hannah has tons of chicken towers which (for some reason) add defence, and also the ability to tax everyone else's beer. This is particularly unfortunate for David whose economy is based around making beer.

There sure is a lot of stuff on this board.

That's a lot of gold.

That's a lot of beer. Would be shame
if anyone were to... tax it.

Next I popped along to the primordial soup of Evolution. Now, some people would say Sam has only just crawled out of the primordial soup himself but that would be rude and unfair. The objective is to get as much food in your food pouch at the end of the game. Though of note is the fact that food goes into the pouch after you've eaten it — but for some reason the game didn't see fit to describe it as the poo pouch, or as I'd call it, the poouch. You have to add traits, body size and population among your species in order to accomplish this. Some critters can become carnivores in which case the others need to evolve defences or the ability to run away if they are not to become someone else's poo. You can even make one of your species a carnivore and have it eat one of your others! By the end of the first turn though I realised just what kind of game it is as Luke evolves a "hard shell" and Sam becomes "fertile." One can only assume that their species are, respectively, birds and bees. Tortoise-birds, I guess.

Primordial soup

Curse your sudden but primordial betrayal!

We always knew it, Sam.

Heheh. Hard.

Well, let us scrape together an account of Arctic Scavengers. It was my first time playing this deck builder that takes place in a typical post-apocalyptic nuclear winter or something. Your goal is simply to accrue as much population as you can, which is achieved by recruiting new people to your cause. There are three ways of acquiring new cards: digging through rubbish (which can turn up tools and assorted junk, but not people), directly recruiting people from the pool available to everyone, and fighting your opponents for a powerful card unknown to everyone except one player. Each card contributes some amount to zero or more actions: digging, recruiting, fighting and also drawing more cards from your deck. If a person has a particular ability, they can be given a tool to enhance it, as well.

Available cards for scavengin'

Tim considers his options.
Thankfully there aren't too many so we
weren't waiting that long ;)

Whatever cards you don't use on your turn are saved and then, at the end of the round, all are revealed and whoever has the most fighting ability wins the secret card: though to contribute, tools must be attached to a person and a person can't use more than one tool at once. The various ability scores cap quite low, so it's not likely for someone to get an unassailable advantage, but as you start upgrading your cards you do gain quite a bit — Ewan was able to handily defeat everyone else in the end-of-round fights by the end of the game. This set him up for a clear win, as many of the rewards from the fights are cards with massive population numbers (up to 5 compared to 1 for most regular cards). Having only played one game it's difficult to tell what alternative strategies are available — I don't see how you can win without doing well at the fights since they give you such large bonuses. However to win them you do have to set aside cards to win which you could be using to recruit cards with known strengths. You are prevented from really shooting for any single strategy though because you can only do each action once per turn — so if you stack up on cards which allow you to recruit you're going to be disappointed when a future hand allows you to dig ten times but you can still only keep one of the resulting cards. This is great for a deck-building moron such as myself but might frustrate people who are good at them and enjoys picking a particular strategy. In the end I came joint second with Eliza, which I consider quite respectable due to the aforementioned moronitude, although I think Eliza was a bit miffed about being caught in the crossfire of such self-deprecation — sorry!

And that's all I got! Catch you next time, gamers!

Instagram

There's now a NoBoG instagram you can go check out amongst the other social media type places you can hang out for your fix of NoBoG.

Your NoBoG social media life has never been so full !

If you're on mobile you can find the links in the drop down nav below the logo. If you're not on mobile you'll see 'em over on the right.

Or just go check out the instagram thinger right here !

Review - A Dog's Life

NoBoG was recently sent a review copy of A Dog's Life to give a whirl of and see what we thought of it. First up to give it a try was Sean and Gemma - and Sean has written us a lovely review of their time with the game.

I've also given this game a run through and was impressed with the gorgeous quality of the art and pieces, and the gameplay itself is funny with plenty of room for dog impressions, barking at fellow players across the table and some devilish moves with strategic pee placement. How many games have an element of strategic pee placement ?!

Matt has also offered to give the game a whirl with his family - and hopefully we'll get his thoughts at some point too !

But for now, over to Sean :

 

A Dog's Life: Is it a dogs dinner or has this dog had his day ? 

