Actualol Newsletter - August 2019 (Patreon)

Welcome to the first Actualol newsletter. A way for me to give you even more opinions about even more board games! To ward you off the games not worth your time. And give a mention to some that didn't quite make the cut for me, but might be for you.

If you haven't already, make sure to watch my Best Games of the Month video, that accompanies this newsletter.

August has been a pretty big month for me, because I got married! We had a small humanist ceremony atop a hill in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, with Arthur's Seat in the background. 

It rained as we walked up the hill, which meant we had the place to ourselves and as we gave our vows it became torrential! For once in my life I loved the rain. Except for when it got our marriage license soaking wet, and we had to go to a cafe to dry it out on top of a panini press before we could sign it!

For the week after we spent our honeymoon in Edinburgh, going to the Fringe festival and seeing as many live comedy shows and plays as we could. And now we're back in London! 

I haven't been playing as many games as usual, but there's plenty of games I played in July to catch up on. Little disclaimer: These aren't full reviews, they are my brief thoughts on games. Since this is exclusive to Patreon backers, please don't share them elsewhere.

Games worth considering

Curios is a light deduction game from AEG. You’re sending workers to collect artifacts from four locations, but you don’t know how much each artifact is worth. It could be 1,3,5 or 7. You each have partial information, the leftover value cards, ruling out what value it won’t be. You need to watch where other people are going to learn what they think they know. Each round you can make one of your value cards public to get an extra worker. 

It plays so quickly that it feels like a filer game. It feels different, and clever, not like anything else I’ve played. It has nice components with big plastic gems, but it comes in a tin that is bigger than it should be. The art, theme and name are all rather uninspired. It’s the sort of game I’d be happy to play again, but it’s not as exciting as classic filler games, and it doesn’t quite have enough depth or joy to want to come back to often.

Artline: Hermitage is a card game that uses famous paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg as the cards. You take it in turns to add cards to rows and columns on the table. When you create a new line you have to find a link between the two cards. “They all contain hats”, for example. Then everyone else has to follow that rule. To get rid of cards and closer to winning you have to place a card that fits the criteria for a row and a column.

It's a simple and clever idea that plays nicely and it creates conversations as you argue over what counts. It has a nice dose of creativity as you try to find connections. The game itself is great, but the artwork is quite drab and the people I played it with wanted the same game with different artwork. This would be a great game for people who love art, or for teaching kids to look closer at art. It's the perfect game to sell in museums and I could see it become a line of games like Timeline for different galleries or periods of art because it's just so simple.

La Viña is a set collection card game. You're walking through vineyards picking grapes and trying to meet winery goals to sell them for points. 

It has a similar mechanism to Tokaido, you can go forward as much as you want but you can't go back. You really have to consider what other players are aiming for, because people can jump in and deliver the last slot at a winery before you.

It has gorgeous artwork and it packs more than you'd expect in such a small box. The tokens are quite small and fiddly to handle. It’s a relaxed, straightforward design that lacks a level of excitement or thinkiness for it stand aside other card game favourites.

Caper is a two player card game, in which you’re competing to heist famous buildings. The iconography killed this one for me. It’s a simple idea of playing cards to vie for area control of three locations. It’s distantly reminiscent of Battleline/Schotten Totten, and I’d much rather play that game. I like very simple, pared down two player games, and Caper is just a little too fiddly for my tastes. I spent too long with my head in an iconography reference book for it to be enjoyable. And crucially there was nothing exceptional in the gameplay or theme that made it worth that effort. I’m sure after a few games with the same partner you’d have it memorized, but I switch partners all the time. As an actress said to a bishop…

Worth avoiding

Silver is a card game from Bezier Games. It has a VERY loose werewolf theme, and some gorgeous artwork. Everyone has five facedown cards in their village. You get to look at two of them. Each turn you can draw a card and swap it with one in your village or discard it and use its ability. Each card has a number value and an ability. The card powers allow you to reveal cards, swap cards and steal cards. The goal is to have the lowest numbers in your village when a vote is called.

We didn’t enjoy anything about this game. The pace was slow, you often drew a card that didn’t do much of any use. The memory aspect wasn’t hard, but it also wasn’t welcome. There wasn’t much interaction between players, and if there was it was often with face down cards that neither player knew what they were. The luck of the shuffle at the start of the round had a big impact on the winner. The decisions were limited, and never interesting. We just couldn’t find any fun in this game.

Arraial is a Tetris inspired tile laying game about trying to fit party goers into a street festival. You're taking pieces to fill up a personal board. If you connect matching coloured shapes you win a Meeple (point), and there's a reward for having the biggest area of one colour. 

I found nothing exciting or interesting to consider this game over Spring Meadow or Barenpark. And it inspired more analysis paralysis and longer turns than those games. Having to spend actions to rotate pieces created decisions but felt against the spirit of a Tetris game, and the same goes for not being able to flip tiles. I also found it disappointing that the tiles were just basic Tetris shapes, not the more interesting shapes in other games, that make for more interesting puzzling.

The artwork is lovely and I wish that this wonderful theme was applied to a better game. It's not flawed it's just dull in comparison to others better options.

Games I've been enjoying lately:

- Slide Quest

- Luxor: The Mummy's Curse

- Las Vegas Royale

- Dizzle

Games that have just arrived that I'm excited to play:

- The King's Dilemma

- Time Chase

- Letter Jam

- ShipShape

Older games that have left my collection this month:

- Article 27: The UN Security Council Game

- Letter Tycoon

Song of the month - Ben Rector - Old Friends 

Video of the month -  I attempted to cross an entire country in a straight line.

I hope you enjoyed this first newsletter! Thank you for being an Actual Hero.

Actually yours,

Jon