MACAO GAME REVIEW Macao is now a Chinese city, but in the 17th century it was a Portuguese colony and major trading center. In Macau, players take on the role of Portuguese adventurers, improving the city's infrastructure, collecting valuable goods, and then trading them across Europe, striving to become the most prestigious adventurers of their time. Macao is played over twelve rounds. At first glance, it seems like a game with a mix of mechanics: a bit of board building, a bit of pick-and-drop, and a bit of territory control. But Macau is actually, for lack of a better term, a turn-based game. At the beginning of each round of the game, five different colored dice are rolled and placed in the center of the playing field. Players then choose two of these dice to collect the dice. The color of the collected dice is the same as the color of the selected die. The number of dice collected is determined by a value. But more importantly, this value also determines how many turns the players will have to wait before they can access the collected dice. After players have collected their dice, their player components, called "wind roses", take their turn, and the dice in the next area of the wind rose become available to them for that turn. These dice are spent on improving your city and collecting goods by buying up city blocks, fighting for position in turn order, moving your player marker along the wall, activating cards and paying for their abilities, and moving your ship along waterways to deliver the goods you collect. In the style of Stefan Feld, Macau is a game full of opportunities to earn victory points, and almost everything you can do will result in you earning them at various stages of the game. And whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins. There are many more in-depth details that I will cover soon. This is just a general overview of the game. If you think you have heard enough and just want to know my opinion, feel free to skip to the Opinions section. Otherwise, read on and I will give you a brief rundown of how it is played in Macau. ANCHORS Macao is organized as follows:  After placing the main board on the table, the 24 Office cards are shuffled and two are placed face up along the outer edges of the board for each round of play. The remaining cards are shuffled into a deck and placed side by side. The Goods tiles are shuffled and one is randomly placed on each of the city blocks. The Joker tiles are also placed in the marked positions. The beige discs are placed next to the Tribute track. The remaining components—the dice (which can be sorted if you like, but I just keep mine in a large bowl) and the coins—are placed within reach.  Next, each player chooses a color and receives tokens of the chosen color, including a compass rose, a ship, two discs, a table, and twelve possession markers. In addition, each player receives five gold. The player's tokens are placed on the wall and prestige track. His ship is placed on one of the positions. Now that you have done that, choose the order of play in some way and arrange the players' discs on the wall in the order you have chosen, from top to bottom. From now on, the player whose disc is furthest along the wall and on top will be the first player for the current round. Second, third, and fourth are determined in the same way - furthest in front and closest to the top of any piles. In turn, each player will choose a card from a small selection of cards. This card is placed on their table. Each player also receives one die of their choice, which must be placed next to the one-dot area on their wind horn, and two dice of matching colors, which must be placed next to the two-dot area. You are now ready to play Macau. CUBISM In Macao, you live and die by your compass rose. So before I delve further into the gameplay, it's important to understand how the compass rose works.  Your compass rose is divided into seven sections. Six of them contain a picture of a die set to a different point value (from one to six), and the seventh contains a picture of a large arrow. Collected dice are placed in the area next to the compass rose adjacent to the value of the die used to collect them. To better illustrate this, consider the following example: A player chooses a red three and a blue four as his dice. He takes three red dice from the supply and places them next to the compass rose area that represents the three-dot die. The four blue dice are placed next to the face of the four-dot die.  After choosing the dice and collecting the dice, each player turns their compass rose. The arrow will then point to the dice available to the player in the current round. If there are no dice, the player takes a penalty marker, which will cost them three points at the end of the game. So, choosing higher value dice will give you a lot of dice in future rounds, but you can't completely ignore lower value rounds without risking penalties. This is the lifeblood of Macau. But as important as it is, there are many other considerations. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS Before the dice are rolled at the beginning of a round, there is a card phase. In this phase, four cards are drawn from the deck and added to the two cards set aside in preparation for the current round. These cards have a tribute value in the lower right corner and a coin value in the lower left corner. These values are added up and the beige Tribute track discs on the main board are placed accordingly.  