DC Comics Deckbuilding: First Look at Forever Evil

Forever Evil, the name says it all.

Ch-Ch-Changes!

One of the marvelous innovations in Cryptozoic's release plan is making all of these different versions completely intependent of each other. This has allowed me to play many games of each version and enjoy the unique aspects of each. The designer (Matt Hyra) gets to really go off the rails, in completely different ways, for each game without having to worry about how the changes interact with what's already out there. I'm sure there ARE people who dump all the cards together, but those people are W-R-O-N-G. It is not the "Ultimate Throwdown" trust me.

The first big change, the one everyone already knows about, is players are now super-villians and the goons you defeat are actually Earth's Mightiest Heroes (wait, those are the Avengers, I have no idea what JLA's tagline is). 

In my first game, playing as Black Manta, I have to say…Black Manta had probably his best day ever among the surface dwellers. When you've bagged and tagged Flash, Superman, Batman and Constantine you feel like a pretty good super-villian. Unfortunately Aquaman evaded me…he wasn't even in the deck!

Initial setup. Good grief, who bumped these cards! Notice the crazy Bizarro Power super power.

The Places We've Been

In the first 2 games, Locations were allowed to have a common mechanical theme. in DC Comics "TOG" you drew a card when a condition on the table had been met. In Heroes Unite you reveal a card, and if its the type the location is looking for you draw it. Forever Evil goes different and has Locations not draw cards at all. They don't even share a mechanical theme this time around! A few cards allow you to trash specific types of cards, others give you bonuses depending on the types of cards you have in play. There might be more that do completely new things

Victory Point Chips

Taking inspriation from whatever Dominion expansion that was, Forever Evil makes it possible to acquire victory points without being attached to cards. Now certain cards give you a victory point whenever a certain action is done or condition met. A prime example is Forever Evil's version of Heroes Unite's "Manhunter".

Manhunter gave you more power depending on how many additional Manhunters were in the discard pile. Forever Evil has the Royal Flush Gang. The Royal Flush Gang gives you VICTORY POINTS (whoo whoo!) every time you play more than one Gang from your hand during a turn.

By the end of my first game, Firestorm was a: Punch, Vulnerability, Communication Device, another Punch, Blackgate Prison, Power Girl and Man Bat. All of these cards triggered when I played my last Firestorm.

Firestorm Fever

Two of the most complex addititions to the deck involve the DC Hero Firestorm. Both Firestorm and the equipment Firestorm Matrix remove the top card of your own deck from the game. In the case of Firestorm, this removed card becomes part of the text on his card. So every time you play Firestorm, he adds another card to his collection and gets a little more powerful.

Firestorm Matrix is a little different. Cards removed by Firestorm Matrix are placed in front of you in a special zone. Any of these cards you can get the effect of once during your turn. 

Finally, the cards removed with Firestorm still count to your victory point total at the end of the game, while the ones removed with Firestorm Matrix don't, because it says so on the card.

Sound complicated? It is! I'm not sure I personally would have added something as "completely different" as these 2 isolated cards. But they do not break the game, and down the road (10 games or so) I'm sure they will feel perfectly natural.

Sifting through piles of cards

Forever Evil continues Heroes Unite's movement towards more cards to affect other zones other than "in-play" zone. Now, in Forever Evil, it matters what cards are in the destroyed pile. Cards like Power Ring want to see heroes, and give you extra power for every dead hero in the pile. "Super Heroes" like Superman and Batman (who you've captured and forced to do your bidding?) actually pull out super powers and equipment from the destroyed pile for you to use.

Even though I love being able to pull my own cards out of the discard pile and put them back in my hand, I can see why its an annoying mechanic. One of the most annoying parts of Heroes Unite is waiting for your opponent to finish digging around in his discard pile for the right combo of power-maximizing cards. Forever Evil takes it up to 11 by having you dig through your discard pile, sometimes your opponent's discard pile, and of course now the destroyed cards pile.

A pretty good hand to draw. This was before Man-Bat had been absorbed into Firestorm's ability

Pass your cards

Finally the part I thought I would despise, but instead love. A couple cards in Forever Evil allow you to pass cards from your hand into the discard pile of your opponents.

The reason behind the negative feelings is because it echoes the decidedly brain-dead "passing parties" seen in previous sets from super-villians such as the Joker and Brainiac. These otherwise cool Super-villians were saddled by a mechanic that took too much time and effectively did nothing in 99% of situations.

