Illusion is a card game for 2-5 players that tests your spatial thinking. The game was developed by Wolfgang Warsch, known for such hits as The Mind , Ganz Schön Clever and The Quacks of Quedlinburg . GAME PROCESS To start the game, a deck of 92 colored cards is placed face up on the table, one of the 12 arrow cards is turned over, and the top colored card from the deck is placed next to the arrow card on the table. The gameplay is very simple, you try to correctly place the new colored cards depending on how many colors of the arrow card it has. On your turn, you either take the top card from the stack of colored cards and place it in the row of cards where you think it should be, or you challenge the validity of the entire row. It's important to note that the top color card is already visible, so you know if it's easy to place before you make your choice.  When a player checks a row, all cards in the current row are flipped over so everyone can see their suit percentage. If the cards are not in ascending color percentage order for the current Arrow Card, the player who made the check wins the current Arrow Card (which gives 1 point). However, if all the cards were in the correct order, the card with the arrow goes to the player whose turn was immediately before the player who made the check. After the task is completed, all remaining color cards are removed and a new round begins with a new arrow and color card.  The game continues until one player receives three arrow cards. Once this happens, the game is over and that player is declared the winner. IMPRESSION  With such a simple game, players feel confident even before they start. After all, you just need to look at a few cards, how hard can it be? Well, it's more complicated than you might think. While some cases are obvious, there are others where the percentage difference is so small that it is very hard to tell. And when a line check could result in the other player getting one of the three arrow cards needed to win, you want to be sure of your decision. Considering the current state of the world, it's worth noting that this game can be played very easily in video chat. All players have the same information, so you only need one camera aimed at the playing area. With Illusion, Wolfgang Warsch has created a fast and simple game that almost anyone can play. I say almost anyone because there is one fatal flaw in the game's graphic design. For those with red-green color blindness, this game is almost unplayable. Just see how a row of colored cards will look to them.  But that's really my only gripe. While it certainly doesn't compare to The Mind or That's Pretty Clever, Illusion does exactly what it sets out to do. It's a quick and easy game that gives you the chance to tell your friends they're wrong. USEFUL LINKS Illusion on the BGG portal https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244995/illusion Illusion on the Game Theory portal https://www.tg.in.ua/boardgames/1393/illusion VIDEO REVIEWS ..

 Set in the west of the Carolingian Empire, Architects of the West Kingdom players take on the role of royal architects competing for favor and glory. Your workers gather resources, hire apprentices, and construct buildings, including the king's magnificent new cathedral. Throughout the game, the actions you take will affect your integrity; Do you remain honest and unassuming, working for the cathedral, paying your taxes and managing your debts more easily, or do you take advantage of the temptations found on the black market, easily accumulating scarce resources while destroying your reputation? In architects, the choice is yours.  Architects of the West Kingdom is a worker placement game where players take turns sending one of their twenty identical workers to any of a dozen locations in the city. Not enough money? Send Aled—as I like to call them—to the Silversmith. Need a stone? Jacinth can run to the Quarry. You will use the collected materials to build landmarks and contribute to the construction of the Royal Cathedral, receiving any short- or long-term benefits associated with your work. Every time the player wants to build, he sends a worker to the Guild, where he will remain until the end of the game. If you build a landmark from your hand, you pay the appropriate resources and play the card in your play area, receiving any immediate bonus it might give. If you contribute to a cathedral, you pay the cost associated with the next tier of the cathedral track and move your token up the row. Each level is worth an increasing number of points and has a limited number of seats available. Players cannot work on a cathedral if the next tier is completely full and there is only room for one on the last tier. Competition for those 20 points can be fierce. CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGE. PART 1 This is all standard issue with worker placement games, but Architects differ in a few ways. Worker placement often limits each field to one meep and uses a circular structure where players remove their workers from the board every few turns. In Architects, you can't block other players in most locations, and workers stay in place until they're forcibly removed. This is to your advantage because more of your workers in one location means more benefits for you. If you send Morgan to join Jacinth in the Quarry, you get two stones this turn. Whether you need your own workers or someone else has more of a presence in one location than you'd like, you can use the Town Center to bring people together. Your own employees are returned to your stocks, ready to go back to work, while you hold your rivals' subordinates captive. The world of architects is unprincipled, and you can make all sorts of slanderous accusations about the business practices of your opponents. When you turn them in to the local garrison a few turns later, they'll be arrested on charges of impropriety, and you'll receive a reward of one coin per head. If your own employees are accused of wrongdoing, you can get them fired, no questions asked. FRIENDS, FRIENDS, FRIENDS, I DEFINITELY HAVE FRIENDS Disciples are the common thread that runs through all three Western Kingdom games. At the Workshop, you can hire one of the eight Apprentice Cards available, which grant you permanent abilities and allow you to build certain types of landmarks. These abilities can vary widely, covering everything from material bonuses to additional actions only available to you. Each student can offer their own path to victory, and the game shines in finding combinations that go well together. The apprentice deck that comes with the game is generous - not to mention if you get all the mini-expansions like I did - and helps add a lot of variety to later games.  