This means that during their turn, the player can purchase the amount of Prestige on the right by paying an amount of gold equal to the value on the left. This is one consideration, and it is risky. Do you pay the amount being asked now for the reward offered, or do you hold on to your money (and money is very tight in Macau!) in the hope of an even better deal that may never come along later? Once the Tribute Track is sorted, players take turns, in the order they draw, choosing one of the cards to place on their table. Each card has a cube value required to move it from the player's table to their active card area. Each player's table can only hold five cards. If the table is already full when a player chooses a card to place on it, one of the cards in the table is discarded to make room for a new card, and the player receives a penalty token, which, you guessed it, is worth minus three points at the end of the game. This is another point to consider. Cards that are harder to play usually have stronger abilities. How many of these do you want to take on? After the card phase is complete, dice are rolled, dice are collected, and compass roses are turned (which may result in penalty tokens) as described earlier. The action phase then begins. During their turns, players may spend dice on: – move your marker along the wall to control the order of turns. – buy one city block by paying its cost and replacing the goods tile on it with one of your property markers. – move your ship one space along the waterways one space for each die spent. If a player lands their ship in a port for which they have the appropriate goods(s), they deliver them to the port (starting with the highest value space) and receive Prestige for doing so. – activate any cards that have been removed from their tableau into the active cards area, and for which they have the required dice. Such cards are usually rewarded with prestige or coins in exchange for certain dice. Sometimes you only have a very few dice at your disposal. In such cases, choosing what to do with them is quite simple, since you have few options. But there will be many cases where these decisions will be difficult. To better understand why these decisions can be difficult, let's talk about scoring. PRESTIGE In Macau, prestige is gained from a variety of sources. Some of it will be earned throughout the game for various cards activated, goods delivered, or the tribute scale. However, a significant percentage of it will be accrued for the final game scores. At the end of the game, you'll earn points for the largest cluster of property tokens in the city—two points for each cluster—and take a penalty token for each card left on your table. There are also many cards that, when activated, will also earn you end-game points. The person with the most prestige wins, and ties are broken by the person furthest away from the wall. CONCLUSIONS As I thought about Macau and how it made me feel, I came to a strange realization. For a game I love so much, I have a lot of negative reviews. For example: – Nowhere in the game (not in the components or the rulebook) does the game explain the different types of goods. They are labeled on the cards, but there are no accompanying illustrations to explain what they are for. Do you have a card that gives you extra points every time you deliver lacquerware? Good luck figuring out what that good is. I think it's the red one that looks like a bunch of vases? Then again, there are blue and white ones that look like Delftware. So maybe that's them? Or maybe it's the one with the green plate. Who knows?  – Macao has some of the cheapest and lowest quality components I've ever encountered. This isn't so much the game's fault as the publisher's. In my experience with older Alea games, this kind of "skill reduction" seems to be the norm rather than the exception. – The tribute table is so random that some games go by without using it. And that seems strange to me. In a well-balanced game, there should never be any aspect of it that feels irrelevant. Yet the tribute table often is. – Aside from a few cards that reward their owners for doing so, there’s little incentive to move along a wall other than to go first. In fact, most games I play involve very little movement along a wall. Often the only reason..

PRODUCT UPDATE Hello, friend. The Lelekan store is updated with board games for every taste. New hits, reissues of favorite classics, and a few unexpected new releases are now available. In this receipt: – New games for companies – Games for children and family leisure – Dueling games for cozy evenings – Complex strategies for experienced players And there are many different types of flooring that will suit everyone. Play fun with Lelekan FULL LIST OF UPDATES EXIT: The Game — Dead Man On The Orient Express EXIT: The Enchanted Forest EXIT: The Game – The Disappearance Of Sherlock Holmes Unmatched: Slings And Arrows Andromeda's Edge Star Wars: Super Teams Come Sail Away! Defenders Of The Wild Inori Exploding Kittens: Good Vs Evil The Witcher: The Roleplaying Game - Quick Start (The Whitcher: The Roleplaying Game) Beaver Creek (Beaver Creek) Rival Restaurants Beacon Patrol Mysteries of Karak II Castle Myce And Mystics GAME LIBRARY UPDATE Sushi Draft Who's hungry? Sushi Draft is a card game where your main goal is to score the most points by eating lots of different types of sushi. The player with the most diverse menu gets dessert! Each round (turn) you must choose one sushi card to "eat". Then choose one sushi card to keep in your hand, and pass the rest to the next player. The game continues until each player has "eaten" five sushi. After three rounds, the players count their points and the one with the most points wins! Sonic the Hedgehog: Dice Rush Speed is Sonic's game, and in Sonic The Hedgehog Dice Rush, 2 to 4 players race in real-time to create the ultimate Sonic the Hedgehog level. Players simultaneously roll their dice and compare their scores with cards featuring sections of a classic 2D Sonic level. Act fast, as certain sections will earn you extra points, while others will take them away from you! SCHEDULE OF GAMING PLACES In August, we continue to delight you with various game libraries in our club. This week we'll be able to try on roles from pirate ship captain to Egyptian architects, do a little zombie killing, and head to the wonderful valley of the beasts. So we present to you the schedule of events at the Lelekan club ..