Cards such as Mallet in Forever Evil speed up the process (and make it seem like its actually DOING something)  by making the action asymmetrical. Only YOU are passing cards, and you get to pass one card out of your hand into the deck of your enemy. This is much more like destroying, and I was able to quickly move a punch or vulnerability from my hand into my opponent's discard pile and I got nothing in return much to my satisfaction.

Bizarro Hate Game

I was extremely pleased to see a return for Bizarro, who really didn't get a fair shake in the original game. There is a Bizarro super-villian you can play as, and special Bizarro themed super powers that actually hurt the person playing them. I loved the theme, but don't know if these cards are any good or not because neither of us were Bizarro. If you aren't Bizarro, they look absolutely terrible. So that will have to wait for another day to examine.

Bad Guys, Good Game

The theme of this game is excellent. You FEEL like a super-villain in many subtle ways. First, acquiring victory points feels like you are getting more powerful independent of your minions. Destroying cards and getting more powerful also feels very villainous. After the first play though, I want to give it a bunch more goes to see what else comes flying out of the stack. Next time hopefully I will get the opportunity to stock up on Bizarro Cards.

Finding Balance in Rhino Hero!

What is that? Is that a rhino climbing up the wall? INDEED! 

-- Rhino Hero Rulebook

The Pleasure of Stacking an Untrustworthy Structure

There is a basic level of fun before Rhino Hero even turns into a game. How often can you say that? At its most basic, the game starts as a card house. People already build card houses as an activity, because its deeply satisfying. The lizard part of your brain likes it. Each new layer of a card house almost subconsciously attracts the vested interest of every adult and child in the room.

The very setup of Rhino Hero works as an attractant, to even those people (perhaps in your extended family) who might turn their noses up at anything resembling Settlers of Catan.

But then you take the "framework" of a traditional card house, you add a few simple mechanics and you get Rhino Hero. Believe it or not even more addictive.

Everyone's Roof is Someone Else's Floor

Each player starts with a hand of cards, and by getting rid of all your cards you indeed win the game. Getting rid of cards is a grueling process because each card is a roof, and to add the roof you first have to build the walls using someone else's roof…which is now your floor.

Templates for wall construction come in all monstrous varieties. The nicest ones are shaped like a box. The meanest ones are a single wall in the center, shaped like a > sign. The most uncertain (you don't know how they'll behave) involve a crazy layout of walls finally punctuated with Rhino Hero, the demon prince of wobbly card towers, lurking somewhere on the card.

Flashy Powers on Every Corner

A close look at some of the roof cards shows most of them have some kind of special power. These powers tread a lot of familiar ground, and I'm not entirely happy with them.

From Left to Right:

1) Reverse: just like in Uno, Reverse makes the turn order go the opposite direction. According to the rulebook, this does absolutely nothing if your game just has 2 players.

2) RHINO HERO! This is the awesome one. When you play the Rhino Hero, the next player in line has to, in addition to building his/her room, also move the Rhino Hero meeple. Fishing your fingers into the gently swaying building structure of the tower to grab this guy and move him to a different level sets off all sorts of warning bells both from you and the audience of other players. This moment is where the wheat is separated from the chaff.

3) +1: makes the next player draw a card. Also somewhat boring, and basically lifted from Uno (or Crazy Eights or whatever).

4) Skip A Turn - Skipping someone's turn has never been very fun, especially for kids. But kids have just learned to accept it. Adults gnash their teeth.

5) Play 2 cards: I really like this power because it adds a little bit more strategy. Once you've got a group of seasoned Rhino Hero players who know how to build card towers, you can actually rat hole a 2X to the very end of the game and hopefully actually go out.

Rhino Hero is saved by the fact that these cards really don't have a lot to do with the overall game. You can even play without the cards doing anything special (only make sure to keep that Rhino Hero in!).

Ultimately this game is all about the stacking, and the amazing chaos lurking just barely at the threshold every time you gently set another card down on its perch.

The Excitement of the Room

Rhino Hero gets people worked up. You take your turn and all your opponents are suddenly your audience.

Rather than the strict rule set, this is more about the emotion. Emotion, but unquestionably ruled by the strict dictates of physics. Wobbly tables, sudden intakes of breath, loud noises they all play a part in the end game.

Compact enough to fit in your work bag. I've armed myself with Rhino Hero for whatever the future of social engagement holds for me.

Jape the Television

There is a lot of talk about theme lately. I got a chance to think about theme while deer hunting a couple weekends ago. While I seldom encounter deer, I did hunt down a great novel, Philip K. Dick's The Man who Japed.