So me and my girlfriend Gemma went to play A Dog's Life that was graciously sent to NoBoG by Ksenia. We have both played A Dog's Life video game and as we both have a love of dogs we thought we'd try it out.

The Doggos

Opening the board game and seeing the components and popping them out I was in bliss. Pee markers ? Yes please. Bones ? Yes please. Being a female dog dressed up to the nines ? I think I went to Doggy Heaven !

A Dog's Life ready for doggos

So let's give the more important points of the game. The idea of the game is to bury 3 bones before your opponent does. This can be achieved by delivering newspapers, begging at restaurants, and dining out at trash cans. While this is going on you have to make sure that you aren't sent to the pound or that your items aren't stolen by another evil treacherous dog. It's a dog eat dog world, what can I say ?

Fully fed and ready to pee !

Ideally the best ways to mitigate these threats are by moving away from the dogcatcher and by marking your territory. Marking your territory means that your opponent has to stop in the middle of his/her turn because of the inevitable pull of another dogs scent in liquid form. These threats are more prominent with more than two players but I felt that the dogcatcher was slowly pulling towards me.

He did , but not in the way I thought. In being so busy collecting bones and running away from the catchers my poor dog Daisy ended up collapsed in an alleyway, taken by those nefarious dogcatchers.

This is the only moment I was scratching my paws though as I checked the rulings that said that dogs do not go hungry in the pound. I think this needs more clarification. Does this mean the starvation counter goes to full ? or does it mean the dog doesn't automatically starve when it leaves the pound ? I played the latter but some clarifications in the rulebook would be nice. ( Editor note - it does actually state in the rules that when released from the pound you get 1 pee and full food, the rule could probably be better placed however ).

Pee domination !

So I think I will get to the Bones of the matter and not flesh it out too much more. A Dogs Life, is it a good game ? Yes it is. Is it a game that I would recommend for 2 player ? Probably not , even though we technically did it incorrectly, I wouldn't want to play with 3 dogs instead of 1. Could this change from being a good game to a great one ? I think so, and I think that some really minor adjustments/ house rules could easily do this. So with no further adu let me say the points I find could be tinkered with a little bit.

1. The Mangy Mutt: So instead of 3 dogs against 3 for two player, why don't we add in a new variable ? A mangy mutt for 2 player games ? The idea being like the dogcatcher the mangy mutt is controlled by the player on their turn , and is used by that player in order to impede the other players progress. Maybe use 2 die so that the mutts movement could go up to 7 and perhaps have it always fed ?
2. Dalmatians: I personally love Dalmations they look so cute and adorable. So why not put them in this game ? Is this because the game has to be realistic to the movie or is it due to perhaps patents on specific images ? To be honest I don't know, but having dalmations in the game would be really cool ! 
3. More Bones please? This is the only true gripe with the board game , and it can be so easily remedied. The game is a medium size game with multiple components to set up in order to start the game, and yet that game is only 40 minutes long for 2 players. Because this goes so quickly the question is why would I take 20 minutes preparing a game to play for 40 minutes when there are many fillers out there that would take a much shorter time to prepare ? The truth is I wouldn't, but do not fret since I have a solution. Just have the number of bones needed to win change for the number of players you have ! This would be similar to love letters so would therefore fill out the time making the game more immersive. Maybe put the number of bones needed to 5 or 6 for 2 players 

Aftermath

So after everything I have said do I think anyone should play this game ?` Yes, but be warned this game will turn you into a dog! We walked back home after the game and I found that all dogs were really nice to me. It was as if I truly was a dog, but is a dog's life truly for me ? I don't think I will ever know the answer to this question readers, while I wait by this lamppost that smells a little bit funny. In general though , you should play the game at least once. The components are fantastic, the theme and the rules are fun. It just needs a little push in the right direction. Rating 3/5 Bones (Quite literally)

Keeping an eye on the dog catcher

Picture of real pupper for reference - ( one of my (Minitrue's) mutts - Ares )

The Colonists

The Colonists - Epic Gaming

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Colonists And Then Some

Over the last three weeks at Monday NoBoG I've had a chance to get to close grips with The Colonists.  It announces itself boldly on the game box as "The Epic Strategy Game", and at a play time for us of over 9 hours for a single game, epic is maybe the right word. What's the other word it could be instead of epic ? Oh yes. Long. But that reads less excitingly on the box cover - The Colonists - The Long Strategy Game.

