My Top 10 Boardgames Published in 2023

    

Here's a look at my 10 favorite games published in 2023.

(Or else made available in North America so late in 2022 that there was no way to really play them before the calendar flipped.)

#10

ATIWA

First of three (!) Rosenberg games on the list. Much simpler than most of his "big box" games, with a cute theme and adorable bat meeples. You're building a village, tending to families and their environment, all the while trying to grow and maintain the fruit bat community.

Atiwa features a very original turn-to-turn mechanic that morphs the main action into another and—together with other design levers—ensures that each play shows a different aspect of the game's personality.

#9

MIND UP!
Mind Up! is very much in the 6 nimmt! mold—complete with exclamation point—but it takes things one step further without making the rules more difficult to master.

A row of cards is laid out on the table, in ascending order. Players simultaneously select and then reveal a card from their hands, grabbing from the tabled row the card that matches the position of the card they played. So if you want to grab the first card in the row, because its color is worth more points to you, then you need to play a card with a low value; but if someone else plays a lower card, well then you're stuck with the 2nd card in the row...

Not only do the just-played cards become the new row of cards up for grabs on the table (think ahead!), but all the cards you win (and score at the end of the round) form your hand for the next round.

Cleverer and cleverer.

#8

APPLEJACK

Designer Uwe Rosenberg does big & complex and short & sweet equally well, always offering a challenging and rewarding experience. This time around, players are invited to each create their own orchard, making sure they have enough connecting apples of each color when it comes time to score that variety. 

For a game that clocks in at 30 minutes and can be explained in five, the depth of the decision space boggles the mind.

(You can read my flash review here.)

#7

GREAT WESTERN TRAIL: NEW ZEALAND

Herding sheep—instead of cows—in kiwi-land, you hire builders to construct your buildings, shearers to profit from the wool before you ship off the actual livestock, sailors to move your ship around and open new markets, and shepherds to handle the beasts themselves. Throw in a little deck-building and a lot of planning ahead, and you've got another winner.

This third and last incarnation of the GWT engine is an excellent game, but it falls a little short of its two older brethren. Call it less elegant or slightly more convoluted: there's a little something that prevents it from reaching the dizzying heights of the original game or the Argentina incarnation.

(You can read my flash review here.)

#6

SKIES ABOVE BRITAIN

Five years ago (already!?) I reviewed Skies Above the Reich, a brilliant solo wargame about breaking up formations of Allied bombers flying towards Germany with ill intent. And while designer Jeremy White said that he didn't see how he'd adapt the system to cover the Battle of Britain, Gina Willis showed him how and jumped in as co-designer.

This new incarnation of the system turns the tables and sends hordes of German bombers over Britain, which the player must defend at all costs. The rules overhead is slightly heavier but well worth the additional investment, for a game that's every bit as thrilling as its predecessors. (Yes, there were two!)

#5

HEGEMONY
I've been burned by enough Kickstarter projects to learn to disregard any kind of hype surrounding a new game being peddled on that platform. Most of the time I'm right; once in a while I'm wrong.

Hegemony proved to fall in the latter category.

It's an ambitious design, pitting asymmetrical roles against each other: the Worker Class, the Middle Class, the Capitalist Class, and the State. Everyone plays by their own rules but must come together to make it all work, and the game truly shines. I don't own a copy myself, something I'll remedy as soon as the 2nd edition comes out.

#4

ORANIENBURGER KANAL
Third and final Rosenberg game on the list; I'm frankly surprised something like this hasn't happened before. Now this might be his driest looking game ever, what with its generic cards and sterile grid of a game board, but I think it might also be one of his best. It's strictly a two-player game, with each opponent attempting to outbuild the other while optimizing the paths, roads, canals and railways that connect everything together. 

The game borrows the clever resource wheel from Ora et Labora and offers a real brain burner, with surprisingly few rules and a play time (90 minutes) that's more than fair for a game of this depth.

#3

PLANTAGENET

The Levy & Campaign series of games has long fascinated me, but there were always a few irritants that prevented me from truly loving what was on the menu. Plantagenet, the fourth L&C title, fixed them all.

Levy troops, raise money, gather food—then go to war! Of course, it won't hurt if you manage to convince a handful of lords and vassals to join your cause, and gain control of critical towns and cities.