A quick note on this: The Age of Artisans expansion introduces a training step where players, in reverse turn order, obtain one of the available apprentices from the workshop before starting the game. Designer Shem Phillips said in an interview that he regrets not including this rule in the base game, and even though I don't have Artisans, I use this option. WANT TO BUY A SUNCLOCK? The Black Market, a collection of three spaces in the lower left square of the board, offers easy access to a selection of other expensive actions and rare goods. Instead of paying four coins to hire an apprentice and two of them going to taxes, why not pay two coins under the table and hire any apprentice you want? Why waste two turns sending workers down the mine to get one lousy piece of gold "the fair way", whatever that means, when you can pay three coins to rip out two bars now, and we'll throw in some wood and rocks while you're here ?  Black Market workers remain there until all three slots are filled, triggering a Black Market reset. All Black Market workers are rounded up and sent to the Garrison, and any player with three or more workers in prison loses power. Also, the player with the most workers in the prison takes a debt, which subtracts two points if not paid at the end of the game, but rewards one honesty if paid. The Black Market items have been replaced with new offerings and three locations are available again.  Keep in mind that the goods here are not just bargains. To the left of the field is the Virtue track, which tracks your reputation throughout the game. Working on the cathedral increases your honesty, while using items offered on the black market lowers it. There is a balance here. The black market is the easiest place to get the rare materials you need to work on the cathedral, but you can't shop there if your reputation is too high, which means it will take longer to progress through the cathedral than if you were a bit bad. On the other hand, if your reputation is too low, you cannot work on the cathedral, the best way to increase your reputation. Do too much of either and the other slips out of reach. The Track of Virtue encourages players to play a variety of strategies throughout the game, but more than that, it gives Architects of the Western Kingdom a great and immersive sense of narrative. CHANGES PART 2 The net effect of all this preparation is a staffing game where you have to pay a little more attention to what everyone else is doing. Not only are you trying to figure out when to build, when it's safe to go black market, or when you should do everything you can to break your workers out of prison, but you also have to keep track of what apprentices your opponents have recruited and the action spaces that will benefit them as a result. Repeatedly going out of your way to disrupt others won't win the architect game, but doing it enough to keep your opponents from running away will. MISCELLANEOUS The choice to make spaces both disposable and reusable is exciting. This eliminates two problems associated with the placement of workers. Player interaction in this genre usually boils down to blocking your opponents or having to think on your feet as a result of losing the space you need. The most unrelenting worker placement games—I'm referring to Russian Railways in particular—offer such a shortage of seats that every move is a knife to someone's heart. Handier titles like Viticulture give you a special worker that can't be blocked, or an action space that lets you copy anywhere else on the board. In these games, much of the tension comes from figuring out when to use that safety net. Architects find surface tension when you want to build, when you want to reset the Black Market, and when you have to stop one of your opponents from getting too many workers in a certain location. The main tension lies in the choreography of your movements on the paths of the Cathedral and Virtue. CONCLUSIONS Accessible yet with subtle challenges that will reward more experienced players, interactive without any penalties or over-confrontation, and richly reminiscent of the world through both its art and mechanics, Architects of the West Kingdom is a stunning game. That's a huge amount of content for such a small box, and it's a great choice for introducing people who are new to board games to the medium-difficulty process. I must note that Architects includes a very good solo mode that manages to convey a lot of the feeling of playing against a human opponent. The bot can also be used to add a third opponent to a two-player game, which I highly recommend. In the end, the Western Kingdom series is a great entry-level game if you want to transition people to more difficult games. The iconography in Architects carries over to Paladins of the Western Kingdom and Viscounts of the Western Kingdom, two much harder—and, I would argue, much better—games. Having familiar characters as a guide can make it a lot easier for more people who are used to light games to dig in. USEFUL LINKS Architects of the West Kingdom on the BGG portal https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/236457/architects-west-kingdom Architects of the West Kingdom on the Game Theory portal https://www.tg.in.ua/boardgames/74/architects-west-kingdom VIDEO REVIEWS ..