I've said it before...I love Avalon Hill's classic TV Wars.

But something I have always wondered…what would TV Wars look like nowadays? And I don't just mean the mechanics of the game, what about the theme?

Because people don't watch TV is the same way they watched it during the "Rating Wars" and "Sweeps Week" programming eras. There are certainly more than 4 major networks, and most people don't have to wait for specific time slots to watch the particular shows they want to watch. You can usually even catch up with entire seasons of shows without any consideration to what the other channels are running at the same time.

Unless you do a historical theme set in the 70's-80's, but to tell you the truth its kinda been done…TV Wars LIVED IT.

I know of 2 different games currently in production to try to revive the "ratings war" style of TV Wars. One is Gil Hova's Prime Time, the other is by Elad Goldstein, also called Prime Time.

The Man who Japed isn't really a dystopia. People seem to have rights, even though Morec (which stands for The Moral Reclaimation) is kind of a dump.

The protagonist in this book writes "packets" which as the story goes along you realize are television scripts. Multiple semi-indenpendent agencies write these packets for sale to the government-run TeleMedia arm of the government. Who then produces them and thus educates (because television is for education!) the masses.

So in Morec-style TV Wars, each player would produce scripts.

Then there would probably be a judging phase where TeleMedia purchases whatever shows it thinks it needs.

But then, the fun thing about The Man who Japed, there is a phase after that where all the players get to annoyomously accuse each other of moral impropriety.

Because one of things Morec does to keep its values in power is allow each citizen to tattletale on other citizens in a weekly block meeting. Transgressions might involve swearing, or fornicating (outside of marriage), or excessive leisure.

In our game, the morals planted in the scripts themselves could be subverted and reinterpreted to make any of the other players look like they are trying to corrupt the system (which they probably are).

The world of Morec also seems pretty fair, in a twisted sort of way. 8-legged robot recorders called "juveniles" are always on the prowl to record people's transgressions. People can make all sorts of accusations about your conduct, but the only accusations to hold up in these block meetings involve evidence gathered from these spider droids.

Thus the morals of the packets can be debated, since there is little evidence of intent when it comes to an idea. In the story there is much discussion over a packet the protagonist writes about a colonist who plants a tree and it dies. The dead tree might mean the futility of human existence, or it could be a lesson to keep your treasure close to the moral center of the universe...Morec.

There are facist brown-shirted thugs called "Cohorts," however these guys are played for almost comic relief, and they certainly don't seem to be very good shots when it comes down to avenging slights on the founding father of the movement. I'm sure we can find a way to fit them in as well.

Anyway, there are very few sci-fi-ish board games out there that don't involve space ships. I like the idea of the Man who Japed, and I'm going to pin it to the wall in the back of my head for future reference.

Quick Look: New Bedford

After having a blast feeding the Montgomery Burns side of my personality in Le Havre I was tipped off to a new contender in the industrial worker placement genre with New Bedford.

I was tipped off to this new game by an extraordinary Dice Tower News brief, obviously written by an incredible genius and masterful journalist. Look at all the quotes and hyperlinks, like a carefully trussed filet mignon.

I have a cousin who's favorite novel (possibly ironically) is Herman Melville's Moby Dick. There are few Thanksgivings I have not heard of Captain Ahab's revenge-fueled whale-pursuing "circumnavigations".

Marry Moby Dick with the industrialized machinations for ultimate efficiency of Le Havre and I think you might just have New Bedford.

I must say one of the messier aspects of Le Havre is the ship-building. There is no point where you naturally feel the urge to build a ship, you just NEED to at certain points to artificially inflate your food production otherwise all your workers run out of fish guts to gnaw on. And then you ship resources and convert them into money…through a shipping lane "building" that can magically accommodate as many people as there are players.

New Bedford looks like it makes ship-building feel a bit more natural and part of the game as a whole.

I don't know for sure what resources you can gain, just by looking at the kickstarter. Wood and bricks for sure. I'm not positive on the timeline, but if coke production makes an appearance the game will be a shoe-in. Because who doesn't want to go on a coke-fueled whaling expedition?

No coke in sight

More details are posted by the designer here.

Gravwell: Try to Escape, and It Pulls You Back

Before I talk about Gravwell, I need to talk about Star Trek.

In "The Void", the crew of Voyager find themselves trapped in a pocket dimension. Surrounded by the corpses of derelict ships similarly trapped long ago, they must use all of their resources to find the faint path back to their own universe. And of course, there are still living ships within this dark space to contend with. A great episode, and the first thing I thought of when Gravwell came out. A game in which you MUST escape, before one of the other players does the same.