(You can read my review here.)

#2

SKY TEAM

How many cooperative games do you know that play in 15 minutes, offer meaningful decisions, feature a generous helping of scenarios in varying levels of difficulty, come with fantastic components, and prove to be a nail-biter to the very end?

Just land the plane. Everything's going to be fine...

(You can read my flash review here.)

#1

MR. PRESIDENT

The most complex and longest game on the list, Mr. President puts you in the White House right after inauguration. Can you deal with everything your cabinet, your country, and indeed the world can throw at you?

I'm amazed at the scope of the package, at the stories it tells, at the palpable tension it generates from beginning to end. Yes it takes at least 10 hours to finish, and yes it's a solo game (which means you're sitting alone in your corner for those 10+ hours), but if you enjoy the sort of engine roaring under this particular hood, you're in for a ride like no other.

(You can read my review here.)

* * *

DISAPPOINTMENTS
I define disappointments as games I expected a lot from, and which failed to deliver.

Here are the "top" three from 2023.

I'm a big fan of Mike Fitzgerald's other rummy games, namely Jack the Ripper and Wyatt Earp. So this one sounded like a great new variation with a fun theme.

Turns out the game's tortured mechanics barely manage to avoid the "broken" label, and the whole thing's a sad and sorry bust. I played one game and knew this was going on the trade pile. Fast.

This case was a bit different: I felt no real desire to play Ark Nova, but the hype surrounding it was so over the top that I just had to see what everyone was talking about. 

And sure, it's a fine game, but it's not doing anything all that different from what I can get out of Terraforming Mars, for instance. I understand if you like the theme better, but people treated this like the Second Coming, which I thought it was not.

This is another case of "best game ever" that I had to investigate. And once again, it's a fine game with good-looking components, but it's another tableau builder that falls flat for me. I found myself missing the feeling of shared construction I enjoy in—yes, that one again—Terraforming Mars.

Hey, maybe I'm just not a tableau builder enthusiast? Wingspan also left me pretty meh.

* * *

STRAGGLERS
Let's end on a high note with three games that would have made the list had I encountered them back in the year when they were published.

A solo WWII tactical war game with a bunch of scenarios, tons of units, and an automated opponent that—while pretty random—generates fun situations and gives the human player a run for their money. Why didn't I play this sooner?

Granted, my being late to the party meant that I could benefit from the revamped maps of the 2nd edition, and spare my retinae some graphics-induced searing.

Merlin feels the way great Eurogames did back when they were simple and efficient. While I love complex games, there's something satisfying in a well designed system that's straight to the point and super fun. 

A classic Feld that's a blast with just the basic game, and which becomes a tasty feast when you start mixing in some of the expansion modules.

I really enjoy trick-taking games with a twist, and Diamonds delivers in spades. You earn diamonds in four different ways that correspond to the suits of each trick you win, but you also trigger the suit ability of a card you play when it doesn't match the current trick!

It's a great example of what designer Mike Fitzgerald can do when he's not busy destroying his rummy legacy.

# # #

Flash Review — Great Western Trail: New Zealand

Players: 1-4
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Age: 12+
Playtime: 75-150 min
Complexity: 8/10

As a fan of both the original Great Western Trail and its Argentina variation, I had very high expectations when it came to the third and last entry in the series, New Zealand.
Did it live up to its pedigree? Yes and no.

Cattle is replaced by sheep, the workers you pick up on your journey don't exactly behave the way their predecessors did, but overall you're playing GWT. The main differences are as follows:

1. You can shear your sheep (instead of shipping them off), using their wool value to gain cash and eventually victory points.
This addition works really well, introducing the shearer to your roster of workers, and making it possible to earn quick cash while you're still on the trail, before you get to Wellington (your shipping-off port in this game).

2. Your train is replaced by a ship that travels to open up new business avenues (similar to the Rails to the North expansion for the original game).
The more sailors you hire, the farther your ship can move; and although you are not required to move your ship, it can provide you with significant benefits you'd be remiss to ignore.