 Golem is a complex euro like Grand Austria Hotel and Lorenzo il Magnifico (both in the 3.2-3.3 range, according to the BGG difficulty rating), and it shows when you're trying to get the game ready. So what is a Golem ? At its core, the game is a complex engine builder built around the legend of a rabbi who reanimates a clay statue into a golem to protect the people of Prague in the 16th century. While the backstory and weirdly dark box art didn't draw me in, the promise of building an interconnected engine between the various economies and tracks piqued my interest. There are different tracks. There are ultimate goals. There are multipliers that are used to increase the points, and while there is scoring during the game, more than half of the points are earned at the end of the game. There are figures of students that can be moved. There are Golem figurines that also move. There is a rabbi figurine that needs to be placed and activated! And that's before you even start adding artifact items to your personal gamepad along with your library tokens, orbs, a synagogue to store said orbs… there's just so much. (The rules contain EIGHTEEN separate steps to set up the game.) Now, if you're a fan of Vital Lacerda games like On Mars and Lisboa, you're probably thinking what I was thinking when I read the 20 page rulebook: Is this game as hard as the Lacerda games? The answer is definitely yes. This also means that if you like heavy combo-after-combo games, I think you'll be right on your plate playing Golem. 4 rounds and only 12 actions gave me the feeling that it would be hard and very strategic, but short; as it turned out, the three-man game took about 3 hours after the rules were explained, and included a good mix of strategic gameplay and forced change of tactics due to the distribution of marbles in each round. WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THE GOLEM? ALMOST ALL! The combos in this game, the big point where you chain together solid moves, it's awesome. I mean, fantastic. I had a turn where I performed an action to activate multiple of my Golems at once. I did this move by doing the Golem action to buy a 5 knowledge discount book (Knowledge is one of the resources in the game) which is placed in one of the columns on my player board along with the 3 other books I already have to give me a one time bonus that will be doubled because I've already activated another power… just describing all of this and rethinking how I did this move is mind boggling. All 3 players made at least a couple of such moves in the third and fourth rounds of the game; Golem is slow to develop, but opens up the potential for late moves that will get nods (or scowls) from other players at the table. Golem definitely has some magical moments that set it apart from other games, from building its engine to ending a little early… in other words, just in time! I also liked the turn order. As in most games, going first in Golem is good, especially if you want to take one black ball to move 2 students one division on any of the 3 lanes, or if you want to take a certain rabbi action. I also like staying last in Golem, especially since you can run into a situation where other players are doing both of their orb actions. Now, on your second of three actions in a round, you need to take a ball or a Rabbi action, and you can block the Rabbi action and wait for the ball action, since that zone is blocked for anyone who has already taken 2 balls. I liked that playing Grand Austria Hotel—and understanding how the "strength" of an action relates to the number of balls left in any row—helped me plan my move. The book market in Golem was fun, buying the right cards was just great. Then placing these cards in certain columns to activate everything in the column can give a lot of resources that can replace a good revenue engine if played correctly. The quality of the game is excellent, although I wish the design team had used wooden components or metal coins instead of cardboard ones. There are many ways to win in Golem and the game seems to direct players to specialize in one or two of the three main tracks in the game (Research, Artifacts, Golems). There's a lot to do, but even though it's a tough experience, the game doesn't get boring once you start playing game after game. WHAT DID NOT LIKE? For some reason, balls just don't work for me. Cubes? I love dice and I still don't know why they didn't use dice like in other games by these designers. The iconography in Golem is heavy. As with the Alma Mater, you'll need to keep a manual handy to explain the new round cards or what bonuses are on the finished Golem body parts. For my third or fourth game, the iconography did not raise any questions, but it is not as intuitive as in other similar games. Topic? I still really don't know why a themeless Euro used 16th century Prague with Golems - Golems that are possibly better killed thanks to the "Kill the Golem" mechanic!! And the idea that the orbs are eyeballs that go into slots on the players board… I don't know, that theme just didn't work for me. EXPERIENCE FROM THE GAME Despite some of the quibbles, Golem is a great game. If you're looking for a tougher version of some of the classic games these designers brought us, Golem, which, like Barrage, has a 4.0 out of 5.0 on BGG, will test every player. I look forward to future installments!..

