Monthly Archives: August 2015

One play: Game Election

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When it comes to games night, one of the toughest games can be choosing which board games to actually play. You might be at someone’s house who has a big collection, or lots of people bring their own games along - or maybe you simply have a big range of tastes. Either way, what on earth do you do next?

One possible solution is to pick up a copy of Game Election from Naturalist Games. Coming in a standard 54-card deck box and costing less than £10, it accommodates two to six players with up to eight games in the ‘election’ mix. Ten minutes later, you should have a game to play thanks to the joys of democracy.

The rules are simple: take one coloured set of cards (each set has the same cards) and keep all the ones up to one number higher than the amount of games being voted on (so you’d keep all nine cards if you were voting on eight games). Each player then places one of their cards next to each nominee, leaving them one card in hand. Once this is done, you may get the chance to use your remaining card to do a ‘backroom deal’.

Backroom bitchiness

Each card will have ‘nay’, ‘yea’, ‘yea yea’ or ‘veto’ on the back - with the more powerful ‘yea yeah’ and ‘veto’ cards also containing some extra text. If you held back a veto, for example, you can swap two of a player’s votes or cancel one of a player’s vote entirely; or if you held back a yea yea card you can choose a game to either win or lose ties.

But there are consequences to using your backroom power: you will have to either set up or take down the game if you used your yea yea card in the backroom, while cancelling or swapping a player’s votes with your veto will let them either decide your place in turn order or decide your starting colour.

Once the backroom shenanigans are over, simply flip over and count up the votes (a yea yea scores two, while each veto is a minus one). If there is a tie, the instructions handily suggest you ‘flip a damn coin’.

Erm, hang on a minute…

It doesn’t take long to start seeing the gaping holes here. First, if you’re going to ask me to spend 10 minutes playing a game to decide which game to play, you better end up with a damn winner because I am not going to flip a damn coin - I’m going to pop your damn game in the damn bin and move on. It’s not funny - it’s lazy game design.

Second, who in their right mind is going to sit around twiddling their thumbs while one person sets up as game - especially when they may not have even played it? And who exactly are you’re punishing by getting one player to pack up? The poor shmo who brought it along and now has their game packed up ‘wrong’ (you know what we’re like!).

In the vast majority of cases, set up and pack down of games is a shared responsibility. It gets you into the game (or the next one) quicker, it feels like the right thing to do and it’s all part of being in a friendly game group.

Of the other ‘consequences’, letting someone pick your player colour is at worst inconsequential - while letting them decide your player position is a decision made with no knowledge of what you’re going to play. Overall, the powers and consequences are going to be at worst a hindrance to the overall fun of the evening and at best pointless.

I’m not saying every group will hate this, and apart from the lack of tiebreaker the powers and consequences aren’t intrinsically broken. I just can’t see how they’re going to have much of an impact in the vast majority of cases.

But the election is a nice idea, right?

Powers and no tiebreaker aside, the idea of voting for a game choice is a sound one. The card text is clear, the instructions simple, the colours bright and the card stock - well, not great actually but not the worst.

But by letting people mess with the votes, you’re not getting the outcome the group wanted. Surely that’s the point? You’re adding a bunch of poorly thought out extra rules which may only end up serving to create the wrong result.

I’ve tried this with two groups and both times it has fallen totally flat after some initial interest in the idea. And both times the lowest common denominator game won, which is probably what would’ve happened anyway. It’s fair to say I’ve had my last game election - at least in this format.

I can’t help thinking something much simpler would’ve been better. Number cards 10, 8, 6, 4 etc and make everyone put a card each on a game - simply add up the votes and whoever put the lowest number on the winning game gets to choose their starting position. Ties break in favour of lowest/fewest ‘high’ cards. Maybe I’ll try that.

So are there any winners?

I think some people will get something out of Game Election. People who like to record plays, for example, get to put another game onto Board Game Geek - while people who like to play purple will be pleased to know they get to play their favourite colour.

