Actualol Newsletter - March 2020 (Patreon)

Howdy hand-washers!

What a month it’s been. I sincerely hope that you’re all coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. It suddenly feels frivolous to be talking about board games, and yet, we also need them now more than ever.

My city of London is on lockdown, but thankfully it doesn’t impede my ability to make videos. I have a new “Best of the Month” video out today, I’ve started a new regular live game show, and I will be turning my attention to comedy videos. 

The Distancing Social

Thank you to those of you who joined us for our first live game show - it went a lot better than expected! Serena was a natural, and we’re looking forward to hosting it again on Tuesday 31st March at 19:00 GMT (15:00 EDT). Click here to set a reminder on YouTube. 

A very kind friend named Neill has applied his coding wizardry to solve the logistical issue of tracking people’s guesses during the show. So we’re now ready to play again next week, which I’ll announce soon.

We’ll be playing Wavelength again because it’s simple enough to run and promotes a lot of discussion in the chat. We might experiment with other games on a future stream, but I’d like to keep it light and interactive. I don’t think everyone playing the same roll and write would be quite as entertaining - not to mention there are many other channels who offer that style of live playthrough. 

If anyone has any feedback on the format - on how to make it more entertaining, or how to reach a wider audience, please share. I aim for it to be a little slicker each time we do it.

Quarantine Gaming

Serena and I have been under self-imposed quarantine since Friday 13th March, and we’re locked in for the long haul to do our bit to stop it from spreading. We’re lucky that we’re both able to work from home, and that we have each other for social contact. 

With less time spent commuting and socialising, we’ve had lots more for gaming, and we’ve already played a Time Stories scenario (Estrella Drive), and three Chronicles of Crime cases, plus some lighter games at lunchtimes.

We’ve tried to keep in touch with friends, and I’ve been exploring the world of online board gaming. So far, we’ve had a fun party games night playing Jackbox party games on the PS4 with friends logging in on their phones.

We had a very successful evening of online Codenames with those old friends I mentioned in the last newsletter. We used the Powerpoint version of the game created by Fiona of “The Game Shelf”, which she’s kindly shared on BGG with CGE’s permission. There’s also one online for Wavelength too, though don’t go overdosing on it before our next live show! 

We finished off the evening with a nostalgic game of Perudo (Liar’s Dice), a game we used to play as teenagers. We each had a random dice generator website open. This is Serena and I lying on the sofa playing it.

Over the weekend I researched the more serious gaming options, and on Sunday evening I played my first game on Tabletopia with my usual London gaming friends. We played On The Underground, which was a great implementation and worked very well.

On Monday evening I jumped into Tabletop Simulator to play K2 with its Broad Peak expansion. I was excited by the much wider selection of games available for TTS, but I was nervous that since they’re fan-made that games would be buggy or broken. K2 worked great! 

Last night I played Dead of Winter - taking advantage of the new normal to play games with friends that live elsewhere that I wouldn’t normally see. Something about the live hangouts chat threw off my traitor radar, and I led the vote to exile a good guy! 

It’s going to be a challenge reviewing newer games that require more than two players over the coming months, because none of them will be available on these online platforms yet. But my channel has never relied on new games for content, and I’ve got plenty of ideas of videos to make about the many games I’ve already played. 

Actual Games

Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview is an expansion to Chronicles of Crime, a crime-solving game and one of my favourites of 2018. The setting is a small American town in the 1980s with mysterious goings on, heavily inspired by the TV show Stranger Things.

You each play as a character with varying levels of charisma, agility and intelligence. The expansion introduces skill checks to the game. Since you’re just a bunch of teenagers with no authority, you’ll have to sneak into premises, eavesdrop and lay on the charm to get the clues you need. You each roll a dice, adding your skill value. If you get a success, the app unlocks the information, otherwise you lose time and will have to try again later.

I personally found the skill checks to be an unnecessary addition to the game. I’d rather it was more of a multiple choice option with which approach you take. But at the same time, the dice system is so simple and quick that it hasn’t hampered my enjoyment of the game.

The three cases we’ve played have all been really fun and consistently interesting. They’ve not felt unbearably difficult, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because they’re purposely easy or that we’ve just got better at playing these games. What I would say is that the stories and the way they unravel have been engaging, and the solutions have felt neat and satisfying, which can’t always be said for crime-solving games. 

I’ve enjoyed the small-town vibes of the setting, with characters reappearing throughout the cases, as they build on the local politics and relationships. You get a taste of someone being dodgy in the first case but you don’t get to dig into them further until a later case, which works nicely.