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 Many board games attempt—often in the rule book—to tell a story. Some go that extra mile to create one or more deep worlds where the game takes creative form. Still others include a special digital program to tell that story along with a set of accents and sound effects along with an atmospheric musical score. Only one game I've seen has a cute microcomic about the random trouble of receiving a diplomatic gift in the form of a very hungry panda.  Takenoko , the creation of Antoine Bose ( 7 Wonders , Tokaido , Ghost Stories ), tells just such a story, immersing people in the magical scene of a Japanese imperial bamboo garden. The gardener, instead of calmly doing his work, has to fight with a magical large-sized eating machine.  In this game, localized in Ukraine by Geekach Games , players try to manage the location and development of a beautiful bamboo garden while satisfying the voracious appetite of a giant panda. The Chibis expansion even adds Mrs. Panda and a growing family for everyone's favorite black and white creature. The only thing missing is live streaming from the giant panda camera). The comic opening sets the stage for a carefree, magical experience that might even inspire a haiku. Did it interest you? I believe so. BAMBOO SPROUTS During training, players receive personal game tablets to store various components and mark selected actions. A tiled pond is placed in the center of the table to prepare a garden, and the figures of the Gardener and the Panda are placed in this pond, presumably to cool their feet. During the game, players look at three types of tasks. They are presented in the form of three separate stacks of objective cards. Players are dealt one card of each type at the start to start a fruitful garden of creativity and pave the way for victory points: Landscaping by placing hexagonal tiles next to an existing garden Irrigation of the land by laying water channels from the central pond Growing 3D bamboo shoots in irrigated areas for a cute panda to feast on  Each turn, players begin by rolling a weather die and applying its effects, which represent a kind of meteorological blessing: a solar bonus action, a rain-soaked bamboo growth, a windy duplicate action, a lightning-fast panda bamboo snack, cloud land enhancement tokens, or any action. Usually, players perform two different actions out of five possible: Take three plot tiles and place one in the garden Take one irrigation channel, use it immediately or save it for later Move the gardener to another area to grow bamboo Move the Panda to another area to eat a piece of bamboo Draw one target card from the deck of your choice There are a number of features that accompany these actions to both help and hinder would-be Zen gardeners. The Gardener and the Panda must move in straight lines, which in a six-tile garden means that not every tile is available at any given time. The gardener's work is effective not only on his current tile, but also on every adjacent tile of the corresponding color. Land improvements include enclosures that prevent the pandas from eating, fertilizer that doubles growth, and a well that provides irrigation without connecting to a pond. They can be placed at any time to change the look of the garden. If a player has completed any of their objective cards after completing their actions, they may place them as completed. The game continues in this way until a certain number of objectives are reached according to the number of players. The first to reach this number receives a small blessing of points from the Emperor when the scoring begins. The points then depend entirely on the value of the completed objective cards. If there is a tie, the winner is the player who fed the panda the best.BABYS The Chibis expansion adds Miss Panda to further frustrate and hinder the Gardener's efforts. As it turned out, the female is not so hungry for bamboo. When it is moved to a Panda space instead of eating bamboo, players receive a Panda token from the supply that matches the color of the tile. Each of the limited number of Pandenyat tokens carries victory points and gives an irrigation token, an enhancement token, or the ability to exchange an objective card.  On the other hand, Chibis also adds a number of unique garden tiles that lead to a season of abundance. The second pond makes watering easier. Kamis tile grows all three colors of bamboo, creating endless possibilities for any type of target. Sacred hills help each tile of a certain color in the garden grow, regardless of location. The Gardener's Hut provides more variety and control when selecting objective cards. With the addition of the Panda family, Chibis adds a whole new way to earn points. By improving the garden, the expansion puts the land on anabolic steroids, the sprouting bamboo is almost out of control; and because Panda is distracted, he doesn't eat as often. The poor gardener must have lost his roof! Is there no end to this unbearable madness?! Everyone knows that sometimes expansion is not a good idea. Chibis aren't mandatory by any means, but they do allow you to explore a wild "What if..." scenario by gently nudging some of the game's features. I found this to be a refreshing twist on a game we already love. VISUAL  Takenoko , from top to bottom, is visually captivating on the table. The grounds are a beautiful combination of green, pink and yellow with vertically cut wooden bamboo shoots. The garden grows wildly, starting with a small pond to engulf the table in a colorful landscape. The cards feature shades of blue, red and purple to add a spectrum of splashes. The Gardener and the Panda are painted miniatures of the comic book characters. Regardless of the outcome of the game, it's impossible to walk away from a session without admiring the aesthetics. In fact, you'll probably be inclined to take a picture of the garden at some point during the game.  I already mentioned the comic, but I have to revisit the concept because Takenoko boasts some of my favorite rules. This is the only book in our collection that the kids fight over when the game starts. The illustrations are cute and humorous and immediately draw players into the game's narrative. Throughout the book, the gardener's frustrations come to life as he learns the rules and struggles with his huge, pleasant friend. The subject matter really fascinates me and these characters have personality.  Takenoko 's base game is a gem. In a two-player game, the speed of the party is insane, often limiting decision-making on fast-track objective cards to nine cards. Three and four players lay out the entire garden and provide more strategy. On the more critical side, any game that contains non-reward contract cards is prone to being trashed. In practice, this means spending late-game turns desperately picking up random objective cards—instead of making fruitful moves, mind you—trying to get into conditions that already exist in order to rack up points quickly. Takenoko doesn't hurt to penalize cards in hand at the end of the game.  