But kidding aside, this could be a useful exercise for a game loving teacher who brings play into the classroom, or for a gaming family with children. There are some potentially interesting things to be learnt about respecting other people’s opinions; consequences, and about screwing dad so you don’t have to play what he wants to play.

These examples may even get use out of the set up/take down actions. I’ll be passing my copy on to a dad/teacher, so I’ll let you know if they get on better with it than I did. But until then, I’m happy to cut to the chase and flip the damn coin.

Board game design: Finding immersion beyond duration

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Immersion is a goal for many a game designer, but more importantly many a player - and hence a topic of many a board game debate. But I think a few points around immersion are often overlooked - with others held in too high regard.

Listen to any conversation on immersion and two things will soon surface: very long games and licensed games. But are these really creating immersion?

Licensed games probably have a stronger argument for creating immersion - but it is very often the license itself that is creating the immersion, not the game. Films - especially sci-fi and fantasy ones - are brilliant at creating immersion so it stands to reason games that take you back to scenes involving those characters will do the same, even if the game itself is crappy.

Long games, I would argue, are rarely immersive at all. People talk of lengthy games of Civ, Mage Knight, Eclipse and Arkham Horror as being immersive but I don’t see it. Having a story to tell afterwards does not mean you were immersed: it means you spent a day of your life doing it so want to talk about it afterwards. These games have time in which to create a story - but that isn’t the same as being immersed.

Did you lose yourself in the world? Did you feel empathy with your character? Did you feel genuine emotion about situations that arose? Probably not. It’s the same with Arabian Nights - a game I very much enjoy but don’t feel is particularly immersive. It’s fun, and creates stories, but again - how is that immersion?

For real immersion you’re safe to turn to role-playing games - which again have a long tradition of lengthy fantasy campaigns. Players have traditionally developed a particular character and world over time, which is clearly going to help with immersion.

But in more recent times some popular RPGs have broken this mould - the classic example being Fiasco. Here players take on the lives of small town people living Coen Brothers film style lives in any setting you like - the kicker being that you cut to the chase and that one session can very much stand completely alone from another.

In board games, an interesting example is Netrunner. A shortish card game set in a cyberpunk world, it has no film license, epic duration or fancy components to help it along. So how does it manage to feel immersive to so many of its players?

I think what both Fiasco and Netrunner do so well is set a scene you can immediately immerse yourself in - and then give you the tools in which to complete the job. Fiasco knows you need a set up, so it gives you it - then leaves most of the crap like dice and character sheets to one side and lets you use the important thing: your imagination.

Netrunner gives you a scenario and then hands you the building blocks to recreate what’s actually happening: the cards are great at acting as building blocks for your computer systems as you try and outfox your opponent. The bluff and counter-bluff fit the theme, as does the ebb and flow of creating and breaking down firewalls and code. It just fits - while one-on-one games always have a better chance of creating tension.

Playing Firefly, Mage Knight or Civ isn’t immersive, it’s mechanical - as is flicking through the book in Arabian Knights while people twiddle their thumbs. And don’t get me wrong - I think all but Firefly in that list are great games. They’re just not really immersive (I’m sure some will claim immersion here still, but I’m talking about the majority of players).

So for me, to create a really immersive board game, you need to set up a simple yet tense scenario and then add mechanics that in many ways mirror the actions you would actually be doing in that scenario. Not easy - but as Netrunner shows, far from impossible. And not requiring of a four-hour play time or a film license to help things along.

Lembitu: A four-sided game review

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Lembitu* is a co-operative board game from small Estonia publisher 2D6.EE, by designer Aigar Alaveer.

It was launched at the UK Games Expo 2015 in Birmingham with very little fanfare, but if you like co-ops it may well be worth your attention.

The game plays two-to-four players but like most co-ops it is equally good for solo play. Games shouldn’t take an hour with four and with one/two it’s possible to play in 30 minutes - or, if things go badly wrong, it could be considerably less!

The components are a slightly mixed bag - but mostly top notch. The box and board and beautifully illustrated while the 60 cubes (the bad guys), three custom dice and 20 fortification tokens are industry standard. It’s just a shame the cheap plastic turn marker and player pawns look like they’re our of an old budget copy of ludo… But as the game retails at about £25 it still represents solid value.