Gravity is a Rubber Band

As you take the first turn, the simplicity of Gravwell is almost overwhelming. You play a card with a number on it. You move your ship that number. Easy as cake. Could be a kid's game. But then the feeling evaporates. Because after the first turn of movement, things get tricky in a big way.

Movement cards in Gravwell don't have a direction. They instead push you either towards (yellow cards) or away (purple cards) from the nearest ship.

If you are last in line (or its the first turn of the game and all the gravity is in front of you) movement is straightforward. Once the other players start flailing around, making big grabs for the escape route, the "closest ship" is incredibly unpredictable.  Moving takes serious thought if you expect to get anywhere.

All movement cards are played at the same time, then resolved alphabetically. Carbon goes before Florine for example. So in addition to predicting the distance your opponents are going to travel, you also have to predict the order they will move in.

Red Ship, Blue Ship and Derelict, together at last!

Bumping Robots

A long time ago, the best game in my existence was a multi-hour programmed movement game called Robo Rally. I went to a couple "game nights" where all we played was Robo Rally, over giant boards of obstacles to navigate.

The absolute best part of Robo Rally was when the robots ended up very close together. Bumping, bumbling over each other, with the greatest chance of something completely unpredictable happening. A robot might miss a step, or end up on the wrong conveyor belt, or get crushed because a single misstep was made.

In Gravwell, the players are always squabbling like that fleeting moment in Robo Rally…from the beginning to the end. Ships try to escape. But they are inevitably drawn back into the chaos by ill-timed movement cards and the incredibly heinous tractor beams your opponents insist on playing.

More like "Jankarium"

Tractor Beams

Beside the yellow and purple movement cards, there are also blue "anti-movement" cards. The tractor beam does not move your ship, instead it sucks all the other ships in the game (including the 2 normally stationary derelict ships) towards the tractoring ship. This is akin to a lobster trying to escape a pot, only to have the other lobsters pull him back in, along with some lemon and seasoning salt.

This has to be the most hard-won "You Win" space ever.

Climbing out of a Hole

The feeling of attempting escape, and being foiled constantly in that attempt, is the heart of Gravwell. Often you will make progress in a single movement phase, only to have most of that progress erased in the next movement phase.

When I first started playing, I thought it would be easy to draft the cards I needed to stay consistently ahead. But what Gravwell is really all about is putting yourself in a good position as a part of the group.  Moving as a giant lump of ships going forward and back, ready to make the one mad dash for victory a split-second before anyone else.

You never, ever want to be in front. You want to be just behind the front ship…yet all the movement cards work to either shoot you back down into the hole or rocket you far into the lead where you will only plummet back again.

An Original Design

I love the originality and simplicity of this game. I can honestly say I have played no game "like" Gravwell. When I was rounding up opponents, I explained the game as "Candyland with space ships and the space ships are all chained together." Despite this, everyone wanted to play. The rules are simple, the game is fast.

Time for Lunch

Gravwell is a lunch break game. You aren't building an economy or maximizing victory points. In an hour long lunch break, you can spend the first 10 minutes teaching the game and playing the other 50 no problem. People who have never played modern games before can learn the rules easily. People who have played modern games before will still be interested.

The End Game

I think the only trouble with Gravwell comes from people expecting more than it is. There is randomness. Bad things will happen, and the very limited opportunities to make corrections during the turn (a single "emergency stop" card) will leave you with little option most of the time but to take your lumps.

Conflict with the other players is always turned on. The constant fluctuations keep all players excited and in the game. I find myself wanting to play Gravwell. And so far that has been easy to do.

Racing To the End Game

All games come to an end. But what about those games where you can control the time and place of the ending?

It feels like most games I play have a set number of rounds. A smaller number end after some other predefined condition occurs (like the deck runs out of cards). The last, most exclusive group are those that allow the players some limited control of the tempo of the game.

Firenze

A smaller game most people don't even know about. I can't count how many times I've been caught flat-footed by another player in this game. Firenze closes down once someone uses up their own limited supply of seals. Intially, when the game starts and everyone is on even footing it makes sense to score as many points for your towers (a finished tower uses up one of your seals) as you can to get the most value.

Once you score a big pile of points, inevitably another player will switch gears and attempt to spend his/her seals as quickly as possible. Because if they can run out fast enough, and eek out ahead of your big score, the game will end and they will win.

Puerto Rico

Shipping points, colonists and buildings. Any of these 3 elements can be "run out" by an enterprising opponent to end the game when he or she is in a position to win.