Over the years, there has been a lot of commentary floating around regarding the distribution of points on goal cards. The core game prioritizes panda feeding over everything else — especially the objective cards — which can be frustrating for those who like to seek balance, though I never thought the imbalance broke the game. Chibis presents two variants of the rules that brilliantly bridge the gap on the way to general happiness. One suggests banning pandas from feeding on the basal segments of bamboo shoots, which poses several obstacles to a strategy of targeted eating. The second grants a bonus for each full set of three objective cards, suddenly making these previously finicky objective cards very important. Although the expansion was a recent addition to our collection, this second rules mod has been in the game since we first heard about it, partly because I like to reward balanced play. The addition of tons of baby pandas certainly changes the physical landscape of the game, but the new scoring path only sees a fixed amount of points available on the table, which sometimes turns out to be the best actions without delaying garden beats. It only takes one try at the Babies, Babies and All Babies strategy to realize that victory does not await those who neglect the core game. If you're a frequent visitor to BoardGameGeek (BGG), you know that every game page has a list of game mechanics. Dice roll, tile placement, set collection, and other board terms help seasoned hobbyists describe the game experience. Takenoko has a whopping eleven mechanics. Eleven! There's a surprising amount going on in this lively garden, but not to the point of being overwhelming. The mechanics fit the theme perfectly and I find it has all the relaxation that The Gardener comic seems to want! The broad yet light collection of mechanics makes Takenoko a great game to introduce young and new gamers to the ins and outs of the hobby without blowing their minds. From opening the box to testing the finished product, Takenoko immerses the player in the stakes of what's possible in a more challenging version with modular maps, changing landscapes, resource management, and some nice low-consequence decisions. This is a game that shows that you can still do this in board games.  Despite ten years and thousands of competing games, I'd still say that Takenoko is the peach of a family game. The theme, aesthetics and gameplay are skillfully combined to create a playful and memorable experience. Like many of Bose's designs, Takenoko is relatively light-hearted fun whose greatest gift is the time spent together in another world without leaving the table. USEFUL LINKS Takenoko on the BGG portal https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70919/takenoko Takenoko: Chibis on BGG..

 I've had my eye on Lands of Galzyr for a long time. Basically, it's an advanced book-game like Sleeping Gods and Tales of the Arabian Nights. You just don't need to flip through the pages of a thick volume here - one click in the online application is enough for the text to appear on the screen. The gameplay is very similar: you move around the map and immerse yourself in various stories. Many other story-driven games can't decide which is more important to them: gameplay or story. Lands of Galzyr stands out in this regard because it focuses entirely on story, strongly rejecting many board game elements. There are no complex combat mechanics here. There is no possibility to create various characters. There are no complex combinations, no complex rules. From a logical point of view, it sounds terrible, but in practice it turns out to be a very easy to lay out and assemble board with a living world full of exciting adventures, from which I cannot tear myself away. The absence of complex mechanics and the application perfectly integrated into the game removes almost all obstacles between you and the story being told. The closest analog to Lands of Galzyr is the game books, but Lands of Galzyr has more freedom of action. A whole world opens up for you to explore. THE WORLD OF GALZIR The gameplay is extremely simple: you move your character (an anthropomorphic animal) to a couple of cells and then read a few paragraphs of text describing what adventure your character got into. Periodically, you need to pass checks on the dice. Here, in fact, are all the main mechanics. But the strength of Lands of Galzyr (as in the previous game from Snowdale Design - Dawn of the Peacemakers) is a well-developed setting and an exciting narrative that makes you get attached to the fictional world and keep playing again and again. It is very interesting to read here. Immersion in the story is also facilitated by the application, which removes the typical for similar games from the need to tediously flip pages until you find the desired paragraph. Here, nothing distracts you from the story. The Lands of Galzyr setting is very elaborate, since this is not the first game about what is happening in the world of Daimyria; there were others before her, starting with Dale of Merchants, one of the best deckbuilders in the world. As in other Daimyria games, here each species of animal has its own character and distinctive features; this is evident in every character you meet in Lands of Galzyr. Not only do you help them, but you also unwittingly become attached to them. QUEST SYSTEM Although Daimyria is open world, the presence of quest mechanics makes it steep like the characters in Darling I Shrunk the Children. You always have a quest or an indication of where to go. On the one hand, you won't have to wander around aimlessly. On the other hand, it prevents you from freely exploring the world and seeing all its sights. Which is disappointing considering how big the setting is here. However, apart from this point, I can name only one drawback of Lands of Galzyr: weak character development. The fact is that it has a leveling cap that you reach pretty early in the game. After that, you continue to pump, but you almost never exceed the ceiling. So, while the adventures themselves are amazing, your character usually doesn't change at all after them. Sure, Lands of Galzyr emphasizes an awesome story, but I still would have liked to see more character development. THE WORLD IS CHANGING As a reward for completed quests, you receive various rewards depending on its result. Some of the rewards are new quests that are placed at the bottom of the quest deck. After a few games these quests will hit the mountain and you can take them. So from game to game the world around you changes a little under the influence of the decisions you make and the dice you roll. It is also worth noting the mechanics of time - days and months. Each game comes in a new month, and each game round is a new day of the week. I'm not sure yet if this affects the story from the app in any way, but it adds a sense of time passing, which is atmospheric. In general, Lands of Galzyr is a beautiful board of its kind, which took the risk to bet purely on a great plot and did not lose. Most likely, its simple rules and slick gameplay will attract you, as it did me, and you will not be able to tear yourself away from the adventures of the inhabitants of Galzir...