In terms of theme, Lembitu represents a tough time in Estonian history - the Livonian Crusade - when the nation was being conquered on all sides by the Danish, the Crusaders and Novgorod (an ancient part of Russia), with only their Leader, Lembitu, standing in the way of them all. That’ll be you then.

In truth, for most of us, the theme is non existent. You can use the three different coloured cubes as you like as each army is essentially the same - one hit, one kill - while your cheap plastic player pawn has all the personality it deserves (ie, none). This is an abstract co-operative game, unless you’re being taught it by an Estonian history teacher.

Teaching

As with any co-op that has no hidden information, as long as one player is fully versed with the rules you can teach as you go.

Game play itself is straightforward and once you get up to speed things rocket along - but unfortunately the rulebook isn’t the greatest and there is also an error on the board itself: pretty inexcusable, especially as it isn’t mentioned in the rulebook/in the box as an addendum (I’ve highlighted all the problems/answers I had in a Lembitu rules FAQ over at Board Game Geek).

Turns are super simple. First, move the turn marker to the next space (nice and clear around the edge of the board) - this will indicate if it’s your turn, an enemy turn or a rebellion, or if you’ve won (by getting back to the start of the track). Winning is simply a case of surviving long enough to get once around the board.

The bad guys move, Defenders of the Realm or The Dwarves style, from the the edge of the board towards your capital along pre-set paths. If they make it, or you run out of defenders (players), you’ve had it. On each bad guy turn, roll the three dice and add attackers (0-2) to the six enemy routes (each dice has two symbols). If the enemy arrive on a space with a player, that player is dead - if they arrive in the capital, game over.

Player turns see each player act, with the amount of actions determined by player number (always a total of 12, so 6 each in a two-player game). An ‘action’ is either move a space, kill one enemy or place an uprising token. That’s it - no dice, no player powers, no items.

You’ll notice the board is in three colours: there are three ‘rebellion’ spaces around the edge of the board, each matching one of these colours. When you hit these spaces, any uprising tokens on towns of the same colour become a fortification - slowing the enemy. In certain strategic positions, these are super useful - but hard to pull off.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.

  • The writer: I shouldn’t like Lembitu. It is structurally naive, the luck can be unmitigable and at times it feels like a prototype rather than a product. But what can I say? It’s fun. Chaos be damned - it’s so simple to set up and quick to play that if everything goes to hell you can set up and go again. And on the plus side, different player numbers makes for a very different game each time precisely because it hasn’t been balanced to within an inch of its life.
  • The thinker: In one way I like the stripped, abstract nature of Lembitu: it has an elegance that is easy to appreciate. But those dice rolls are just too swingy, especially near the end when the enemy is getting two turns to your one. I need to feel good play will be rewarded more often than not and here I think too many games will be decided by the dice. But I wouldn’t turn down a game if others were keen.
  • The trasher: I found this one to be fun, in a crazy dice fest kind of way. The game moves at a great pace and we actually played back-to-back games after getting thrashed the first time - which is quite rare for our group. That said the abstract nature means I probably wouldn’t miss it if we never played again: it just lacked a bit of personality, despite some fun pics on the board. If only those sea monsters were actually in the game!
  • The dabbler: While I didn’t hate Lembitu, I was quickly shouted out of the picture by more alpha gamers. Beyond the colour of your plastic piece you have no personality, no power, no distinction - it’s even worse than Pandemic in that respect. I ended up being given a quiet bit of the board and just plugged away, doing what I was told. It was fun watching things unfold, but I didn’t really feel part of it and the theme was totally lost on me.

Key observations

Lembitu is definitely a game that will irk the pampered modern gamer. With no player powers or hidden information/traitors there is plenty of room for a gobby ‘alpha gamer’ to take control and order everyone around; while a player taking a risk could well be eliminated in the first round and have to sit the rest out.