Puerto Rico is such a soulless game. And yet, there lives within its husk an incredible adrenaline rush when everyone's economic machines start working. If you are really screwing up your turn and bombing out on your developments…the game will at least be over quickly.

Dominion

I thought Puerto Rico was the most obvious one. But then I thought of Dominion. Every single game of Dominion has 2 parts: first players are building card engines and adding to their deck. Then the moment comes when the leap is made to scoring victory points. When that first province is grabbed, the game turns upside down and hopefully you have what you need to get some points of your own.

Race for the Galaxy

Sharing some development with Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy inherited some of the same racing end conditions. With a few more to make it play even faster. Add the 2 player expert rules, and you can lay down extra planets/developments each turn and really run out the clock if you have a plan. The dream scenario is 2 developments and 2 settlements in the same action phase…running out a full 1/4 of the game in the span of a single turn.

Woe be the player who chooses production, while his/her opponent sneaks out another card into the tableau to end the game!

Glen More

You can move your little guy around the rondel as fast as you want. Other players can take as many turns as they want until they catch up. Yet, the game punishes you for having too many tiles so surprisingly it doesn't hurt as much as you'd think to leap ahead quite a ways. Since the game ends as soon as the 3rd tile stack is depleted you can really make a run for it if you feel like you're in a good position.

I'm still trying to figure it out. It might sound like I'm continually campaigning for highly-interactive games that keep you on the edge of your seat. Yet there's something to be said for relaxing, laid-back games that let you kick back and plan your turn a little.

3 Parents Play 2 Player Games

My last game day, there were three adults, plus a bunch of kids at various ages. For the majority of the day, we played 2 players games. I came away thinking it was a winning concept.

A World of Constant Distraction

Very few kids want to play board games for extended periods of time. So the first thing all of our kids did were book it out into the yard. Where they played well for the most part.

The 2 player idea came about just because that's what we happened to have. Here is what went down.

Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small

I've played Agricola.  I've played Caverna. All Creatures Big and Small focuses these classic worker placement games into a laser-tight beam. And the result is awesome. In fact, I had to sit back for a moment and try to figure out exactly what they had taken out. True, the game is only 2 players. But there is also no feeding or maintenance costs. This fits right into my narrative about Enjoying a Debt-free Existence in your Board Games.

Also, and surprisingly important, you are limited to the workers you start out with. There is no way to generate more workers, so you are confined to figuring out how to optimize things with what you have. Because I am constantly undervaluing (or overvaluing when it's too late) the "grow workers" spot in traditional worker placement games I felt actually competitive.

Finally, there are less buildings and upgrades. You still get a few different paths and ways to take your farm in different directions, but its not overwhelming.

Star Realms

Balancing a 2 player worker placement game was the latest deck builder on the block. The more I play Star Realms, the more I am amazed how much game fits into what is essentially a Magic: The Gathering starter deck box. Fast, direct, vicious. With surprising deck-building avenues depending on how the cards in the trade row come out. If you wanted to play a deck builder with me, I would suggest Star Realms every time right now. The only reason I continue to play stuff like the DC Comics Deckbuilder is the desires of other players. And you always need to remain in tune with the wants of the rest of your play group!

Fast and Furious

Playing these 2 games made it so there was very little down time for the odd adult out. Each game would take maybe 20-30 minutes and then opponents could be switched with ease. The odd adult out could handle kid requests, or just supervise the game and make sure people are doing it right.

I love to watch other people game, and 25 minutes is about the right sweet spot before I start to lose interest. Knowing full well the hot seat is coming allows me to think about the coming game and how I would play differently.

The Learning Game

Playing multiples of the same game also threw my slow-paddling game-learning brain into overdrive. I am champing at the bit to play my next Uwe Rosenberg worker placement monolith because of the hard-core resource allocating and farm building I was doing on All Creatures Big and Small. Deck building with Star Realms has me ready to take on my frothing-at-the-mouth workplace game opponent over my next lunch break. He's been coming coming in ahead on far too many games and honing my deck building skills might just be enough to tip the edge.

The Fun-ening

Overall, instead of 1 giant game possibly interrupted several times by upset children…It was my child, I admit it!…we instead had a lot of fun several times over in quick, easy-to-digest bites. At the end, we even got 2 of the older kids together and introduced them to Star Realms. I can tell you as a parent this is the most wonderful feeling in the world when you can legitimately get your offspring excited about something you yourself are interested in. Rarely, rarely can you ever expect this.