MOVIE MIND GAME REVIEW In 2013, I saw 160 movies in theaters. Technically, that was every "wide release" movie that year. That means I have a problem; it also means I sat out movies like The Smurfs 2, The Hot Cop, and the only Die Hard movie that was truly terrible, Die Hard Good Day. I regularly watch 75-100 movies in theaters every year. I refuse to talk to other people during the Oscars. I've seen Indian movies in India. I've gone to the theaters alone during COVID. I've waited outside theaters in all weathers to be first in line for midnight premieres. It's safe to say that I like movies. I'm pretty good at film trivia, but my general knowledge of movies, accumulated over time, is pretty strong. When I got my hands on a game from Gigamic, namely Movie Mind, I immediately sat down to figure it out. Here's the short summary: a lot of fun, but only for die-hard movie buffs.  Movie Mind is a three-round quiz game for two or three teams against each other. On their turn, a team draws one of 80 picture cards; the opposing team selects a reader who asks five questions that must be answered within 90 seconds. Each correct answer earns one point. Between rounds, each team has the opportunity to answer one question about the card currently in play to potentially steal a point. After three rounds, the team with the most points wins. The illustrated square cards are the heart of Movie Mind. Each card features visuals from 10 different films released over the past 70 years or so. The illustrations don't always try to depict a single scene; sometimes there's a character from, say, Pulp Fiction walking up to a masked man you remember from the Scream movies, without any context. It's essentially a collection of ideas piled into one space, so as you listen to each question, moviegoers have to figure out which films are depicted, then try to match the answers to the random questions: "A film about an airplane." "A film in which a character is granted three wishes." "A film in which a man leads a group on a great adventure." Vague, isn't it? More often than not, when someone on my team answered a question correctly, I would yell, "Where do you see THAT?" because I couldn't find the link to the image for some reason. The illustrations further complicate matters; on one card, the character is simply sitting on a couch. Most of us had no idea who this person was supposed to be, despite the fact that this was a character from a very successful comic book franchise. That's because there wasn't much additional information about this character; he was just sitting there. But if you recognize some of the characters, symbolism, or key visual moments from your favorite movies, then you're in for a treat. Also, there are no quotes in the images. For a fan who knows movie quotes well, this won't help you at all in the "Movie Quotes" game. WHO WILL BE INTERESTED IN THE GAME?  Movie Mind really works, but it's a game for a true movie buff. I know this because even as a movie buff, I often had a hard time answering some of the questions. The illustrations by Diane Fayol and Charles Deroux are interesting, and many of the players I sat with found the work to be solid, if not at times impressive. But that's not the point. When you see something from, say, Jaws, you just have to see a shark, and bam, you get it, right? Jaws is and always will be "The Shark Movie." (Apologies to The Meg, Shark Tale, and the classic Sharknado TV franchise.) But, "Interstellar"? Can you imagine things from the movie and then imagine them animated? How about "Lawrence of Arabia"? You imagine the footage from the movie, but it's not drawn, right? This makes Movie Mind a little more difficult than it needs to be. It's always fun, and as I often say on these pages, I love games with screaming, timers, racing, and drama. Movie Mind has it all. But if you have a friend who considers himself a movie buff because he's seen all the Star Wars movies, this game isn't for him. This is for the person who loved — and remembers! — Big Fish. Fan of the French film Amelie? Go here. Are there any references to Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or some Marvel movies? Sure, and those references are a bit ahead of the less obvious ones. But I think the main enjoyment here will come from someone who has a really broad and deep taste in filmmaking. One manufacturing flaw: the hourglass is a bit awful. My included hourglass only holds enough magic dust for 55 seconds, so I used my smartphone timer. With two teams and 90-second rounds, this game takes literally nine minutes to play; let's call it ten, since you'll have to spend 60 seconds learning it. For this price, and the reasonable price at many online retailers, you'll be in great shape if you decide to pick up a copy of Movie Mind!..