This expansion is a very safe bet if you enjoy Chronicles of Crime. I’d highly recommend it.

Inhuman Conditions has one of the most exciting premises of any game. It’s a two player social deduction game that recreates a Blade Runner interrogation, from the team behind Secret Hitler. 

The investigator must determine if the suspect is a robot or not. The suspect, whether they’re human or robot, must convince the investigator that they are human. It’s a five minute interview, and by the end the suspect will be rubber stamped, literally, one way or another.

Each module gives the interrogator certain questioning avenues to go down. And the suspect must answer their questions. The human can say what they like. The patient robots are restricted in how they can answer, they must adhere to their rules without appearing evasive and in turn, robotic. Whereas, the violent robots are actively trying to deprogram themselves by achieving certain goals in what they say, without the interrogator noticing.

It’s ambitious and it’s unique. The freedom of a five minute conversation is novel, and terrifying. It doesn’t feel like a typical game. You must give imaginary answers as an imaginary character, so there’s some natural roleplaying required. The more you roleplay, the more you can try to hide your true nature. 

I wish I could continue this summary with the same level of positivity. We played Inhuman Conditions six times and found it wanting every time. I don’t see how a robot can ever win the game. The interrogator is watching them like a hawk, and as soon as they make a false move they will stamp them as a robot - there’s no reason not to. The game asks you to covertly say, for example, “say the name of a punctuation mark” in conversation without being detected. Without being detected by the person whose ONLY job is to hang on every word you say. That is impossible.

I might give it one more chance, but after six games Serena refused to ever play it again! I think there’s real potential in the idea, but it needs work to make it a legitimately tense social deduction game.

Stay Cool is a quirky party game that challenges your ability to multitask. You take it in turns to be in the hot seat. The sand-timer starts, and you’re asked two sets of questions by the other players. One person is asking you simple questions which you respond to by spelling out the answer with dice that have letters on.

Whilst you’re doing that, you must answer as many questions as possible from the other questioner - which are a eclectic mix of basic trivia, mental arithmetic and annoying questions designed to fox you, such as saying things backwards. Each question will challenge you in a different way, which means you’re consistently having to switch mental gears.

It’s intense, and a real challenge to keep up with. But in round 2, it gets even harder because you have an extra thing to worry about. You have to keep an eye on the timer, and tell the timekeeper to flip it when it’s about to run out. If you don’t, your round is over. In round 3, the timer is hidden, and you have to guess when to tell the timekeeper to flip it. If you go too early, you’ll have even less sand before it needs to be flipped again. It’s ridiculously hard!

Stay Cool does what it sets out to do very well, but is it fun? Sort of. It’s a memorable experience once, but it’s punishing and for some, humiliating. It’s a great spectacle, and a fun experiment, but for the person in the hot seat it’s frustrating and stressful. I couldn’t find in it the addictive quality I want in a party game. I’m not compelled to play it again and that’s the problem.

Stockpile: Illicit Investments is an expansion for Stockpile, the game of insider trading. It introduces a deck of powerful Investment Strategy cards. Each player will start the game with enough to play one each round, during the action phase.

There’s plenty to choose from and they shake up the game in different ways. Some will let you sell your stocks at a higher value than they’re worth. One will give you a payout for revealing your insider information to everyone for that round, giving them potentially useful information on whether to sell or keep stocks. Another will let you look at other player’s insider information. Each card comes with a cost, so you need to be sure that spending your valuable cash will be worth it to make more in the long run.

They’re really nicely judged, the cards feel strong enough to make an impact, but without imbalancing the game. And since you have the cards from the start, it gives you something to aim for so that you can use them to their best potential.

It’s a really enjoyable addition to Stockpile that adds almost nothing in rules and adds a little more to consider. I’d recommend it if you love Stockpile, but you shouldn’t get it ahead of the first expansion “Continuing Corruption”, which is even better because it varies how the stocks will move each round.

Games I’ve been enjoying lately

- Circle The Wagons

- Timeline: British History

Games that have just arrived

- Succulent

- Cartographers

- Hats

Song of the month - Your Light - The Big Moon 

Video of the month - Riz Ahmed - The Long Goodbye (a powerful short film)

Currently watching on TV - Babylon Berlin (which is amazing!), Younger 

Hang in there, keep your social distance, and I’ll see you next month for more of the same.

Jon