 On your turn in The Castles of Tuscany, you lay out region cards, disrupt and lay out region token tiles, or spend cards to place region tokens on your personal board. For this, you get an immediate bonus based on the color of that token and a point if you finish filling an area of that color. Cards and tiles have eight suits, and to place a tile you need to spend two cards of the same suit, with two cards of any suit acting as jokers. So to place a blue tile, you need to spend two blue cards, a blue card and a matching pair of cards - or any two matching pairs of cards. The eight available region tiles are randomly selected and replaced randomly from the player's personal tile supply. You may or may not flip the color your opponent wants! When someone has placed a third of their tiles, players score points by adding all of their current green points to the secondary red track. This step will happen again when someone places the second third of their tiles again, and again when someone places all of their tiles. This means that the points you score in the first third of the game will be added to your total points three times, so don't be lazy. You start the game with one of five bonus actions, and each time you place a red city tile on your regional board, you change your bonus action to another. These tiles allow you to use more cards, have more tile rooms in reserve, or modify certain color bonuses. These tiles give you ways to customize (customize) your building capabilities.  Your starting layout affects your possible further growth and bonuses, although at the same time you are dependent on the randomness of cards and tile flips and, of course, not the random actions of your opponent. In this game, you will not be able to win with any special plan, because the tiles you need may not drop or, worse, the opponents may take them from you, forcing you to choose a different path to victory. Players also compete for color bonuses, being rewarded if all color areas on the board are covered. These bonuses are given to the first and second players. But the trick is that there won't be enough tiles for everyone to cover every color, so you'll have to keep track of who takes what. Your starting layout also affects this matchup, and if possible you can finish one color and then the other, getting a double color bonus for doing so. In five of our games, the player who was ahead in the first third of the game remained the winner until the end of the game, but in our sixth game, this no longer happened. And I think it's because we've gotten better at both building our own game engines and understanding who wants what and thus keeping someone from scoring and complicating those early points...

 Note : the game is complex and it is not easy to describe it in words. However, I will try to do a review as it is worth it. If you're interested in Hegemony, I'd highly recommend taking a look at Heavy Cardboard's recent stream showing the main gameplay elements; this is better to see with your own eyes than in text format. So, let's begin. Hegemony (or more precisely, Hegemony: Lead You Class to Victory) is a new kickstarter project from Hegemonic Project Games, a company new to the market, created specifically for the launch of Hegemony. According to the Kickstarter page, the company has a lofty goal to "create flooring that inspires people and helps them learn more about the world around them." In particular, Hegemony tries to connect the world of board games with politics and economics.  It cannot be said that this is the first attempt of its kind; there are already a lot of political and/or economic issues. However, Hegemony differs in that the players are asymmetric factions competing with each other within the same state, and not just abstract competitors (say, merchant guilds or political parties). Players take on the roles of the working class, middle class, capitalists, or the state itself. A couple of games from Leder Games are mentioned here: "Root" and "Vast" - also asymmetrical games with active interaction between factions. You can partially mention the games of the COIN series, but in Hegemony there is no direct conflict, unlike the examples listed above. The struggle is political and competitive. Each group tries to become the most successful by gaining the most victory points.  The methods of achieving victory vary greatly. The working class seeks to consume goods and form trade unions. The middle class also tends to consume goods, but they also get rewards for owning companies and exporting goods. Capitalists get almost all the rewards for accumulating capital.  As for the state, it seeks to please everyone; its method of obtaining PO depends on its reputation (legitimacy) in the eyes of other factions, with only the two lowest reputations of the three being considered. All factions can also gain PO by promoting national policies that are beneficial to them. And this is where the game turns from just a complex economic euro into something special. The field has a policy scale with seven tracks that change the rules of the game. For example, one of the tracks determines the minimum wage that companies are forced to pay. Another determines the amount of taxes; yes, there are taxes in the game and they have to be calculated every round. Actually, most players will have to calculate two types of taxes: on their business and on their income. The third controls foreign trade, including the fee (or lack thereof) for imports when buying goods from a foreign market. Other tracks determine how many state-owned companies can be in the game, how much the state takes for health care and education (these are the resources that the middle and working class consume for social security, as well as to change the quantitative and qualitative composition of their workforce). There is even an immigration track that determines how often new workers appear in the game.  