PRODUCT UPDATE Hello, friend. The Lelekan store is updated with board games for every taste. New hits, reissues of favorite classics, and a few unexpected new releases are now available. In this receipt: – New games for companies – Games for children and family leisure – Dueling games for cozy evenings – Complex strategies for experienced players And there are many different types of flooring that will suit everyone. Play fun with Lelekan FULL LIST OF UPDATES Defenders Of The Wild Hidden Games Tatort: Ein Perfekter Plan (Hidden Games Tatort: Ein Perfekter Plan) Tucano That's Not A Hat Exploding Kittens: Zombie Kittens Domino Double 9 Splendor: Duel Lovers Azul: Duel River Valley: Mosaic Factory (River Valley Glassworks) Terraforming Mars: Turmoil Words Of Magic Bullet: Puzzle Shooter (Bullet) Steel Bullets GAME LIBRARY UPDATE Regroup! Chicken Army  What else haven't we done in the nests? The correct answer is - we haven't gathered flocks of chickens for the chicken army! This box will compensate for what was lost and will allow us to arrange a fierce battle of the birds. And among the chickens there are very talented birds: the fighters and the sorceresses will stand shoulder to shoulder to not give the opponent even a single chance to win! Matcha Stop, leave your business and hurry... sip from a cup of aromatic drink and put your own thoughts in order. We had a game about coffee, now there is one about tea! The tea ceremony in Japanese culture is an entire art, based on the highest expression of spirituality. However, in the board card game "Match", you don't have to wait too long to drink tea: just 15 minutes - and the cups are already empty, and the winner is determined. Serve tea again and try to collect all the necessary elements this time! PROMOTIONAL ITEMS Amygdala https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/amygdala-amygdala-ukr Tiletum https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/tiletum-tilletum-anglukr Camelot Market https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/igry-po-typu/card-games/rynok-kamelut-kameloot Pirates Of The 7 Seas - Second Edition https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/board-game-pryznachennya/family-games/piraty-7-moriv-druge-vydannya-pirates-of-the-7-seas-ukr..

WIZARDS OF THE GRIMOIRE GAME REVIEW Archmage Andor is dead. Of course you had nothing to do with this. Of course. Of course you've waited years to sit in the big chair, hold the big musty tome, and cast complex spells, but murder? Fuck that idea. Even if you had anything to do with it, you planned it poorly. Obviously you're not the only heir. Archmage Andor was not familiar with the Rule of Two, and now you and your opponent will have to fight to the death. Grimoire Wizards is a dynamic, engine-driven dueling game for two players, with an impressive amount of hyphens for such a small box. For the first six rounds, each player begins their turn by adding a new spell from the central market to their list. Spells come in three types: they deal damage, give you more mana to use with other spells, or allow you to move the mana of your spells. Starting on turn seven, taking a new spell from the market is voluntary and can only be done if there is a spell that can be replaced.  You spend the rest of each turn distributing the mana cards from your hand between spells, deciding which ones you want to pay for and in what order. So far, that's standard stuff. Magic: The Gathering lawyers are sharpening their pencils as I type. The similarities are only superficial, though. Dueling? Yes. Mana to pay for spells? Yes. But Wizards of the Grimoire is much more concerned with timing. You could argue that it's a rhythm game if you wanted to, and to some extent I want to. ENGINE DESIGNER Years ago I was talking to a mechanical engineer who worked in a factory. His job every morning was to get the machines to run 180º out of phase with each other so that their sound waves would cancel each other out, making the factory floor quieter. That's essentially your job here, but you're trying to make the machine as loud as possible. In Wizards, timing is key, figuring out when it's best to pay for Spell X or Spell Y to synchronize it with Spell Z. When you pay for a spell, you do so by placing 1 to 5 mana cards on top of the spell card itself. At the start of each turn, you discard one mana from each of your spells, which cannot be reused until they are revealed. Furthermore, spells take effect at different times depending on when you cast them. Some activate the moment you discard that mana, and will do nothing more until they are purged and you pay for them again. Others are active as long as there is mana left on the card. There is a third kind, my favorite, that activates after the last mana is removed. It's hard to get all your spells in sync. Replay is rewarded with an increasingly refined sense of what to cast when. It's satisfying to avoid casting a spell that throws your opponent off their rhythm. Wizards of the Grimoire is easy to play. It's hard to play well. ALL HANDS ON THE DECK Wizards of the Grimoire is sure to appeal to Magic players, and they, in turn, will likely have great success introducing it to others. Magic is imbued with a long-term purpose and a constant need to level up. Wizards of the Grimoire feels like 90s Magic, with clean combos and minimal rules. Another plus: the only way to fail is either by playing badly or by making a conscious choice.  This is a great product. These are probably the nicest playing cards I've ever seen, with a sturdy material and a linen cover. After six or seven draws you won't even feel like the cards were touched. The box has also held up to a lot of travel. You get what you pay for in terms of product and design. A colleague pointed out that the game could have been released in a box half the size by combining the mana deck into the spell deck and adding mana power to each spell, rather than having a separate set of cards. However, this is the closest I can come to a complaint. Wizards of the Grimoire is definitely a stunning design. The artwork is textbook serious fantasy, but it's a good textbook serious fantasy. This game knows who it wants to appeal to, and it does so expertly. If the mechanics and theme appeal to you, you won't be disappointed...