Origin

The Colonists is a game firmly of the Euro style camp, a worker placement production engine builder, released last year by new to the game design scene Tim Puls. His first game design ever, the seed for the idea behind The Colonists started in 2008 when Tim first started to play heavier Euro classics including Agricola. Loving the idea behind the worker placement Build Your Little Production Engine World and taking some nods from the computer scene from things like Civilisation, Tim began to design The Colonists with a clear dislike of anything military or play spoiling and the idea that your workers on your actions shouldn't simply return to you magically after a round but stay where they are, persistent, and only able to move to areas / actions near them.

The Detail

The Colonists is a game where players take on the role of village mayor and must guide their settlement to ever greater heights of development and employment. To achieve this the player will build an assortment of different buildings in their tableau by spending resources, managing those resources carefully between active and non active storage locations, playing development cards to help the colony, allocating worker meeples to staff buildings and finally at the end of a year making sure you have enough sustenance to keep your worker meeples actively employed and not scurrying back to their homes in search of food.

The game space breaks down into two main parts - the first is your tableau where you will manage your village and your resources ( each resource needs a storage spot, there's no unlimited stacking of resources here ! ) , and the second is the shared world called "The Mainland", which is a modular tile based set of actions that your action meeple will wander around to take actions.

An Era 4 Tableau

End of Era 3 Mainland

The game takes place over 4 "eras", each successive era containing its own unique buildings, action spots and development cards with a ramping build cost, sophistication and power. The eras are played back to back, so things you pick up and develop in era 1 could well be along for the ride for the whole game - or if they're the right kind of building maybe they get upgraded into something a bit fancier, or if you start running out of space in your limited space village you might choose to burn them down to building something else.

Each era breaks down into a number of years where additional tiles will get added to the mainland - the pool of actions - your village will produce resources and sustenance demands need to be met. Overall you'll get to take a minimum of 30 actions per era, possibly more up to say 40, depending on your setup. This is pretty much a Euro length game in an of itself per era - 30 meaningful actions ( something like Glass Road has anything between 12 and 40 actions per player per game, Agric has a minimum of 28 actions up to around 52 ish ).

A key aspect of the game is that all meeples are not equal - there are three types of meeple, green farmer/labourer, yellow citizens and red merchants. Each type of meeple is basically a level of sophistication up from the next with increasing requirements of sustenance and building capability. The names are by and large arbitrary and don't reflect the capabilities of each meeple type. During the game you'll find yourself slowly evolving from a simple green meeple economy to a more convoluted and pricey green / yellow meeple economy to finally a tricky to balance green / yellow / red village.

All The Lovely Meeples. The Red Dudes sit at home awaiting jobs.

 The second key aspect is that resources require explicit storage space - each single resource requiring a single space - if you have three food, you're going to need three storage slots. Also, not all storage spaces are equal. Some can be freely used on your action - some you cannot access during your action, but you can move around before an action, and some are one way only storage spaces - production sites that can temporarily house that years production at best, but never be re-used.

Storage - Era 1 and Era 2 Storage here

 The final key aspect to the game is that of the mainland - a modular hex tile board, each tile of which has an action on it that a player can take. Each players action meeple ( or meeples later if you get upgrades ) can wander around adjacent tiles taking the action from each rather like the mechanism in Istanbul. Obviously this has a massive impact on the game - you're not free to simply pick and choose what action you'd like to take, you have to take a series of chained actions, and, depending on how the modular board has been created this can be vastly different from game to game ( or even in game once action spots start giving you the ability to switch any two hex tiles ).

Era 4 Mainland - James has spent most of the game arranging the mainland
in the worst possible way. The Milton Keynes of the Euro world.

The Aim

Victory points. What else ? Your victory points here are going to come from the buildings themselves - minimal points for eras 1 and 2, but these do add up quickly, development cards - minimal again in the overall scheme of things, and finally employed meeples - fairly substantial if you're doing it right.

Getting juicy high point end era buildings in and also staffed by high point red meeples is the killer aim, but affording the exorbitant costs of those buildings and the greedy sustenance requirements of the red meeples is the puzzle of the game - assuming you're playing the whole game.

