All That Glitters Is Not Aurum
All I play anymore is trick-taking games.
I’m not being all the way serious. But it is a rare game night that doesn’t see at least a few tricks being taken. As I wrote in the first part of my open letter to my younger self about the value of trick-takers, these things are just so dang easy to learn that they offer the perfect digestif to a full-course gaming session. Only yesterday, Shreesh Bhat’s Aurum provided a literal digestif, enabling a pleasant half-hour after dinner with the in-laws. It helps that Aurum is mostly a team game. That way, my mother-and-law and I can tear up the table.
The Goose Will Have Blood
I can’t speak to whether The Gods Will Have Blood, the latest game by Dan Bullock, is a faithful adaptation of Anatole France’s Les Dieux ont soif, but it evokes sensations that only rarely creep into our hobby from literature. Perhaps it would be better to call it an abridgement. At only twenty minutes in length (if that), it packs terrible questions into a pressure cooker that threatens to pop with every flipped card and drawn cube.
Gosu Gosu Gosu! Ecks!
Gosu, it’s good to see you.
I wrote about Kim Satô’s goblin-filled GOSU a literal decade ago. I was a relative newcomer to the hobby then, and enjoyed its antics thoroughly, though time and the luck of the draw saw it falling out of favor. Gosu somehow managed to go on without me. This new edition, Gosu X, is less a game designed than a game developed. Its publisher, Sorry We Are French, has put it through the wringer with multiple years of playtests. The result strongly resembles the original, but with a few alterations that leave it feeling like an entirely new beast.
For one thing, it’s no longer about warring goblins.
The Unlucky Eighth
Even though he has only the sole credit to his name on BoardGameGeek, it wouldn’t be fair to call Zach Barth a newcomer to card game design. While his studio, Zachtronics, was perhaps best known for its high-concept engineering and programming titles like SpaceChem and Infinifactory, I was more preoccupied with his solitaire offerings. When it comes to a simple deck of cards, Barth displays an ear for riffing on established designs, producing new and more interesting versions of FreeCell, cribbage, and one of the most devious solitaire games I’ve ever had the pleasure of suffering through, a ditty by the name of Fortune’s Foundation that wields a tarot deck like a rusty knife.
So it’s safe to say that Barth knows solitaire card games. Now that Zachtronics has been shuttered, it seems he’s shifting his attention from digital to tabletop. The first project of his design collective is now out. It’s a solitaire card game. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Here’s one better: unlike his previous solitaires, this one isn’t quite like anything else. It’s sharp. It’s punchy. It plays in about ten minutes. It even opens with a bona fide gag.
Sustainable Archipelago
In 2017, an island vanished. Parali I, one of thirty-six islands in the Lakshadweep archipelago off the western coast of India, disappeared thanks to rising sea levels and coastal erosion. It was a small island, uninhabited, a quiet calamity. But it’s a calamity that will be repeated. Four more of the archipelago’s islands are expected to disappear in coming years. Experts anticipate that it won’t be long before more populous islands and coastal communities are affected.
Sidhant Chand’s Lakshadweep is about the titular archipelago. Its tone is optimistic. Rather than dropping islands beneath the waves, it’s about developing sustainable industries that will allow the local population to prosper without demolishing the natural world around them.
Running Shoes Unlocked
You’ve heard the story. Boy meet girl. Girl chases boy. Boy leaps off building, evades federal marshals with the help of a nightclub’s smoke machine, wades through the sewer, and boards a plane to a non-extradition nation.
It’s been a hot minute since I wrote about Fugitive, Tim Fowers’ highwire hidden movement game. There’s now a second edition out. I wasn’t anticipating that I would play it, let alone write about it, but it’s stolen my heart all over again.
Space-Cast! #30. Remembering Stonewall
On this day in 1969, a police raid in Greenwich Village sparked three days of intense rioting by members of the gay community. This was the turning point in the fight for LGBT+ rights in the United States. Today we’re joined by Taylor Shuss, designer of Stonewall Uprising, to discuss how his game charts the beginnings of the Pride movement, wading into the muddy waters of gamifying the AIDS epidemic, and how playing as history’s baddies can give players a deeper perspective on civil rights.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Biting Off Too Many Bahnbahns
There’s something off about Autobahn, the heavy Eurogame by Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Mangone. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, both the historical, bound up in the division and eventual reunification of post-war Germany, and the mechanical, based on the interlocking incentives of other route-building games. It’s a game with a lot on its mind. Perhaps too much. Its gaze is larger than its stomach.
This Trick-Taking Life: The Contracts
I remember the first time I was asked to make a contract bid. You don’t forget a trauma like that. I’d played maybe two trick-takers — ever — and suddenly I was being asked a question for which there was no right answer. “Dan,” she said, “Now tell us how many tricks you’ll win.” I stared at her like she was nuts. She was nuts, right? What did she think I was, a precog? The only prediction I could make for my future was that I was about to lose yet another trick-taking game.
My personal journey with trick-takers has been fraught. In part one of this letter to my past self, we discussed the innate simplicity of the genre. In part two, things took a darker turn with triumph suits. Both of those experiences pale in comparison to today’s topic: contract bidding. Or, how trick-takers are secretly the toughest genre of card game in existence.
Skimping on Parchment
I’m a skeptic when it comes to roll-and-writes. For every one that hits, there are three or four others I’d rather never touch again. No, I won’t be giving examples. Whether that’s because I can’t remember any off the top of my head, I can neither confirm nor deny.
Paper Dungeons by Leandro Pires exemplifies the phenomenon. Per Space-Biff! policy, I’ve played it three times. In between each play, it managed to slip from my memory like fog through fingers.
SPACE-BIFF! 