3. Your deck can now be home to a variety of cards that are not sheep, adding a bit more of a deck-building feel to the proceedings.
And it's this change in the rules I'm not convinced I really like. It sure adds variety (the cards are not the same from game to game), but what they actually do is lukewarm at best. Some are sheep (admittedly sheep types you can't get anywhere else, but still), some are objectives (again, exclusive ones, but hey) while others are cards that you play for some resource (gain 1 pound, earn one certificate, etc.) before discarding them and drawing a replacement.
You might see why I'm dubious here: after a handful of plays, I still don't know if those cards bring a vital new mechanic to the game or just add noise to the system, providing resources players could have garnered through other means.

So two excellent gameplay twists, and a third one that leaves me a bit cold.

GWT: New Zealand is still a solid game, but it doesn't feel as refined as its Argentina brother—which to me stands as the pinnacle of the whole series.

Most easily forgotten rule: Contrary to both previous GWT games, you don't have to reveal all of your sheep cards when you reach Wellington. The cards you do reveal all need to be different, but you can hold some of them back if you want.

# # #

Flash Review — Tesseract

Players: 1-4
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: fine
Age: 14+
Playtime: 60 min
Complexity: 5/10

A tesseract (a four-dimensional cube) has appeared in the sky, and a bunch of scientists must work together to disarm it before it destroys our universe.

Forget the thin sci-fi conceit: Tesseract is a cooperative game where players slowly dismantle a (three-dimensional) cube made out of dice they then manipulate to perform a variety of tasks. Get the job done before the tesseract finishes counting down, and you win.

Pretty colors can kill you!

The menu of operations available to players is a mix of classic (rotate a die, flip a die, change a die’s color) and innovative (exchange dice with a collaborator, manipulate a die to affect another die remotely, put a die back in the tesseract), all aimed at completing an array of 24 tasks before time runs out.

7 tasks down, 17 to go

The tesseract eliminates at least one of its own dice every turn, and whenever a column is empty, it triggers the base-plate symbol just revealed—and those are no good. Also, if the tesseract ever runs out of dice, the game is lost. But the fascinating thing here is that the raw resources players must use to defuse the ticking time-bomb are the tesseract’s dice themselves. So you have to speed up the timer if you ever hope to stop it. There’s no playing it safe.

That orange symbol removes an additional die from the tesseract. Sorry.

The components are great fun, the lazy susan (gentle!) the tesseract rests on works like a charm, and you do feel the mounting pressure throughout the game. With four different difficulty levels and a gazillion possible starting setups—just look at that cube—the experience should remain challenging for a long time.

Solo gameplay involves a single player going at it two-handed. It’s not my favorite solo system, but it works well.

I’ll just add that the official age suggestion seems out of line here: an interested 10-year-old could certainly play Tesseract without any problem. (Maybe even at 8; kids are sharp.)

Most easily forgotten rule: When you contain a die from the tesseract, you get to destroy an identical die (color and value) from the Primed Area.



# # #

Flash Review — Framework

Players: 1-4

Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: a bit boring
Age: 8+
Playtime: 30 min
Complexity: 3/10

Just like Applejack, this is one of Uwe Rosenberg’s simple-yet-clever designs, albeit under a more abstract guise: you’re just building a series of interlocking tasks that you try to complete.

The game is played with a huge variety of tiles that players organize in rows and columns, with no predefined grid to adhere to. When it’s your turn, you pick one tile from a limited selection on offer and add it to your structure, making sure the new tile orthogonally touches at least one other tile. Then you check if you’ve completed some of your tasks, and put one of your wooden markers on each of them that’s done.

Some tiles will display one or more tasks, in the form of a number on a colored background; other tiles will show one or more colored frames (used to complete the aforementioned tasks); and a third category of tiles will sport both bits of information.

Which would you pick?

To complete a task, you need the required number of frames in the requested color, arrayed in a continuous chain where at least one link in the chain is in direct contact with the task at hand.
In the example below, the 5-yellow task is done (I should put a wooden marker on it), but the 3-gray task is still missing one gray frame—and the 4-brown/orange task has nothing going for it. Yet.

Some tiles are self-fulfilling (like a 5-green task that also shows a green frame), which makes them easier to pull off and kind of a no-brainer. Where things get twisted (and interesting!) is when you have to deal with, say, a 7-brown task surrounded by a yellow frame: Do you place that tile next to your group of brown frames, or would it be more effective to forsake the 7-brown task and instead use the yellow frame to complete a bunch of yellow tasks elsewhere?