It should be noted - probably because the game is so long - that there are game variants where you can pick and choose which era(s) you play. This means you can dip your toe in at a complexity level and length of game that suits you, but, at a cost of the game being way less dynamic and a good deal more flat in what you can achieve. I can't really imagine playing say, an era 4 only game - it would be weird and I suspect very dull with everyone having the same setup, and limited time to pick a direction.

The Feel

To me, the game plays like a simplified Caverna with a spin of an Istanbul like central action space that ties you into choosing suitable paths of actions rather than just picking any old action you feel like. The buildings that are placed in your village have the same feel as Caverna - each one doing interesting things and generally providing either space for your worker meeples or production spots for those end of year production phases ( of which you get 5 per era ). This is pretty much the same as Caverna or Agric in that your fields in those games produce food and animals, and there is then a requirement to feed ( and clothe in The Colonists for those damn picky red meeples ) all your dudes. The difference here is that The Colonists production phase can see you pretty much producing all the goods available in the game - wood, clay, bricks, planks and so on - as well as the needed sustenance food, and, the number of worker meeples you have is going to be far far greater than the max of 5 ish you get in Agricola - you're going to be dealing with a dozen or more.

Era 4 tiles awaiting to join the Mainland. James is in charge. It's awful.

Despite the increased production breadth in The Colonists and the number of worker meeples you are pushing around, there doesn't seem to be a particular uptick in the complexity required in managing your tableau. By and large once something is in your village it tends to stay and just keep on doing its thing - with maybe an upgrade or two to keep it efficient.

The game is interesting in a Euro management kind of way, there's plenty to do and look at, and the paths to get where you are headed are fairly diverse - but overall it doesn't seem to make too much odds how you go about things - it doesn't feel like it's a game where you can get a runaway leader and then have to sit there for the next 9 hours watching said runaway leader preen over how good their efficiency is. Is the game just busy work then with a series of hobsons choices ? It doesn't feel like that - the choices about how you build your world are interesting, I just think there is no super bad course you can take here - the game is not punishing, and just about everything you do is going to help.

This Years market actions. You get five of these per era. 40 in all. Zoiks !

 The pain point in the game is the getting of resources, conversion of resources, storing of resources and then the spending of resources. That's the crucial juggling you'll be doing as you attempt to build better stuffs and keep up with the increasing sophistication of the eras.

It must be said here. The game is long. Very long. It doesn't feel like a waste of time or too much boring downtime - which is quite something as there is an absolute butt load of downtime and there can be some sticky AP moments which just double down on the length.

Overall

The game is cool, very enjoyable if you like your Euro stuffs, is wildly replayable with a modular tile mainland that guarantees almost a unique pattern of actions every game, and a variable card deck and limited choice of powerful Ambassadors in setup. It has no huge game breaking flaws mechanically, scratches a Euro production engine itch, and because of its length and scope is probably the most Euro productiony thing you're going to play. But, that's not because its a super crunchy and clever production engine game. It's just that you're going to be doing a fairly standard production enginey thing for 9 hours. Quantity. Not quality.

The game kept my attention and interest, and some of the core mechanics are interesting and cool - the persistent wandering meeple is a lovely twist on the typical pick whatcha like Euro mechanic, indeed the whole mainland thing is interesting with its variable market action that changes every year, and you'd think that this aspect of the game has legs to be pushed into other games.

But the game does have problems. Possibly one killer problem. And the design some seem to suffer from a lack of editing, something of a kitchen sink mentality and a lack of elegance.

Problem ?

There are a number of small problems with the game which feel like they are a victim of this being a My First Game I Designed issues and no strong editorial voice cutting the game where it needed some pruning.

But the kick ass arguably show stopping problem for this game is its length. Length and what you get for your time investment.

Time

The box reckons the game is between 30 minutes and 6 hours in length. But by now we all know that box game length times lie. Our four player game, excluding setup and rules, took us 9 hours to complete. Eras 1 and 2 came in at over 3 hours for the pair together, Era 3 on its own was around 3 hours, and era 4 a similar amount of time.

At 9 hours in play, sitting down to this game with a full table is daunting. This is not going to be a game you slam out regularly for a gaming session - this is going to be a full on reserve a day and settle in for the long haul. Even if you split play up over multiple sessions, the commitment will then be more akin to a short roleplay campaign than a simple board game night !