The latter isn’t much of an issue though, precisely because of the first point: no player powers. You don’t feel invested in your character, but you do feel invested in winning - in solving the puzzle. Moving a particular piece feels like an arbitrary part of proceedings.

In addition the setup dice rolls (showing how far the enemy troops have encroached before play begins) can swing from practically non-existent to outside the city gates - and there is no official way to make a game ‘beginner’ or ‘hard’ difficulty. It’s down to luck. But again this just makes it feel like a different puzzle to solve each time.

But from a design perspective there is a lack of cleverness or subtlety behind the scenes, which will annoy some: it has a microgame ethic, but not a microgame size or price point. But others will appreciated the stripped-back vibe that moves so far back away from the fiddlyness of games such as Dead of Winter and Robinson Crusoe.

And a minor point: I would’ve liked a token to represent the ‘free move’ you get after moving on a road. The extra action makes sense, showing you made more progress by moving on an established route, but when you’re trying to work out your moves it can get a bit much when another slightly different action is thrown into the mix.

Conclusion

Purists may well mock Lembitu for its naive, retro design - I know there are some players I wouldn’t put this in front of knowing the derision that would follow. But for me it is an absolute keeper.

Friend and fellow game designer David Thompson described it perfectly as a ‘guilty pleasure’: a game that ignores recent conventions and suffers mechanically because of it, but has enough old skool charm to carry it off and be a success regardless.

Bad luck can, and sometimes will, see you lose - while on other days you’ll quite easily coast to victory. If you can’t take that from a game, walk away now. But quite often the game sits on that tightrope edge between victory and defeat - where that risky move could give you the edge or lead you to certain doom.

This is something I’ve heavily criticised in my review of Dead of Winter, so why do I find it OK here? Simple - this is a puzzle that sets up in two minutes and does not have me role-playing or investing in theme: you can set up and play a game of Lembitu in the time it takes to get Dead of Winter out of the box.

Lembitu will be on sale at Essen 2015 and if you like puzzley co-ops I’d recommend checking it out. But if you roll lots of doubles during setup, don’t expect anything other than a hideous spanking…

* I would like to thank designer Aigar Alaveer for providing a copy of the game for review.

It’s coming! 5 Essen Spiel off-piste newbie tips

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With the number one event on the worldwide board gaming calendar - the Internationale Spieltage Spiel ’15 in Essen - just two months away, I’m already getting stupidly excited.

This year’s event will be the biggest yet, moving up to 63,000 sq m of convention hall space (from 58,000 last year), with a staggering 850+ exhibitors flogging they’re cardy, dicey and boardy wares. This will be my fourth time attending, but each time feels just as good as the previous visits.

But if you’re heading to Essen Spiel for your début gaming Mecca experience, here are a few things that I feel shouldn’t be missed but that may not be immediately obvious to the goggle-eyed and overwhelmed first-timer. I’d also suggest checking out my Essen Guide for travel, hotel and Spiel tips. See you in the mad throng!

