Actualol Newsletter - March 2023 (Patreon)

Howdy there patrons,

I’ve taken a break from my next video (Etiquette for Board Gamers) to bring you a new newsletter. In this one, I’m sharing my thoughts on Toikado Duo, Rattus: Big Box and HerStory.

Actual Life

The other week I revisited Draughts Waterloo, one of the board game cafes in London. It’s had a face lift since I’d last been there, and it’s a lot cosier now.

It’s in one of the many archways under Waterloo station, and they’ve now expanded to the tunnel next door, opening up even more gaming space. If you ever visit, I’d recommend booking in advance because it’s impossible to get a table at busy times - it’s become a real tourist spot, being in such a central location.

I was talking to the owner, who says they’ve spent a lot of money trying to solve the acoustic issues of being in a brick tunnel. It’s still not exactly quiet, but a nice improvement on before - which was always a common complaint about the place.

Me and my friend Tom played Jaipur and halfway through realised that certain cards were missing from the deck - which probably imbalanced the game. These are the risks of playing in a board game cafe!

Actual Games

Toikado Duo is a two-player version of the popular game Toikado, and they’ve changed quite a lot to make it a more head to head experience.

In this version, you each have three people you control. Your pilgrim is similar to the original game, walking clockwise along the Toikado path, stopping at spots along the way. Meanwhile your trader is picking up goods in the mountain towns then dropping them off at the coastal boutiques. And your artist is roaming the regions, creating paintings and then gifting them.

And they are controlled by dice - each turn the first player rolls the three dice, and then picks one - moving that character that many spaces. It’s roll and move but with decisions - you can see what’s possible, and pick what’s best. Then your rival picks from the two remaining, and finally, you get the one that’s left.

It’s a point salad - anything you pick will be good, but you’re trying to pick what’s REALLY good. The pilgrim’s scoring is simple - they collect temples and gardens, and you multiply them by each other.

The trader is doing pick up and delivery - drawing random goods from a bag, then taking them to the shop that wants them, to sell them for coins. If you get lucky and draw a lot of the same goods at once, it can feel over-powered.

The artist can choose to paint or gift - if you paint you reveal paintings for every other pawn in your region. Then to gift, you have to take an action in the region that matches the landscape on your next painting.

Overall, it has interesting decisions, but it lacks some of the bite I enjoy in two player games. I’d recommend it if you like the theme, or play a lot of two player games and don't mind something a little less combative.

HerStory is a noble idea - a card game that celebrates important women from history. The premise is that you’re writing a book about women’s history, and every card you take represents a chapter on a particular woman.

You spend turns taking tiles with the right icons on to buy the cards you want. And it’s here that the game lets itself down. There’s nothing interesting about the decision, and this is the bulk of the game. It attempts to encourage strategy by giving you a 3 point bonus for paying for a card with the exact number of icons, but this is nigh on impossible, and whether you can do it is very much down to luck of the draw.

Some cards have special abilities, and end game scoring conditions - there are nods to a better game, but it’s not enough to make this game fun.

It’s a shame, because they’ve clearly put a lot of work into the theme - with the story of each woman written on the back of their card. As an educational tool in schools, I think it is excellent. But as a game for at home, I’d be hesitant to recommend it. Yes, it can help teach kids about an important topic, but it could also teach them that games aren’t much fun.

Rattus: Big Box is a new version of Rattus, a game from 2010 in which you’re trying to keep your people alive amidst the Black Plague. For me, it was a chance to play a game that has always appealed, but has been out of print for a long time - and with some nice new artwork.

I love a game with a map, and you will take turns placing your colour citizens into the countries of Europe and North Africa. 

Every turn you can take a role card that gives you a special power. They allow you do things like move your citizens to another country, or add more citizens. 

At the end of the turn, you must move the plague to an adjacent country, and then reveal the rat tokens there to see who dies. Every token has a number - it will kill citizens if there are at least that many people in the country. And it has symbols - it will kill the citizens of a player who has those role cards. So the more roles you take, the more likely you are to die.

It feels like a classic euro game. Simple rules, lovely wooden pieces, a lot of player interaction as you try to kill off other people’s citizens. But it’s fatally flawed. The luck of the rat tokens controls the outcome - the rest of the game feels like fiddling while Rome burns.

The role cards are great - you feel like you’re making an important decision. And the expansions add fun concepts, like walls and bishops and nuns that protect you from the plague in interesting ways. But none of it matters. With every victory I couldn’t pinpoint anything that player did better than anyone else.

I wanted to like this game so much, but unfortunately without a complete redesign that fixes the heavy luck issue, I think it should have stayed in the past.

New Arrivals

• Dice Manor

Games I’ve been enjoying lately

• Merchants and Marauders

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Red Box

• Chronicles of Crime: 1900

Now Watching - The Gold

Song of the Month - Shoulder To Cry On by Alana Springsteen

I hope you have a great month!

Actually yours,

Jon