The first player who completes 22 tasks (i.e. runs out of wooden markers) wins the game. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll just want to play it again, and again. It’s amazing how much gameplay Rosenberg can pack in a 30-minute game with two and a half rules to learn, with something addictive thrown in for good measure. So don’t be fazed by the apparent simplicity of Framework: it’s dead easy to learn, yet damn fun to play.

The solo game is, as with most of Rosenberg’s designs, a beat-your-own-score type of puzzle. So the first time you play it, you don’t win nor do you lose: you just set your own benchmark—then you try to do better. Not my kind of solo experience, but it’s over in five minutes and it’s not an unpleasant exercise.

Most easily forgotten rule: In this case it’s not a rule you’re likely to forget, but rather a completed task you’re just not seeing. Keep your eyes peeled!

# # #

Flash Review — Sky Team

Players: 2
Age: 12+
Playtime: 15 min
Complexity: 4.5/10

It’s been an uneventful flight across the ocean, the airport is in sight, and all you and your co-pilot need to do now is safely land that behemoth. Shouldn’t be any problem, right?

Sky Team is a cooperative dice-placement game that, despite its slim 15-minute play time, manages to generate thrills galore throughout and then enthusiastic high fives when the wheels finally touch ground.

Each turn, both pilot and co-pilot roll four dice and assign them one by one (without talking to each other!) to critical systems. Two dice placements are mandatory—engine power and horizontal axis—but you’ll have to take care of the rest eventually. However, will you have the right dice values at hand when you decide to deploy the landing gear, lower the flaps, or apply the breaks? And don’t forget to stay in touch with air traffic control so that they can clear the runway as you start your approach…

The starting scenario, Montreal, uses only the basic functions of the plane, and it’s still a blast to play. As you fly from one airport to the next, new challenges will include fuel management, ice worries, wind problems, further traffic headaches, and even a pesky intern stealing some of your precious time away from vital maneuvers. (And publisher Le Scorpion Masqué keeps adding new, printable scenarios to their website.)

At the very least, it’s worth 15 minutes of your time to give the game a shot.
But I’m convinced YUL love it.

Most easily forgotten rule: Axis and engine power are resolved as soon as their two dice are in place (and not at the end of the turn).



# # #

Wargame review — Plantagenet

Don't Mind the Thorns

Designer: Francisco Gradaille

Player count: 2

Publisher: GMT Games

Sometimes I fall in love with an engine and find myself waiting for someone, somewhere, to create just the right game to go along with it.

That’s what happened with Dominion, the grand-daddy of deck-building games. As a veteran TCG player who wanted to spend more time playing with friends and less time huddled alone in a corner tuning my deck, I was blown away by the idea that you could build your deck of cards during the game. What a genius concept! Except I found the game itself dry as powdered bones, and I waited eagerly for new games built on that magnificent engine to come around and win me over. (It did happen, of course, and I’m still discovering great new deck-building games today, 15 years down the line.)

I experienced something similar with GMT’s Levy & Campaign series. The first of those titles I played was Inferno, three times, quickly followed by a handful of games of Nevsky. Those sessions left me absolutely taken with the L&C system, so very different from any other wargame I’d played before. I loved the levy part, with Lords calling upon one other and amassing matériel in preparation for war; I was thrilled by the campaign part, where each player puts together a stack of cards—and commits to a specific order!—that will activate one Lord after another, launching them on perilous travels and heroic feats of arms. Add a cool combat system on top of everything, plus weather to contend with, and what’s not to love?
Yet I always came away from the experience somewhat unsatisfied. The system felt a bit too heavy to me, and I could never quite get my Lords to where I wanted them in time. If they managed to reach their destination before starving to death, then a siege usually stood in the way of a good old-fashioned fight, supply lines became a nightmarish puzzle, and anything short of the campaign game tasted like a game-convention demo. Which models medieval life in a faithful way, I suppose, even though it wasn’t what I was looking for in a game. But I loved the engine under the hood, and I was determined to keep trying new titles in that expanding series until I found the one that was tailor-made for me.

That game is Plantagenet.