SKULL OF SEDLEC GAME REVIEW In 1278, the abbot of the monastery in Sedlec, in what is now the Czech Republic, made a journey to the Holy Land. He returned with a small amount of earth from Golgotha, the site of Jesus of Nazareth’s crucifixion, and sprinkled it on the abbey’s cemetery. As word spread of the abbot’s pious act, the cemetery became a sought-after burial place, and soon tens of thousands of people were buried there, effectively requiring the cemetery to be expanded. Hundreds of years later, a new chapel was built on the site, and the remains found were kept in an ossuary. In the late 19th century, a woodcarver named František Rint was hired to sort through the piles of ancient bones, leading to the creation of what is now known as the Sedlec Ossuary. I know what you're thinking: the perfect premise for a light card game, right? Meet the Skulls of Sedlec. LET'S TAKE A CLOSE LOOK  Skulls of Sedlec is an 18-card mini-game from the wizards at Button Shy Games, and like many of their games, there's more to this game than meets the eye.  In the game Skulls of Sedlec, 2-3 players take on the role of František Rint and take turns drawing and placing cards into their own pyramid. Each card depicts 2 skulls of five different types (criminals, peasants, romantics, priests, and royalty). At the end of the game, players will score points based on the location of these skulls relative to each other. Criminals get points for being near priests. Villagers always get 1 point each. Romantics get points for being near each other. Priests receive points for each row of the pyramid they are in. Royals get points for having peasants and other royals below them in the pyramid.  On his turn, the player can choose one of three actions: Turn over the top card from two of the six center piles for drawing.  Take one card face up from one of the draw piles. Place a card from your hand into your pyramid. Please note that players have a hand limit of only two cards. In a two-person game, each player completes the game with a pyramid: four, three, two. In a three-person game, each player completes the game with a pyramid: three, two, one.  The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. CONCLUSIONS Towards the end of 2019, Button Shy Games launched a series of 18-card challenges. The goal was to showcase everything that could be done with just 18 standard-sized playing cards. In case you didn’t know, Button Shy’s signature feature is that all of their games have 18 cards. That might seem like a small amount of design space, but once they opened the gates, they were flooded with submissions – hundreds during the challenge! Skulls of Sedlec won the Create a Game Based on a Real-World Location contest in November, and it's a great example of smart game design and complex choices. Plus, the game is already available on Kickstarter as you read this review. Skulls of Sedlec is an exercise in simplicity. With just three actions and five different types of skulls, the focus is on the layout of your pyramid. You want to collect the right cards, but try not to have two cards in your hand if you can. Being stuck with two cards means you won't have the opportunity to collect a second Romance when your opponent turns it over. You'll be forced to play one of your cards from your hand first, which is bad because it means your opponent has the advantage; they could potentially collect two cards in a row. The illustrations in Skull Crypt may not win any awards, but they are very well drawn, with clear symbolism and rich colors. No one will confuse one skull with another, which is good because you will often be looking across the table to see what exactly lies in front of your opponents.  People with good memories may have a slight advantage in this game, as all card draws are public. But even that won't help you if your opponent just turns around and takes the card you were looking for. If you're already a fan of Button Shy Games' work, then I don't need to convince you how good 18-card games can be. In fact, their hit game Circle the Wagons is still one of my favorite games of 2017. Skull Crypt doesn't have the same level of difficulty as Circle the Wagons, but it's still a solid game that's worth your time!..