And what do you get for your 9 hours ?

You get Caverna. Played maybe three times over back to back.

First you get to build your village with green meeple buildings - and no sustenance cost.

Then you get to do it over again, this time with yellow meeples and yellow buildings, this time with your more traditional, one food per meeple sustenance cost.

And then you get to do it again with your red meeples and red buildings, with a pricey two food and one clothing cost.

The buildings interleave and upgrade, so you'll have a mix of green, yellow and red by the end, but make no mistake, the mechanics are the same - the costs rise, the capabilities go up, but you're doing the same problem solving three times over.

3.5 hours in, End of Era 2. My first yellow dudes have turned up.

Which is perhaps a clue as to why the game takes 9 hours to play. That and the fact that by game end you'll have taken at a minimum a gut busting 120 actions, and in all probability the action count will more likely be up around 140 actions. You'll also have overseen a massive 20 production and sustenance cycles.

Compare and contrast something like Agric. 6 sustenance and production cycles.45 ish actions. Which just so happens to be approximately a third of the numbers of The Colonists. Coincidence ? Hell no !

So. It's three Euro games. Stuck in one.

But yeah, think of the awesome unique production euro-ness and the heights of efficiency joy you get with 9 hours to craft your vision.

Except you don't. Maybe there's a finite limit to Euro Production Joy. Maybe its the fact that you're repeating the same schtick for 9 hours. But whatever it is, for me, The Colonists does not produce three times the Euro goodness of Other Things. For me it produces the same amount of Euro goodness of Other Things. But at three times the length.

Meh. I mean ok. It's not terrible. But now combine that with "and when the hell am I going to get time or convince anyone else to sit down to a 9 hour game of Resource Shuffle (TM)". And you have a problem.

I like the game. I am very glad I played it - I had fun. I feel no need to ever play it again. Ever.

So that's the time issue. What else ?

Resource Finagling

The storage issues in the game are just a pain in the ass. And not an exquisite pain in the ass like the panic of trying to feed yourself in Agricola and avoiding the shame of the begging card, but more a pain in the ass like, wow, this is entirely unnecessary and fiddly.

The game makes a deal of having only some of your storage areas accessible to use goods in an action. The other areas are off limits. You are free to switch goods around before an action - but not during. In this way it kinda makes sure you cant spend all your goods in a single action. Its limiting you to how many things you can build or convert in a single action. But oh boy. The fiddlyness of this is just meh. One of the areas - a warehouse - contains a single, SINGLE resource slot. Which is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. If you're lucky and diligent you might get this up to as much as five slots by game end ( by contrast, a single storage hall at this point can hold 12 items, and you have potentially three of them plus an extra three slot area, making a total of 39 items ).

Extra Storage. All three spaces. Three. Woo. A sad single ore is next door.

The ratio of this warehouse to usable space is minimal. And only exacerbated by the fact that, oh my, so long as its before an action, you can freely switch this shit around anyway.

Era 4 - my storage is still stuck around Era 3. No time to get better.

Which very quickly makes you beg the question - why the hell is this in the game. It serves bugger all purpose. Apart from adding extra rules and extra fiddlyness for the sake of it.

If you wanted to limit how many things someone can do on an action - rather than arse around with usable and non usable storage, simply state the limit on the action - no more than three times, two times, whatever. Indeed the game already has this concept in place for single use activation - you can only do this once. The game should clearly have just ditched the fiddly resource shuffling and stuck in build limits - elegant, quicker, no pain ( less time !! ).

Limited player interaction.

The game plays like a solo multiplayer. Even when you've not got a card in that entirely eliminates all interaction between players, the interaction is almost nil. The only interaction is someone must pay to use an action spot someone else is standing on. Exactly like Istanbul. But in The Colonists the chances of you tripping over each other at exactly the same time with exactly the same plan are minimal to non existant. Whereas Istanbul has 16 action spaces of which maybe half are not reasonable relevant at any point, The Colonists can have 60 spaces ! Imagine Istanbul with 60 spaces, and then see how many times you land on each other.