  1. Österreichisches Spiele Museum: The Austrian Boardgame Museum is a charity that hosts a collection of more than 25,000 board games. Each year the charity has a stand at Essen with a couple of new games on sale, donated to support the charity and often from highly reputable designers. Recent offerings include the original version of Port Royal (Handler der Karibik) and a Bohnanza variant (Sissi!) from Uwe Rosenberg - plus the games are usually cheap, the money goes to a good cause and they’ll throw a bunch of other promos into your bag if you smile sweetly.
  2. Istra Steakhaus: Germany is well known as a carnivorous nation and my favourite restaurant in the city so far is the traditional meat fest of the Istra Steakhaus. Handily located on Rüttenscheider Straße - the nicer of the roads that connects the Messe to the city centre - I’ve had several meaty meals there over the years and never been anything other than well satisfied with the food and also the beer. Expect a ‘traditional’ German welcome (ie, surly) but hey - it’s all part of the experience and they’re a friendly bunch once you engage them.
  3. Adlung-Spiel: If you’re from outside Germany you may not be aware of this little card game publisher, who always has a tiny booth squirrelled away in a corner of the Messe. Its games are always in a traditional single card deck-sized box, but can vary from drafting and hand management through bidding and bluffing to children’s and dexterity games. Much like an OSM game above, these are great Essen mementoes. Classic titles include Meuterer, Vom Kap bis Kairo and Blink.
  4. Grugapark: Depending on how you arrive at the Messe, it can actually be easy to miss the fact that the north and west sides of the huge conference centre are dwarfed by a huge and lovely country park. Even if you don’t have time for a wander around, or if the weather isn’t playing ball, you can sneak out of Hall 2 on its western edge onto a balcony (mainly wasted on smokers) that has a lovely, peaceful view over the greenery, deer and other tranquil sites - perfect for taking a 10-minute break away from the bedlam inside the main halls.
  5. Toys ‘R’ Us: This one may only apply to us Brits, but wandering into this store (which is just a five minute walk from the central Essen Hbf station) its a sobering indictment of the state of the high street for board gamers in the UK. Where in England its wall-to-wall Barbie, Lego and Frozen, at Toys ‘R’ Us in Germany you’ll also find everything from Arkham Horror and Dominion through to the latest Spiel des Jahres nominees. You may find some classics cheaper than at the Messe - but remember language dependency!

Top 10 outdoor/summer holiday games - even in the rain!

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If you’re currently ‘enjoying’ a typical English summer, or are anywhere looking for games to take on holiday - camping, to a festival etc - check out this list of my most likely candidates for outside gaming.

all these games are either totally non-cardboard/paper, or are close enough that you’ll be able to get away with it.

So don’t waste your poor old phone or tablet battery trying to entertain yourself in the tent or on the beach - grab a few of these classic games and enjoy the last of the drizzle in the great outdoors.

The outdoor gaming top 10

  1. Mölkky: Pictured above, this Finnish take on skittles sees players throwing a wooden baton at a bunch of other lumps of wood - but there’s more to it than initially meets the eye. You get a point per pin knocked over, or the number on the pin if you can hit just one. Plus, once they are knocked down, they are stood up again where they landed - meaning it gets harder as you go on. You need to finish on exactly 50 points - bust and you go back to 25. Alternatively it can end up being last man standing, as three straight misses and you’re out. Plays up to 10 people.
  2. Pickomino (Heck Meck): This classic push-your-luck dice game (think Yahtzee, but good) comes with just 8 dice and 16 domino-style plastic tiles, so all you need is a flat surface. You roll dice Yathzee style to claim scoring tiles from the centre, but can also steal them from your opponents - adding a great take-that element. Plays up to 7 players in about 30 minutes. Pickomino review here.
  3. Hive: If you prefer a more chess-like, two-player only abstract game experience you can’t go wrong with Hive. The travel edition is just 22 plastic tiles in a handy carry bag - you don’t even need a board, just a vaguely flat area. Each player places/moves their pieces in an attempt to surround their opponent’s queen - with a game lasting about 20 minutes.
  4. Werewolf: This classic party game is great for big groups as the original plays 8-24 people - with more modern variations filling in the gaps in both directions (One Night Werewolf plays with as few as 3, Ultimate Werewolf s many as 68…). Games run from 10 minutes to several hours. Each player receives a card with a role - werewolf or villager (many have specific powers). At night the villagers close their eyes and the werewolves will plot and kill a villager - but by day everyone will discuss who they think the werewolves are - and put one to death. Great, silly and often loud fun.
  5. Hanabi Deluxe: This prize winning co-operative game sees players trying to lay their tiles onto central stacks in the right number and colour order - the big catch being they can see everyone’s tiles except their own! Each turn you can lay a tile or give a clue to another player about what they have - but with restrictions on what you can say it’s incredibly tricky. Originally a card game, the deluxe version uses domino style tiles and takes 2-5 players about half an hour to play.
  6. Crossboule: Another ‘proper’ outdoor game, Crossboule is all about throwing hacky sacks at a smaller hacky ‘jack’, much in the same way you’d play classic French game Boules - but sillier. Each round begins with the jack-thrower making a rule for the round - maybe throwing under your leg, off the wall, over your head etc. You get bonuses for getting close, but also for landing on/touching other sacks. And while it plays up to six, you can of course add more sets for more mayhem.
  7. Blokus: Another classic abstract board game, Blokus is an all-plastic affair - both board and pieces. The bits look like Tetris pieces and you can only connect yours corner to corner. The idea is to block your opponents off while laying as many of your pieces as you can, with both defensive and attacking strategies at your disposal. Blokus Duo/To Go is great for travelling but only two-player, while the big box version plays two to four - either version in less than an hour.
  8. Can’t Stop: This is another classic push-your-luck dice game, also with a plastic board and plastic pieces - and like Blokus you can even play on the move, as it is played on a grid. A game lasts about 30 minutes and takes 2-4 players, but you can buy extra playing pieces cheaply to take it 5 or 6. This one isn’t as nasty as Pickomino, as the essence is much more on the pushing your luck than in the take-that elements - so pick your poison (I recommend both). Can’t Stop review here.
  9. Qwirkle: This award-winning wooden tile game sees players matching colours and shapes to score points in classic family game fashion. Playing 2-4 players in under an hour it’s a brilliant abstract game of pattern building - and all you need is the 108 tiles in a bag. There’s also a dice version, Qwirkle Cubes, which is every bit as good (same player numbers and time) - and better if you rolling dice, I guess!
  10. Liar’s Dice (Perudo): Talking of dice, this has 30 of the little blighters - plus six plastic cups. Roll your dice, secretly hide them under your cup, and then guess, lie and fluke your way through as you declare higher and higher totals of a number with your very limited information (three 4s, four 2s, five 6s etc) - until someone calls the last player to guess’ bluff. Everyone then reveals their dice and you count so see who was right - the loser losing a dice. Simple, thoroughly entertaining fun.