Two families, York and Lancaster, tore each other to pieces for most of the 15^th century, as they competed (to put it politely) for the throne of England. The War of the Roses—pitting two coats of arms that each bore the delicate flower—would lead to upheavals and rebellions, betrayals and broken promises, and a veritable festival of tragedy all across the land until the Plantagenet dynasty tore itself apart.

That rich history is alive again in Plantagenet, as York goes up against Lancaster in a series of escalating clashes. The board is crowned with a calendar where a marker moves forward to regulate turns, and where players can track the effectiveness of their Lords and vassals. (How long before Fauconberg decides he needs to get paid again, otherwise he and his men will desert my army and go home?) The rest of the board depicts England as well as a few of the surrounding territories, together with an influence track that wraps around the play surface.

Pay day for a couple of vassals is just around the corner.

Each turn is divided into a levy phase and a campaign phase. During levy, players use their Lords already in play to try and convince other Lords (and a bunch of vassals) to join their forces, attempt to influence locations into favoring their cause, or else stockpile whatever they’ll need to reach the enemy and attack them.

Then the turn marker on the calendar is flipped to its campaign side, and it’s time to get in gear. Each player assembles their own stack of command cards, secretly programming the order in which their Lords will act, up to a number of cards limited by the current season. Summers are the best, as you can stack seven of those cards—meaning seven lord activations will take place. (But since each Lord only has three command cards to his name, you can’t activate the same Lord more than thrice on any given turn.) Harsh winters severely blunt dreams of conquests, though, as only four command cards can be used on those turns.

When they act, Lords need to keep an eye on everything. They can parley (curry favor with a nearby municipality), supply their troops (provided the supply line is a chain of locales that favor their side of the conflict), forage if supply proves impossible (albeit with mixed results), tax their own seat or that of one of their vassals (the more vassals on your side, the easier it becomes to raise money), or else march, sail and generally get closer to some guy who’d rather not see you show up.
Almost every one of the actions listed above depletes a location’s resources, so it’s only a matter of time before you can’t pilfer this or that town to satisfy your needs anymore. Plan accordingly.

When armies do meet on the battlefield, the outcome is determined via an ingenious battle system where hits inflicted upon each army are known in advance and it’s the defense, in fact, that’s up in the air. You need to absorb 3 hits? Pick a unit to suffer the first one and roll against that unit’s protection rating—from 1 for the lowly militia all the way to 4 for valiant knights—with the unit surviving if the roll is equal to or lower than its rating. Further hits can be inflicted on the same (surviving) unit if you so choose: it all depends on which forces you’d rather keep in fighting order. Your knight enjoys better odds of survival, but he’s also a much more potent attacker than that poor militia. So do you want to risk him again and again to absorb hits?
Defeated Lords go into exile or outright give up the ghost, but either way, they lose precious influence that will alter the course of the campaign.

Speaking of which—remember that influence track? At the end of each turn, players accrue influence there for control of various locations on the map. It’s a net computation: whoever has the most influence subtracts from it their opponent’s influence and marks the result (in their color) on the track. Not only is influence a measure of success on the part of one player or the other—indeed a victory condition set at different heights for each scenario—but it’s also a currency you’ll need to spend with care throughout your diplomatic endeavors. Want to convert a neighboring city? Pay some influence. Intent on bringing some vassal over to your side of the conflict? Pay some influence. Desperate to keep Lords and vassals fighting for you once their time is up? PAY SOME INFLUENCE.

(I’m not even talking about forking over vast quantities of food each time your forces execute the slightest of maneuvers, or disbursing actual cash to keep troops in your employ. But fear not, you’ll be required to manage those aspects as well, or suffer the consequences.)

The winner is the family that reaches the influence threshold set by the scenario, or that’s got the influence marker on their side when the game concludes its last turn.

WAR PRODUCTION

Plantagenet ships in what’s fast becoming the new GMT standard: the sturdy double-sized box you can use to jack up your car when a tire needs changing. Inside you’ll find a generous stash of wooden pieces in various shapes and colors, two decks of cards (one York, one Lancaster), a variety of cardboard markers for several purposes (including that damn coinage your Lords will keep running out of), a pair of handy player aid folders that sum up everything you need once you’ve got a couple of sessions under your belt, rulebook, background book, and a mounted four-panel board where all the action takes place.