All of these mechanics may seem like a scary cracker, but in practice they are the main source of conflict in the game. Take, for example, the painful issue of public health care. As a rule, the player for the working class wants to achieve cheap or free health care, because he needs it for PO and for the growth of the worker population. Capitalists naturally want to make it expensive: partly because cheap health care is financed by high taxes for capitalists, and partly in order to make more profit on the domestic market from their private health care. The middle class may support the former or the latter depending on whether it seeks to sell or buy health care services. As for the state... it's not easy here. If health care is cheap, the government gets more revenue through taxes and also gets a PO every time someone buys health care from them. But if it becomes too cheap, the state can go bankrupt or waste all the resources that may be needed in the event of a crisis. And it all boils down to a basic production-consumption engine: you send workers to various businesses, and they produce goods. However, the basic engine also has its own nuances, due to which strategies are formed.  Yes, the game does not limit you to the standard "1 worker = 1 action". Each player has a hand of 8 cards and they take turns playing one card for each of the 5 game rounds. When played, they either activate the special action listed on the card, or discard it to play a standard action: open a business, place some workers, arrange a vote to change one of the aforementioned policy tracks. A total of 6 actions can be played per round, leaving 2 cards for the next round. Also, only two of the four factions have workers, and only three of the four factions regularly do business.  Capitalists have the most productive businesses. They can also mechanize them to further increase production. However, they do not have their own workers, so they have to rely on middle or working class workers. Capitalists have several ways to temporarily "freeze" the worker in the business they want, but otherwise they are forced to compete with the businesses of the middle class and the state. The middle class has both workers and businesses. The latter are not as productive as capitalists, but do not depend on other players: owner-employees do not demand payment and control their own production. They can also hire workers from the working class, but it is not easy for them to offer competitive wages. Also, middle-class workers can work for the business of capitalists or the state. Public businesses are less efficient than the private sector, but instead offer higher wages, so it's easier for them to hire workers. However, the state can open a maximum of 3 businesses unless it achieves changes on the relevant policy track. In addition, it is very difficult for the state to expand business without risking bankruptcy (in which case the IMF comes in and changes all policies, which can have a devastating effect). In my experience, the state is constantly at risk of bankruptcy. As for the working class, they don't have their own businesses (apart from cooperative farms, which can only be brought into play with an action card - more on that below). Therefore, they have to work for the rest of the factions to make a living. However, they will prefer the job that offers the most favorable conditions. In addition, the working class has the means to force the rest to raise wages (through strikes) and to achieve full employment (through demonstrations).  All this usually leads to a situation where the middle and working class compete for well-paid jobs for the state and at the same time are forced to cooperate to prevent the capitalists from getting far ahead with their most efficient production. The state is trying to produce more resources, which are necessary to solve crises and increase its reputation (legitimacy), but if you make ineffective moves, you can go bankrupt. The middle class and capitalists also have reasons to cooperate, for example, to achieve lower taxes, and the middle and working classes to jointly reduce immigration (unlike capitalists who seek to achieve a regular influx of easily exploited workers). In this aspect, Hegemony is most similar to COIN: alliances are also formed and destroyed during the game - depending on the situation on the field and the balance of power between the players.  The game also has fierce competition for resources. Capitalists can (and often do) sell goods on the foreign market, removing them from the game. This can be very profitable, but requires action. Capitalists can also put them up for sale to other factions; then the buyer will spend the purchase action. The working class needs to consume welfare-enhancing goods, but as the population grows (and it's growing fast), it becomes more and more expensive. In addition, at the end of each round, the level of well-being drops slightly, so more and more funds will have to be invested to maintain well-being. The middle class can both sell goods and consume, but with less efficiency (they produce fewer goods, and their level of well-being falls twice as fast).  The state does not consume goods, but it is interested in a stable flow of goods from other factions for its own well-being. To do this, you can either suggest that others buy cheap or free medical services and/or education, or spend goods on crisis solutions, which can bring many programs. Each round of the game, two event cards appear; if the crises pointed to them are not allowed, it will undermine the legitimacy of the state, which promises less influence and less software. The game also has fierce competition for policy tracks. If the indicator on the track is "correct" (corresponds to the interests of the faction), it will bring it VP at the end of the game. Also, POs give a proposal and successful voting. Voting is done by drawing cubes from a bag, and the player can spend to get more cubes in the bag (hello, 1960: Making of a President). However, if all 4 players participate in the vote, things get a little more complicated: before the dice are drawn, each player must announce whether they are going to vote "for" or "against". Players can also make bets blindly by spending an influence resource; the results are summarized by the results drawn from the bag. Moreover, the state can influence the voting results only by spending influence — it does not have voting cubes. The winning side's cubes are reset, as are any spent influence, and the loser's cubes are returned to the bag, balancing out the effect of randomness..