With the exception of Hanabi Deluxe (which is easy to find, but a little pricey) all of these games can easily be found inexpensively at your favourite friendly independent online retailer - as long as your favourite online retailer sells games, of course. Or worst case scenario, they’re all on Amazon.

You shouldn’t have to pay more than about £20 for any of them either. So what are you waiting for? Become part of the great social gaming renaissance. Or if you really can’t drag yourself away from your smart device; Qwirkle, Can’t Stop, Blokus, Hive, Perudo and Hanabi all have apps too…

What I have I missed? Let me know below.

The Institute for Magical Arts: A four-sided game review

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The Institute for Magical Arts* is an area control card and dice game for two players from Biblios designer Steve Finn. While the box and title suggest a thematic game of magic it is very much abstract in how it plays: I wouldn’t let the theme either sway you toward it or put you off, depending on your outlook.

Playing out in about 30 minutes the game comes with 60 cards, 70 wooden pieces and eight dice, along with instructions and a reference sheet - making it good value for around £20 (everything here is definitely of solid if unremarkable quality).

This is very much a one-on-one game, with the winner being the player with the most points at the end of the round in which someone reaches 20 or more. There are take-that elements that can’t be ignored, with the heart of the game being an area control mechanism (much like that in Smash Up) where you compete to claim cards and then use their powers.

Gamers looking for a reference should very much think of The Institute for Magical Arts in the same breath as small box games such as Jambo/Asante or Targi, rather than a less complex game such as Jaipur or Lost Cities - but if you like the cut-and-thrust of either it’s worth reading on.

Teaching

While The Institute for Magical Arts has some relatively complex mechanisms at play, the game is easy to teach due to all the information/components being open when you need to discuss them - or at any point someone would need to ask a question.

Game-play very much revolves around the dice, or more accurately what you choose to do with them once they’re rolled each turn. Players have identical hands of six cards: two used to attain ‘power stones’ and four to assign them. Each turn starts with the players rolling their four dice simultaneously and assigning a card (face down) to each one - and yes, there are of course plenty of ways to mitigate the rolls.

