This Week I got the opportunity to play some of the newer games available
The White Castle
In my personal board game collection, there are plenty of short games around 30 minutes or less and plenty long games that are around 3 hours or more. However, the gap I face is strategy games around the 90 minute mark. The White Castle ticks this box very nicely.
How does The White Castle Play?
There are three rounds in the game, each round consists of rolling four dice of each colour and placing them in order across their respective bridges. Each player then selects a die at the front or back of the bridge in turn, three times, but with the combinations made players will be taking more than nine actions in the game.
The main mechanic is to use dice in a worker placement fashion. Each space in the castle have tokens which will be different in every game next to a card showing which actions each colour of dice can activate. Typically, the actions will collect resources, which may often be spent for more actions and place additional meeples in the different areas of the board, which in time, will combine together for further points and resources as the game progresses. Each placement space can be used twice, with players paying or collecting coins depending on the previous die face.
On this occasion we played three players and really enjoyed the game (I even won!). Being only 90 minutes in length, I can see it getting to the table again soon and frequently.
Ancient Knowledge
I really enjoy engine building games and Ancient Knowledge is a great addition to that mechanic. Another game in the 90 minute window, players create historical monuments which move down the timeline until they are left in the past, but be careful, any knowledge tokens on them when they transition into the past are lost and count against your score.
The artwork of the cards is very nice, a few times noting that 'I've been there!' to some of the monument cards. I'm a history enthusiast anyway and this gave me that extra bit of integration with the theme of the game.
What was my experience of Ancient Knowledge?
As with many engine building card games, I found a combination that I enjoyed playing but then realised very late in the game that it was wasn't scoring me many points compared to my two friends. When you score badly and come away from the game really enjoying it, its got to be the sign of a good game? I'm looking forward to playing again with the experience of a game under my belt to hopefully play it better next time!
Expedititons
The eagerly awaited sequel to Scythe brought five keen players to the table. The main aim of the game is to use action selection mechanisms to move your mech into the map tiles, exploring new area and new actions.
How does Expeditions Play?
Turns play very quickly, typically choosing two out of the three action available, move your mech, play cards in your ready area and gather the resources of the tile your mech currently occupies. These action can be chosen resolved in any order. The following turn players must block one of the actions they previously took, limiting the choice of actions. On occasion players will take a 'refresh' turn to ready their exhausted cards, then the following turn players can use all three actions for that turn only.
The scoring system has similar elements to Scythe, placing stars on the score board when objectives have been achieved, when a player has placed their fourth, this triggers the game end, giving all players one final turn, numerous other factors can then give multipliers during final scoring.
I was looking forward to this one and it didn't disappoint. This isn't a complicated game to play but it does have strategical depth, which with the different player powers available, will give the game good replay value.
I've had a great games week and I'm grateful to those that chose to buy some of these games from Clownfish Games - and then invited me to play the games with them!
What have you played lately? Let us know in the comments.