The game also includes generic Lord mats used to hold each Lord’s card, vassal markers and troop pieces. Previous volumes in the series used dedicated mat with a Lord’s stats printed right on it; but since Plantagenet allows for Lords to replace each other, it made sense to provide blank mats together with a deck of Lord cards players could cycle through. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see future L&C titles use a similar idea.)

Nevsky on the left, Plantagenet on the right

The board may look cluttered at first, especially when compared to earlier titles where the map depicted vast expanses dotted with the occasional stronghold. Here, the territory is more compact, generously irrigated with roads of all kinds, and offers a host of tantalizing targets within a short radius. Yet, even with several armies on the march—and seat markers scattered across the countryside—the map remains perfectly legible.

Nevsky on the left, Plantagenet on the right

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

At 18 pages, Plantagenet’s rulebook is the shortest one within the L&C family, and for good reason: every system has been streamlined and tightened, with exceptions filed off and unnecessary chrome discarded.
Gone are sieges, for instance, and although there are those out there who will mourn their removal, I for one rejoice in the heightened immediacy of battle. Stop hiding behind walls and let’s get down to business!
Also dispatched is the Call to Arms, a once-in-a-while über-armament phase which provided interesting possibilities, but at the price of dealing with an additional sub-system that players needed to factor into their every decision.
And let’s not forget the laden/unladen distinction, now a thing of the past. The types of pathways Lords use to move around the map—and not the weight of their baggage trains—determine how costly marching will be.

This doesn’t mean that the game isn’t injecting some new material of its own in the series. One of my darlings is the addition of influence points, used both as a new currency and as a means to assess victory. Capability cards are also assigned to specific scenarios, which means that your favorite asset will not always show up. And whereas defeated Lords would previously see their service markers shift left on the calendar—thereby shortening their usefulness—they can now die in battle and vanish from your plans of conquest entirely.
Several other rules differences round out a package that, for me, accomplishes what I was hoping the L&C system would deliver to begin with.

The game comes with one battle mini-scenario (handy to learn the ropes of violence on the medieval field), five standalone scenarios of various lengths (with Lords often switching sides from one scenario to the next, owing to the historical context), and one three-part clash with branching outcomes, depending on what side proves triumphant each step of the way.

The extensive background book is replete with gameplay examples, strategy tips, historical references and a host of other resources, including detailed family trees for the House of Lancaster as well as the House of York. (Might as well know whose legacy you’re cutting short.)

FUN FACTOR

As I made clear with my comments above, Plantagenet is the most fun I’ve had so far with the Levy & Campaign series. I think this time the system feels a little less like a simulation and a little more like a game, which is exactly what I was looking for. The turns fly by and things keep moving, with plenty of battles and enough fealty shenanigans to keep even the most impatient players engaged.

While vassals used to be assigned specific allegiances in earlier volumes (they belonged to one opponent or the other), I love that this time around they can be recruited by either side. This makes it sort of a race when it comes to reaching and persuading a specific noble before the other side gets to him. And while each vassal comes with his own retinue, their main appeal lies more often than not in the fact that you can tax their hometowns—a significant advantage when money becomes scarce, and it will. Troops that go without coin payment, even for a single turn, go on a rampage that not only damages your reputation (resulting in the loss of precious influence points), but also flips the loyalty of their current location to your enemy’s side.

The decision space widens with bountiful replenishment options, where you can use a location’s resources to stockpile food, raise money or even levy additional troops on your way to war. However, those temptations are shaded with a hefty price tag. The first time you squeeze a locale to satisfy your needs, it’s marked “depleted;” the second time, it goes to “exhausted” and can no longer provide anything. A growth turn will put locations back on their feet, but those only come by once in a blue moon, and by then it might very well be too late for your Lords and their not-so-merry men.

PARTING SHOTS

Amongst all of the newfangled elements that make their brilliant debut in Plantagenet, the one that excites me the most is the reworked currency system.

Previous titles ran on coin (spent to keep Lords in your employ) and food (doled out to sustain marching and fighting troops). Players could earn victory points by defeating enemies in battle and occupying opposing strongholds, and whoever had the most VPs at the end of game took the crown.
In Plantagenet, food is still used to maintain troops that move or battle, but coins are required at the start of each turn to keep those same forces happy, even if they did nothing at all. Sure, you can amass that gigantic army and threaten to march it all the way to London and unseat your opponent; but will your pockets prove deep enough to keep everyone on the payroll until the job is done? Especially if you stop a few times along the way to gain more food or—God forbid—raise some new troops? The clock is ticking.