Both players then reveal and use their cards simultaneously, taking/assigning stones to cards (in spaces - you guessed it - one to six) in the centre of the table. Most are ‘institute cards’, each of which has two requirements that need to be met to be claimed: a minimum number of stones spent, plus a clear majority it needs to be won by.

This means you may need to have laid at least three stones on the card, but also need to have laid two more there than your opponent - so if you lay three and your opponent two, the card (and stones) stay in play into the next round. In this way a card can have many more stones on it than required if it is hotly contested.

Cards won are added to a players tableau and their points immediately scored (each has a value between 0 and 7). Cards also give their winner an ability - either a once-per-turn or one-off power, all of which bend the rules of the game in fairly standard fashion. There’s a little more going on than that, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the game’s relative simplicity in terms of rules.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.

  • The writer: I like a good bluffing game and The Institute for Magical Arts has the elements it should need to be one. The secret dice assigning leads to a lot of second-guessing, while there are several routes to victory hidden within this very small package. But beneath the potential of bluffing the game is really about logic and once the game is settling down in the middle stages it can become quite predictable. A little chaos would’ve helped for me - but then the game feels as if it knows its audience and that should be seen as a strength.
  • The thinker: Possibly the game’s greatest asset is the potential game of chicken that awaits you as you choose whether to re-roll your dice. As turns are simultaneous, one of you has to decide whether or not to re-roll or stick - leaving your opponent the chance to act afterwards. It’s a highly unusual game state and one I thoroughly approve if, adding to the game’s one-on-one appeal and intensity. Ignore the fantasy sheen - this is a thinker’s game with a small element of luck and a much bigger dose of decision making.
  • The trasher: I really liked The Institute for Magical Arts - in theory. Trust me: you do not feel like you’re casting spells. With the exception of a few nasty ones, most of the card powers are incremental rather than game changing - and as everything is open you can see it all coming a mile off, so even the stronger ones lose their ability to add excitement. The ‘character’ cards sum it up: they have none, beyond unique art and a name - no powers, just a basic set collection score.
  • The dabbler: Sadly I didn’t feel the personality here at all and the game-play was just ‘meh’. There’s very little effort made to pretend the theme isn’t just pasted on - they didn’t even stretch to individual art for all the cards, or any flavour text. I’m not really keen on two-player games at the best of times, unless they’re a bit more raucous. This is more about keeping your poker face on, but after a few turns I’d lost my smile anyway so no problem! It’s like Smash Up without the smash (or the up).

Key observations

There’s not much to work with in terms of opinion on The Institute for Magical Arts right now, but in terms of criticism the words seen most often are ‘boring’ and ‘unfun’ - things I think I’ve addressed above.

But as I haven’t been 100% behind the game so far, I think it’s also worth looking at some of the more positive comments - and there are many. Fans describe it as ‘light’ or ‘super light’ (both to play and learn), blending interesting mechanisms to create a unique duelling/area control game.

There’s nothing I can argue with there - except to say that this is very much a Steve ‘Dr’ Finn game. I was fascinated by my first game of Biblios, laboured a little through my second and am not interested in playing it again. This, for me, is a much more interesting game - and Finn fans seem to generally agree. But I still couldn’t get most of my gaming friends excited enough to want to play it more in future.

Conclusion

The Institute for Magical Arts is a good game: it is well designed, simple to teach, and everything holds together under scrutiny. It has that enforced battling element you’d expect from a two-player-only game and plays varied and fast; cleverly mixing bluff, dice and area control.

But is it fun? If you like thinky abstracts with just a dash of theme - or any of Finn’s other games - it is definitely worth checking out. Others may be advised to try Biblios (which is widely owned and available), as I think they have similar qualities in terms of theme and mechanics (Biblios is a card game where you are forced to ‘gift’ cards to your opponents as well as yourself, trying to amass cards in different currencies while also manipulating the value of those currencies).

Personally, if I’d found anyone who enjoyed playing it with me that I thought I’d play often enough, I’d have kept it. As it is, I’ll be moving it on - and I’m sure there will be plenty of Dr Finn fans happy to snap it up.

* I would like to thank Games Quest for providing a copy of the game for review.