Solo multiplayer doesn't sound so bad - no one can mess with my ideal setup. Sure. For 9 hours ? At this point you might as well lock yourself in your garden shed for a day, play the game, then compare notes with everyone else ! Table camaraderie and socialising is a key aspect to how palatable this game is. Because the game certainly isn't going to give you anything.

Learning Curve

There's a learning curve to the game. What's an optimum number of green workers. When should you start pushing for Ore. How much food is a good number for end game ? Pubs. Yay or nay ?

Building two pubs. A good idea ? I'll let you know in 9 hours

Unless you're the kind of gamer that likes sitting down before ever punching the bits and number crunching the rules to get some kind of game plan - or possibly just cheating and reading what someone has to say on the internets - then this game has a learning curve like pretty much every other Euro of, oh, This Is A Good Idea Right Now, And Thats Really Not.

Which is fine.

But at 9 hours, getting a good grasp of that learning curve is less of a gaming experience, and more of a life choice. Yes. I Have Dedicated Myself To Mastering The Colonists. In my spare time I have a career and earn money.

It's perhaps not a big deal particularly if everyone is just learning as you go, or some very helpful experienced soul nudges you occasionally, but again, finding out that your plan to massively invest in
Snake Oil Lol This Doesnt Do Shit Really But Its Kinda Been Left In The Game Anyway was bullshit after 9 hours of play is going to be, I imagine, somewhat deflating. Fortunately there isn't really anything in the game thats a Big Mistake, but you can definitely mis-step and either under provision or over provision for stuff that never really happens ( James and his Cunning Plan of developing Powers so he never had to pay anyone for action spots springs to mind - it was basically a waste of time ).

RNG

The RNG in the game is pretty acceptable. By and large it's not a huge surprise, you can see things coming, and it just injects interest in the game rather than table flipping bullshittery. That being said. Some things like the development cards can be at one end of the scale an entire waste of time, and at the other super powerful. One card that James picked up in the powerful end game set of development cards was literally - gain one coal. The prize for naughty children at Christmas. And in game terms worth about the same thing. The problem is that achieving anything in The Colonists takes quite a bit of prep. Hauling your meeples ass out to pick up cards then hauling it back across the board two turns later to play the card is a pain in the ass effort. Picking up a card that says Ha Ha You Loser on it, and watching the next player pick up, Everything You Do From Now On Costs Nothing is somewhat shit. Then again perhaps its part of the balance of the cards - its something of a risk. But again, after 9 hours of this shit, everything becomes a little more .... sensitive in design terms.

And Everything Else

Theres a number of minor issues throughout the game. The largely pointless busy work with tools ( you need tools to build stuff, you produce them every turn, after 9 hours of gameplay no one at the table ever had a problem with their supply whatsoever - what the hell is the point of this goddamn extra piece of resource crap that is never a supply problem in the first place ! ), the oddly pointless green meeples ( they cost nothing to support, they get you 1vp if employed, well crap, shall we just  remove them entirely from the game and assume green buildings are powered and get you an extra vp ?! ) . Timing seems to be rather wacky in the game as well. By the time final era storage spaces are available, you'd be an idiot to build them instead of building something rather more points fancy - and if you do build them, you're likely not going to have a chance to utilise them. Unless they come out super early - and even then, limited usability. A lot of stuff seems to be like this - odd timing issues with the whole game.

Green and Yellow Economy ! Era 3 ish.

You could do much in the game so much more elegantly, reduce bit count, reduce time , reduce fiddly.

The game is badly in need of a ruthless editor.

Or another game needs to come out which takes some of the nice concepts from this game, and chops it down to some reasonable length.

Summary

I've given The Colonists a good kicking here. Ambushed it in a dark alleyway and proceeded to beat the living snot out of it. But it's all in love really. The game is very playable, enjoyable, and I think every serious Euro gamer needs to play this at least once. Maybe twice ( more than this is madness or a life path choice imo ). The game is going to be the most productiony Euro game you play, it IS epic because it's three Euros in one, back to back, over 9 hours of play, and you get to wear the I've Played The Colonists Survivor T Shirt.

It's a nice effort from Tim Puls. But hopefully, when he does his next game, his excitement about including Absolutely Everything Ever and making Everyone Play It For The Longest Time Ever will have receded and something a bit more elegant will hit the table.