Influence is the final nail in that delicious coffin. You can spend it to do most everything in the game, and it’s a powerful tool—hell, you can even use it when you technically don’t have any influence left to spend, pushing that Influence Points marker further down your enemy’s side, tug-of-war style. But don’t forget this game is won on influence: sooner or later, you’ll have to win those IPs back or else lose it all. So will paying three influence (which you might not have to begin with) to win over that Essex dude be worth it in the long term?
There’s only one way to find out.

Victory's a long way up when it comes to influence points...

# # #

Flash Review — Applejack

Players: 1-4
Works well with just 2: Absolutely!
Solo quality: Okay
Age: 8+
Playtime: 30-60 min
Complexity: 4/10

Another Uwe Rosenberg game about farming? You bet.

This time we're running an orchard and harvesting apples, using honey as currency.

The game's timer is a die that steps its way around the central board. On your turn, you pick an apple tile from one of the stacks on either side of the die, and add it to your own orchard. Then the die takes one step forward, and it's your neighbor's turn.

Right after the start of the 2nd circuit

If the die passes an apple icon, each player scores that particular apple variety: add up all of your apples of that color displayed on tiles that touch each other in your orchard, and subtract the number on the die (which starts at 1): that's how much honey you earn. There are seven different apple varieties, so pay attention!

When the die has done a complete circuit on the central board, it rotates from 1 to 2 and starts moving again—but this time your apple groups need to be larger to score. After a second complete circuit, the die rotates from 2 to 3, and the game ends halfway through the third and last circuit.

Perform some final scoring shenanigans, and the player with the highest score wins.

My personal orchard, about halfway through a game

If you're familiar with Rosenberg's work, the scope of Applejack can be compared to that of Patchwork. While they don't play the same way at all, both games offer a surprisingly deep decision space, despite shipping with very simple rules and a short playtime. And they're fun!

I've found the game works best with two players: the solo goal is fixed (score 65 points with no one to give you trouble), while multiplayer outings tend to overstay their welcome (60 minutes for a game of Appeljack would test my patience).

Most easily forgotten rule: Flowers do not need to touch when scoring. Just count the number of flowers in your orchard, no matter where they are.

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Lucas Land: ID Please

 (Previous chapter: Stag Night)

One of the things I was looking forward to the most when I first started working at Lucasfilm, stupidly enough, was to get my employee card. I wanted to hold in my hand a piece of laminated cardboard with my name on it, along with my picture and the Lucasfilm logo. To me that would be “proof,” somehow, that I hadn’t just dreamed up my new life. (Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that I was driving into Skywalker Ranch on a daily basis—I told you it was stupid.)

I wanted to be asked for my employee card at the gate, and then produce the little thing like a magic key that would throw open the doors to the kingdom for me. (This isn’t how any of this works: when you show up, either you’re on The List or you’re not. They know if you’re meant to be there.)

So I waited anxiously for that morning when my boss or HR or anyone, frankly, would tell me where to go to get my employee card minted, forged, hammered into shape, handed down by divinities—whatever it was that LFL launched into motion for that precious document to come into existence.
And I waited.
And waited some more
When it became clear the wheels wouldn’t start turning unless I gave them a push myself, I asked a colleague about his employee card.
“What employee card? They stopped making them almost a year ago.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to camouflage my disappointment. And then, after a beat: “Where were they done?”
“Over at the Fire House.”

Located at 5858 Lucas Valley Road (no relation, if you can believe that), Skywalker Ranch sits in the middle of nowhere. The closest fire engine would arrive too late should a fire break out in one of the many buildings on the Ranch grounds—which, considering what’s housed in many of them (we’ll get around to that eventually) would be a catastrophe. So the decision was made early on to build a fire station as part of the Ranch itself, and to staff it with men and women who are not only trained firefighters, but also certified paramedics. In short, George decided he’d have a bunch of superheroes on the premises, and built them a house to live in—complete with sexy fire engines.

The one and only picture I took of those beasts.
I love that shade of red.