PRODUCT UPDATE Hello, friends! Over the past few days, we have received a lot of incredible games. So we are happy to share with you the latest news and updates in our store. Check out Lelekan-chik — there is a lot of interesting stuff there! There are so many new items that they simply cannot fit in one post :) Don't delay — the games are really cool and for every taste. Be the first to get them! FULL LIST OF UPDATES Your Mum In Knickers Hutan: Life In The Rainforest (HUTAN: Life In The Rainforest) Movie Lovers Game About Emotions Mythicals Catan Potion Explosion Cyclades: Legendary Edition Small World Regroup! Chicken Army Yokohama Return To Dark Tower Race To The Raft Dune: War For Arrakis Pikit Aqua: Ocean Biodiversity (AQUA: Biodiversity In The Oceans) Ticket To Ride: Paris GAME LIBRARY UPDATE  Jamaica is a bright and exciting game about pirate races around the island. Plan your route, collect loot, stock up on provisions and try to outrun your opponents. It is ideal for playing in a company and creates a real atmosphere of adventure.  Night Parade Of A Hundred Yokai is an atmospheric game with a unique visual style inspired by Japanese folklore. In it, players form their own parades of spirits, develop abilities, and compete for influence in the night world. Perfect for those looking for something original and deep. PROMOTIONAL ITEMS  Amygdala https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/amygdala-amygdala-ukr  Tiletum https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/tiletum-tilletum-anglukr  Camelot Market https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/igry-po-typu/card-games/rynok-kamelut-kameloot..

PRODUCT UPDATE Hello everyone! Over the past few days, we have received a lot of great games. Therefore, we are very pleased to inform you about the latest arrivals and updates of goods in our store. Get acquainted with the new products and what's new in Lelekan-chik. There are so many of them that we can't even fit them all here. Hurry up, the games are great and will satisfy all tastes, be the first to know) FULL LIST OF UPDATES The Pug Party (Ukrainian) Exploding Kittens 18+: Adult Edition (Exploding Kittens: NSFW) (ukr) Domino Kingdom (Kingdomino) (ukr) Carcassone (Ukrainian) Carcassonne for Kids (My First Carcassonne) (ukr) Codenames (Ukrainian) Codenames: Pictures (Ukrainian) Mavka: Between Two Worlds (Ukrainian) Dragomino (Ukrainian) Colonizers (Catan) (ukr) Poetry for Neanderthals (Ukrainian) The Quacks of Quedlinburg (Ukrainian) Herd Mentality (Ukrainian) Taco cat goat cheese pizza (ukr) Taco Hat Cake Gift Pizza (Ukrainian) Happy Salmon (Ukrainian) Sherlock: Fabian Essays (Sherlock: Ensayos Fabianos) (ukr) Paw Patrol: Heroes Of Adventure Bay (Ukrainian) Ya Ne Mafia (Ukrainian) SCHEDULE OF GAMING PLACES  Saturday 07.06 16:00 - 20:00, Pilots, 2 players Age 12+ FREE GAME LIBRARY  Sunday 08.06 18:00 - 20:00 Tiny Epic: Vikings, 1-4 players Age 14+ Games library at club rates.  Registration: By appointment, come with friends and family! Question: For additional information, call +380938247182. Come and enjoy a great time with Lelekan!..

