Knizidero
Zoo Vadis, Bitewing Games’ reprint and update of Reiner Knizia’s long out-of-print classic Quo Vadis?, has only been available to the public for a few weeks. But the good Doctor has never excelled at resting on his laurels. Already he has two more games on the way: Cascadero and Cascadito.
If those titles strike your ear as sounding somewhat similar, you aren’t experiencing auditory hallucinations. Knizia is well known for riffing on his own designs, sometimes producing games redolent of previous productions. Now, apparently, he’s expediting that process. Cascadero and Cascadito are deeply similar, and not in name alone. Today we’re looking at the “original” of the two.
The Wine-Dark Aegean Sea
I know Carl Chudyk can design a great game. That’s because he has. Many times. The Glory to Rome black box sells for like a bazillion dollars, and not only because it’s out of print. Innovation has fifty editions, all well deserved. And I still regard Impulse and Red7 as overlooked gems. Not because they’re overlooked, really. Because they don’t get the same attention as those first two I mentioned.
So it’s with no small degree of perplexment that I have struggled to understand Aegean Sea. The bones of a Chudyk game are there. You can line them up to make a proper skeleton. But once assembled, there’s no telling how this dinosaur was meant to function.
Ulos & Euphrates
Dawn of Ulos is seriously smart. Designed by Jason Lentz, and ostensibly set in the same universe as Roll Player and Cartographers, its intelligence is less a question of innovation than one of tactical inspiration. By drawing from classics such as Sid Sackson’s Acquire and Reiner Knizia’s Tigris & Euphrates, but still applying his own modern spin, Lentz has created one of the sharpest stock-profiling games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.
Femkort in the Woodland
A solitaire trick-taking game sounds like a contradiction in terms. Then again, I used to say the same about two-player trick-taking, until a few superb examples showed me the error of my thinking.
It’s still too early to tell whether For Northwood!, the solitaire trick-taker by Wil Su, is an outlier or an originator, but it makes for a dang good time either way. More than that, it functions as a primer for a handful of trick-taking concepts that can prove intimidating to tackle in a multiplayer environment.
A Very Civil Schnapsen
Nobody is doing historical board games quite like Fred Serval. That’s a tall claim, considering that only one of his designs, Red Flag Over Paris, has even been released. However, between that and a few secret projects — seeecreeet — Serval has demonstrated a talent for cutting to the heart of a historical topic with straightforward mechanisms.
A Very Civil Whist is currently the best example. Originally designed as a convention gift consisting of only two sheets and a deck of cards, this two-player trick-taker was recently picked up by PHALANX, where it currently sits in the preorder queue.
To the Waters and the Wild
It’s a rare game that saturates itself with a sense of loss. Defenders of the Wild is one such title. Both a lament for the natural wonders we so readily pave over and a defiant yawp in the face of automation and progress, there’s an optimistic romanticism to the whole thing.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. T.L. Simons previously designed Bloc by Bloc, another supernal game about staring down systemic oppression. Now he’s joined by Henry Audubon to take the fight to the fields. It’s not as great a jump as one might assume. Put them together and the combination produces a rallying cry: Bloc by Bloc for the urban populace, Defenders of the Wild for those who see their way of life being swallowed up by enclosures. The whole thing has the tone of a fable. A fable about slagging robots.
Join in the Restivities
Let’s see if I can do this correctly: Real men are always thinking about smashing the state. Have I gone viral?
The 35 cards in Brendan Hansen’s Unrest edge it out from being considered a microgame, but it’s about as short and tidy a game as I’ve seen. With one player controlling a dystopian empire and the other seeking to overthrow it, a full session last maybe ten minutes. The rules are similarly light, taking all of a minute to explain. Even so, it feels like it’s wasting the time of one of its players.
The Shoggoth and the Shotgun
Cthulhu is in the news again. According to CMON, a third edition of Martin Wallace’s beloved A Study in Emerald is soon to appear. Details are few, but the forthcoming game, dubbed Cthulhu: Dark Providence, appears to take a diverse cast of characters to Washington D.C., where they will presumably assassinate the president. Before you ring J. Edgar Hoover’s ghost, keep in mind that in the previous two editions, the world had been taken over by eldritch Old Ones from outer space, so this universe’s president probably sports emerald skin and feasts on the psychic energies of infants.
As I’ve written before, board games — and Martin Wallace — have an uneven history of tackling cosmic horror and the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft. So today I’d like to offer another perspective. Apart from the royalties-free nature of Lovecraft’s work, is there anything to be gained from using his creations? Be forewarned, this is a sensitive topic.
Space-Cast! #32. The Mirroring of Jenna Felli
Jenna Felli is the well-known designer of some truly unique board games, among them Shadows of Malice, Zimby Mojo, Bemused, Dûhr: The Lesser Houses, Cosmic Frog, and The Mirroring of Mary King. Despite having designed some recognizable games, however, Jenna is appearing for the first time on today’s episode. Join us as we discuss chaos, identity, and authenticity in board games and in life.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Roadside Picnicking
There’s always been a bit of an identity crisis rattling around the copper-bottomed hull of Scythe. Jamey Stegmaier and Jakub Rozalski’s alt-history speak to one thing, those continental hamlets shaking at the approach of smoke-belching combat mechs. Then you play it and it’s about moving logs. And I say this as somebody with an above-average appreciation for the thing.
After multiple expansions and a spin-off for kids, Stegmaier and Rozalski are back at it with a proper sequel. It’s called Expeditions, and it swaps the battle-torn countryside for the barren tundras of Siberia, where a recent meteor fall has kicked off a series of otherworldly events. It’s a tantalizing excuse to groom your animal companion, check the bolt of your rifle, and hop into the old mech for one last adventure. It’s too bad the winter air doesn’t work any miracles on the series’ neuroses.
SPACE-BIFF! 