The Fire House stands off to the side, assuming a low profile while keeping a watchful eye on everything around it. It’s big, but at the same time so discreet that it took me a while to notice it was even there—which is all the more bizarre, since the Fire House is rather close to the front gate, and enjoys a direct access to it. You see, Skywalker Ranch is not the only property to exist in the middle of that particular nowhere, and George didn’t want to keep his posse of superheroes to himself: he intended for them to be his neighbors’ superheroes as well.
Which is why it’s not uncommon to spot one of the Skywalker Ranch fire engines somewhere down Lucas Valley Road, putting out a blaze or, less dramatically, helping a driver and their vehicle out of a ditch. And if you’re ever struck by a malaise strolling along Lake Ewok, the fire brigade’s got your back—or any other part of your body that requires medical attention.

The morning after I was told employee cards weren’t a thing on the Ranch anymore, I hopped onto one of the purple bicycles employees could borrow to ride around the Ranch, and pedaled my way to the Fire House. I resisted the impulse to knock on what looked like the door to a private residence; instead I turned the handle and walked into something like a living room where half a dozen people straight out of a gym commercial were handling equipment or having a snack. One handsome, mustachioed gentleman looked up and gave me that trademarked California smile.
“Hi! What can I do for you?”
“I—  I’m here for my employee card.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Your what?”
Someone laughed in the background.
“My employee card,” I repeated, as if that clarified anything at all.
I wondered whether my plan was just about to explode in my face. If it did, I was certainly in the right place to have the deflagration taken care of by experts.
“We closed up shop last year, son. We’re not issuing them anymore.”
I kept up the charade. “Oh—I had no idea. I was just told to come here and get mine done. Today.”
The same voice laughed once more from the back, and Mustache Man looked at me the way I imagined a gunslinger would at high noon, his shooting hand hovering near the butt of his revolver.

There was a tumbleweed-crossing-the-thoroughfare kind of a pause.

“Alright then!”
The man turned toward the hallway to his right, calling out to a space I couldn’t see. “JOHN! Could you bring up the photo equipment from the basement?”
“Say that again?”
“You heard me!”
He looked at me with a grin that lit up his face, and winked.
The duel was off.

(To this day I still don’t know if I they believed me or not. For a while I thought they did… and then grew to feel like it would be even cooler if they didn’t, and decided to play along because they were just awesome people. Don’t tell me: I’ll hold on to the mystery, thank you very much.)

I heard heavy, steady footsteps traveling a staircase in both directions, and then the man called John walked into the living room holding a large cardboard box and a black tripod. He dropped his cargo and gave me a quick once over before stepping back into the netherworld he had been happy to inhabit until I showed up.
A tough-looking lady was already setting up the equipment, and Mustache Man pointed to a blank wall behind me.
“Stand right over there.”
His voice was strong, his tone commanding; my legs walked the rest of my body to the indicated position on their own initiative. “Smile if you feel like it.”
Oh, I felt like it.

The shutter worked its magic (we’re talking 1998, remember), and then another device—the laminating machine—whirred to life. A scant two minutes later, I had my employee card with me. It technically did not exist, nobody would ever ask to see it, and the little plastic rectangle would not gain me admittance anywhere I wasn’t supposed to be. But it didn’t matter: I had my Lucasfilm employee card. What was more, nobody else would ever have one.

(Not on the Ranch, at any rate. I’m sure that when the bulk of Lucasfilm relocated to the Presidio in 2005, some sort of ID worked its way back into the daily routine of the ex-Ranchers. But I can’t imagine any plausible scenario where my employee card wasn’t the last one ever made within Skywalker Ranch.)

I thanked whoever happened to be in the living room when my evil plan had reached its dénouement and made my exit before a curious witness (the laughing man, perhaps) started asking questions—any one of which would have poked lethal holes into my flimsy story.

Outside, the air was crisp and electric, but the bike I’d ridden on the way in was gone.
Win some, lose some.
Gripping my newly minted card, I started walking back towards the Brooke House, smiling like a kid who’s just met Santa Claus and got the best present of all.

This was taken six years later when I went back to the Ranch for a visit. Still looked like a nerd.

(Next chapter: Hero Worship – coming soon!)

(Full series here)

 

 

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