TORRES BOARD GAME REVIEW  Torres was developed by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer (Tikal, Java, El Grande, Wandering Towers, Pueblo, etc.) and was first released in 1999. A year later, it won Games Magazine's Game of the Year award, as well as a minor award called Spiel des Jahres. The game of Torres, played over three short rounds, is about trying to outscore your opponents by expanding your castles upwards and outwards. Sounds simple enough, right? Let's put Torres on the table and see how he plays. PREPARATION Place the castle tiles on the board, placing individual castle tiles on the indicated squares. Players then place one of their Knights on an empty castle tile. The last player to place a Knight also places a King on an empty castle tile. (We'll come back to His Majesty later.) Before the first round begins, take a deck of ten action cards. Shuffle them and set them aside, face down. Finally, at the beginning of each round, collect a certain number of castle figures, depending on the number of players. After all, these castles will not build themselves. GAME PROCESS Each turn you have five action points (AP) that you can spend. The actions themselves and their costs are as follows: place another of your Knights on the board orthogonally next to any of your other Knights (2 AP); add a castle token to the castle (1 AP); move a Knight orthogonally one space (1 AP); move your token one space along the scoring track (1 AP); or deal yourself the top three action cards and choose one to keep. You then place the others back on the top or bottom of your deck, your choice (1 AP). Action cards allow you to perform one-time, rule-breaking actions. For example, one card lets you move a knight diagonally, another gives you seven actions this turn, and yet another lets you build a castle piece directly under a knight. Even better, from the perspective of your five action points per turn, playing an action card is a free action. FIRST THING Throughout the game, you'll need to do two things. The first is to expand your castles outwards and upwards. The reason for this is because of how the scoring system works: at the end of each round, you score points for the castles your knights occupy by multiplying the number of pieces that make up the base of your castle by the level your knight is on. So, if you increase the base of your castle to five pieces, but you're still on level one, you'll only get five (5 x 1) points. Expand your castle and move your knight to level three, and that same castle will now be worth 15 (5 x 3) points.  Of course, there are some limitations to building castles. While castle pieces can be diagonally adjacent, they can never be orthogonally adjacent. This would connect or merge two castles, which is not allowed. Also, the size of your castle base determines how high you can build it. If you have built your castle base to only three squares on the board, you cannot build higher than the third level. SECOND THING The second is to expand and invade. You don't win Torres just by building and scoring points in your starting castle. You'll need to bring a few extra knights onto the board and move them to adjacent empty castle pieces to start a new castle. Another option is to bring an extra knight onto the board and have him move to another castle. It turns out that these castles lack defenses, and the knights are all pacifists. You can move a knight into one of their castles (and they can do the same to you) and at least partially participate in the scoring.  You can spend action points to move a knight from the board to the first level of your opponent's castle—the one your opponent is building. This is because, in addition to moving one square orthogonally on the board, Knights can also move up one level per action point. (Say, from the board to the first level of a castle; from the second level of a castle to the third, etc.) Note that you can add castle pieces not only to the castle(s) you have started building, but also to any castle on the board. This comes in handy when you have invaded an opponent's castle and want to move up a level or two to increase your score for that castle. HIS MAJESTY, THE KING One castle you will definitely want to build and capture is the one where the King resides. If you have a Knight in the King's Castle at the end of the first round and you are both at the same level, then in addition to the standard castle point count, you also get an additional 5 points. After all the first round's calculations are complete, the player who finished last can move the King to another castle on any available level. At the end of the second round, if you are on the same level as the King in that castle, you will receive an additional 10 points. At the end of the third round, you will receive an additional 15 points. For the player in last place, strategically moving and placing the King is an important way to win back. If you can deny your opponents the opportunity to be in the same castle and on the same level as the King, you will be the sole winner of those nice bonus points. CONCLUSIONS Aside from the action cards, Torres is an abstract game, which is probably why I like it so much. Each of the three rounds begins with players receiving the same number of castle pieces and five action points per turn. The question is, what will everyone at the table do with those pieces and their action points? Given the action cards, while not required, they add an element of rule-breaking that I enjoy. (Unlike the gods cards in Santorini, which I skip every time I play.) In my last game, we each played a card in the final round at the right moment. Each one created an unexpected, point-winning move—the kind where you just nod your head in approval at a really good move (and then wait to make your own, equally unexpected and successful move). For those who may be concerned there is a large math aspect to Torres that may seem off-putting, rest assured the math is limited to the lower bound of standard multiplication and addition tables. The board also has a point tracker along the edge, making it easy to tally up points at the end of a round. Torres is an easy game to learn and plays fairly quickly. The board size and action point selection are large enough to make each game different, but intense enough to keep players from falling into analysis paralysis. While there is no direct interaction with the players, you will be paying attention to what your opponents are doing during their turns. Knowing when to build, when to add and move knights, and when to invade will require a balance between your five action points. You will need to constantly monitor your opponents' actions to make the best moves for your turn. There's something so satisfying about building your own castle, and then invading your opponent's castle to grab some much-needed extra points. Of course, it's not so satisfying when they crawl into your carefully constructed castle. But that's life, isn't it?..