 I have to admit that I am not indifferent to games in the skirmish genre. Since Super Fantasy Brawl came out on Kickstarter, I was ready to play it a lot. I tried playing Warhammer Underworlds for a while and enjoyed it, but was put off by the sheer number of deck options and not having anyone on hand to play competitive matches. Underworlds was definitely an entry-level game for Games Workshop, but Unmatched and Funkoverse are entry-level games for everyone and are great for offering a card or cube skirmish. Super Fantasy Brawl retains the entry-level feel while adding a bit more depth in the long run. The game uses a clever card system with small decks of six cards for each hero. So let's grab our champions and dive into the game. I LOVE WHEN YOU ARE CONSTANTLY IN A STRUGGLE First of all, let me state up front that I have the Kickstarter kit, but I have reworked this review for the main box. The main differences are a lot more champions and component upgrades. While the neoprene mats and plastic tokens are nice to have, the cardboard counterparts are durable and look great. The miniatures set – a purely aesthetic update – will also be available at retail separately. Just remember my greed when looking at the photos! The retail edition includes 6 champions, with three more available as separate sets. The great thing about this is, firstly, the extremely reasonable price and also the variety in the box. Many other games in the skirmish genre only give a "small" idea of the full gameplay, and therefore you will have to purchase new characters for the full experience. Super Fantasy Brawl is different. The games are played in a 3 champion vs. 3 champion format, so you get the full game in the base box. Surprisingly, the variety in the game is quite large. This is due to the fact that each champion is an individual, and not part of a faction or "squad" that he is supposed to represent. So you'll need time to try all the combos the base box offers, and even adding one new champion will add a lot of variety! A FIGHT IS POSSIBLE WITH ME Now that we've made sure you're getting a more than decent price, let's dive into the mechanics. There are some really good moments here that really take Super Fantasy Brawl to the next level. First, each champion receives a deck of six cards. This deck is divided into two cards of each of the three suits: red, yellow, and blue. Red symbolizes destruction, yellow - creation, blue - manipulation. Each player has a token of each color, which he flips over to take actions on his turn, and sometimes off-turn. The main use of the token is to play a card of the appropriate suit, giving you a total of up to three actions per turn. A token of any color can be used to move 2 steps, and each token has one step and a specific action. For example, red allows you to move once and deal one unblockable damage. There are about a dozen key terms, but they are easy to learn and fully explained at the end of the rules. After one game you will know and learn most of them. Most cards will allow you to attack or buff a friend or foe!  But it is not only about beating your opponents as hard as possible. With a well-thought-out goal system, positioning will be extremely important. At the beginning of the game, two targets appear, and then, after each player takes their turn, they move down the row one place - and another is added. As you move down, their value will vary between 0 and 2 victory points. You can also earn a point by defeating an opponent's champion. It only takes 5 points to win, so you can set up some massive combos, but you have to hit the objective early in your turn to win! This means that the other player has a whole turn to try to disrupt your plans. In one game, the two goals were "have at least two of your champions in trap hexes" and "have at least two champions leveled up". My opponent was determined to win the game because at the start of his next turn he would still have one of those objectives! A single character attack would have been enough for me to knock out one of his leveled champions and bring him back to normal, but they weren't even close to the mark. Looking through my cards, I noticed that I could sneak through an opposing champion, picking him up along the way and dropping him next to another champion with attack cards. The day was saved! Or at least their victory was delayed. This has happened at least once in every game of Super Fantasy Brawl I've played. Combinations like these make for battle stories you'll tell anyone who will listen and remember long after the plastic and cardboard have been put away. PLAY HOW YOU WANT Figuring out how each champion works is pretty simple, as each has just 6 cards and a specific style. Once you get to know some cards, you'll be using keywords like "planning" (putting a card from your hand to the top of the deck) and burning the deck to get the cards and combos you need. While there is success in shuffling these cards, you always know the card you need is nearby. After that, the battle is determined by the characteristics of the cards. This is where your off move comes into play. Each champion has one "reaction" card that can be played for any champion your opponent attacks. She can cancel damage, deal damage, resurrect you, and more. The downside is that you still have to flip a token of the appropriate color, giving you one less action on your turn. Losing one action is not always serious, but it can completely destroy your plans. Super Fantasy Brawl is a game where you will never feel like you lost. Even if you lose 4:0, you always have a chance to turn the situation around. Champions also differ from each other. This creates a great synergy that you can discover for yourself. Do you have a slow tank? Use one of the powerful heroes to launch the ego across the battlefield alongside the enemy! But remember that you must be focused on achieving goals by the beginning of your next turn! CONCLUSIONS I have a bit of a crush on Super Fantasy Brawl. It's not just one of the best skirmish games I've played, it's one of the best games I've played. The gameplay is straightforward and fun, and I discover new synergies or potential combos every time I play. Each new champion increases variety because it can be added to any team. The game only has one arena, but I haven't gotten bored of it yet. Maybe it's because you spend most of your time bouncing off walls and statues, dealing extra damage to your opponents. The new arena will likely require a new set of objective cards as well, which isn't such an unappealing prospect, but it's definitely not needed in the short to medium term. Super Fantasy Brawl is all about champions and what you can do with them. It's worth a look even if you haven't played skirmish before, and while some may be disappointed that the Kickstarter update is hard to come by, it's worth remembering that the game's price is really good considering what's in the box: from components to the gameplay itself!..