INTRODUCTION  Terra Mystica has spawned numerous role-playing game contenders that attempt to emulate its unique blend of deterministic resource management and territory control. It even had its own "children": Gaia Project, Terra Nova, and several expansions.  Age of Innovation is an expanded Terra Mystica, but before I can serenade it, I need to give you a general overview of what makes the original so captivating. DELUXE CHESS PUZZLE  Terra Mystica is a game about world development. Each player plays as a faction associated with a specific type of terrain. This faction has two special powers: one they have at the start of the game, and the other is unlocked by building a specific building. Each player has several different types of buildings on the playing field, each of which, when built, gives the player additional income at the end of the round. They provide worker income, coin income, income from manipulating the priest track, a resource for manipulating the CHUBBS OF POWER, and additional asymmetrical tiles with bonuses that are dealt in turn order.  You as a player are locked into a specific terrain type, and you can't build your extremely valuable buildings without first terraforming the terrain (using your limited number of workers) to the type you need to build on. Additionally, each round will activate an achievement category that will award you points for completing certain tasks for that round. The aforementioned bowls of power also have a cool energy circulation system where you move a resource to perform actions with a boost. This leads to a very complex dance where every move counts. You have to balance building buildings and scoring points, taking territory from other players, while simultaneously cutting down your own and destroying your own economy. All of this is done without any hidden information or sudden pitfalls. In theory, the entire game could be calculated from start to finish, and the designers and players actually did so using computer simulations that (I think) still exist on BoardGameGeek. This is the essence of Terra Mystica . It is a game where you can lose on the first move, and if played perfectly, the right starting position will win you the game. Of course, most people don't play at this level, just like chess. It is fun to play, although it has a similar level of difficulty to chess, where even a small difference in a player's understanding can lead to a dramatic defeat. I say "possible" because it usually doesn't happen that way. People make mistakes, miscalculate, and take suboptimal steps. But the overwhelming feeling of making the right decision from the very first step is undeniable. Now, as a sequel/evolution, Age of Innovation doesn't fix this because there's nothing to fix. If we're playing a competitive game, I'm not really interested in trying to handicap since there are about 2 million other Eurogames that do this. ARCHITECT OF OWN DEFEAT  "Age of Innovation" is still Terra Mystica, as much of what made the original game so competitive and mentally taxing is still there. In true infomercial fashion—but wait! That's not all! In the version of Terra Mystica most commonly used by competitive groups, you get your faction, and depending on the map, you get a starting point value that is adjusted based on how competitive that faction can be on that map. Ultimately, the most important decision is where to start. Some places on the map are simply better for certain factions, and often some positions are improved by having other factions in or out of the game.  Age of Innovation also offers the same difficult choice of starting faction, AND ALSO another series of difficult decisions to evaluate. You see, you need to create your faction before making any moves on the board. Factions are made up of three things: terrain type, faction power, and faction-specific building. Players draft these components one at a time during preparation. You are responsible for choosing the best things to make your faction work well against all the things other factions are drafting and what you think they are going to do. This is an extremely difficult task that requires advance decision-making, and for beginners it can be a significant challenge in an already very difficult game. OTHER INNOVATIONS  Age of Innovation also adds a new way to score points: Innovation Tiles. These are tied to a new resource, books, which come in four colors. Books grant access to randomly assigned abilities that allow you to access/obtain the aforementioned tiles. These tiles often grant you a powerful bonus, permanent ability, or a huge surge of points if you meet their parameters. In a sense, this is a third victory point lane that was offered in the additional victory condition at the end of the game in the Terra Mystica: Fire & Ice expansion. You have to position yourself well to grab them at the right time, which is made more difficult by the fact that opponents are often competing for the same points. CONCLUSIONS For me, Age of Innovation is firmly in the top ten games of all time. It’s a complex process of making meaningful decisions, where you have to accurately assess what other players are capable of, correctly assess the type of play that will occur in a given session, and stay focused and adaptive to your opponent’s decisions. You can’t make mistakes or expect a well-organized catch-up mechanism or strategic balancing to correct your mistakes. It’s demanding, challenging, and beautiful. When I think of games that best illustrate the kinds of social experiences that this environment can bring, Terra Mystica tops the list, and Age of Innovation joins them without missing a beat...