In Which a Kanban Hangs Above and Below The Flippin' City's Recycling Station * New Reviews for KANBAN, ABOVE AND BELOW, and FLIP CITY: REUSE * And Some Good News for Team Peter! :P

by Milena Guberinic

Hi friends!

This was another week of germy Mina! :yuk: Viruses are not fun. They were so not fun that I had to take two days off work this week! :( But I never let viruses keep me from having fun and I didn't let them get the best of me this week either! I even played the story-driven Above and Below without a voice! JEEPERS! :P Fun was had and games were played! And tomorrow is TableTop Day! :) We are going to be at BoardGameBliss to enjoy some gaming! I hope I'll see some of you there! :) Now, on to this week's gaming!

***

What's New?

Kanban: Automotive Revolution

Peter loves cars. I love Vital Lacerda. This game was inevitable.

The Overview

看板 is a Japanese term that literally means "billboard," but also refers to a just-in-time manufacturing process in which upstream and downstream processes communicate through the use of kanban orders in order to ensure efficient and defect-free production. Kanban, the board game, uses this system as its starting point to put players in the roles of factory workers vying to impress their manager in an automotive plant. Over the course of the game, players will develop and improve automotive parts, upgrade vehicle designs, and test those designs, all the while trying to gain the favor of their manager, Sandra, who will constantly be evaluating them.

Board fully set up

Player board at setup

Kanban is a worker placement game in which each player has 1 worker to place in one of the 6 factory departments each round. Each turn, players will take turns placing their one worker in one worker placement spot on the board, indicated by a clock icon. The number of quarter hours shown on the clock indicates the number of actions the player may take at the associated departments. Players are able to use any of their banked shifts, which can be acquired through tasks and rewards, in order to increase the amount of time they have at any given department up to a full hour (i.e. 4 actions).

Throughout the game, player order will be determined by the relative positions of players' workers on the board from left to right, with the leftmost player in the previous turn going first in the current turn and the rightmost player in the previous turn going last in the current turn.

Players will be able to visit the Design Department to adopt a number of designs equal to the quarter hours spent on this action. Designs will allow players to develop and upgrade vehicles at the Testing and Innovation Department. Alternatively, players may spend their time moving up the training track in order to become certified in design and gain access to cutting-edge designs, which are at the top of the stacks.

Players will be able to visit the Logistics Department to issue kanban orders (which cost 1 shift but allow you to bank a shift) to order parts and collect parts they will need to upgrade vehicle designs in the Testing and Innovation Department and assemble vehicles in the Assembly Line Department. Alternatively, they may spend their time moving up the training track in order to become certified in logistics and gain access to an extra space to keep parts and request 1 part voucher (wild part) per day as a logistics action.

Players will be able to visit the Assembly Line Department to provide parts needed to assemble vehicles and watch them roll of the assembly line. Needed parts are indicated by any upgrades to the vehicle model in the Testing and Innovation Department and these must be added to the assembly spaces prior to any other parts. Only one type of each part can be added to a single assembly line for a vehicle. Each part placed moves the top car of the respective type down the line, pushing other cars out with it. If the car that rolls of the line matches the model of car in demand indicated on the Demand Tile, the player takes a seat at the meeting table. Alternatively, players may spend their time moving up the training track in order to become certified in assembly, allowing them to keep a fifth car in their garage.

Players will be able to visit the Testing and Innovation Department to upgrade a design for a car model. To do this, a player needs to have a design for a model in need of an upgrade and must have the part in his warehouse in need of upgrading. The player must spend 1 shift (quarter hour) to move the car part from his warehouse to an upgrade space for that model in the Innovation Department, receiving the depicted benefit. The player also flips the design tile face down and receives 2 points and increases the value of the car part by 1 step on the part value track. Players want to upgrade designs for models of cars that they have in their garage in order to score points both during end-of-day meetings and at the end of the game.

Alternatively, at the Testing and Innovation Department, players may claim cars from the test track for which they have designs. They discard the designs and take the cars into their garage, gaining the bonuses depicted on their player boards, which include things like banked time, books to help you advance on training tracks, and seats for meetings. Each car taken by the player moves the pace car forward one space on the test track. When the pace car passes a checkered space, enough test data has been accumulated and a meeting is held at the end of the day.

A third option at the Testing and Innovation Department is to train in order to become certified in testing and innovation and gain the ability to double upgrade a design, increasing the part's value by 2 steps instead of one.

Players will be able to visit the Administration Department in order to train either in the Administration Department itself or in another department. Getting certified in accounting unlocks a player's 5th chair at meetings.

End-of-day meetings are held at the end of each round in which the pace car passes the checkerboard space. At a meeting, each player must either speak or pass. To speak, a player will use one of chairs (which represent accomplishments he has achieved in the previous round and which make him worthy of being heard :P) to either place on one of the available four public performance goals or his pet project (i.e. one of the performance goal cards in his hand). This will score points depending on how well the player has fulfilled the goals.

Sandra, the factory manager, moves around the departments and takes actions in turn order along with the players. Each time she ends up at a department, she evaluates players' performance. When playing with "Nice Sandra" the player furthest ahead on the training track in that department will score points equal to his number of banked shifts and when playing with "Mean Sandra," the player furthest behind on the training track in that department will lose points equal to 5 minus his number of banked shifts. Either way, as Sandra moves from department to department, she will evaluate players in some form and tidy up. In the Testing and Innovation Department, Sandra will advance the pace car one step. In the Assembly Line Department, Sandra will clear car parts from all assembly spaces. In the Logistics Department, Sandra will remove all but 1 car part from each warehouse. In the Design Department, Sandra will return the 4 oldest designs to the bottom of the central stack of designs and refresh them. In the Administration Department, Sandra will conduct an end-of-week evaluation of players' vehicles, giving players 2 points for each upgrade they have made to each vehicle in their garage and 1 point for each upgrade another player has made to each vehicle in their garage.

The game end is determined by the position of the production cycle marker (which is moved ahead every time the pace car reaches the checkerboard space and a meeting is held) and the week marker (which is moved ahead every time Sandra reaches the Administration Department). When one marker is on space 2 and the other on space 3, Final Scoring takes place.

For end-of-game scoring, players may move any face-up chairs they have to the final goal tile, scoring the goal requirements. Players earn 1 point for each banked shift, each seat, book, or parts voucher on their player board, the value of each car in their garage, which is a set value and indicated on the board, and the value of the car part for each design upgrade for which they have a car of the same model in their garage (for example, if you have a yellow car in your garage and have made an upgrade to the chassis, which is the black part, and the transmission, which is the blue part, you would score the current value of those parts). Finally, relative positions on the training tracks are scored (5 points for being furthest ahead, 3 for being second, and 1 for being third). The player with the most points wins!

Kanban order cards

The Review

:)



:) 1. Deep, rich, intricate experience with a simple underlying system
After our fourth game of Kanban, Peter said, "It's crazy to me that this game came out of somebody's brain!" Indeed, Kanban features a dizzyingly intricate system of interactions between actions and goals and manages to challenge players to the utmost with the level of strategic planning it demands.

A visit to any department presents players with at least 2 possible ways to use their time (i.e. at least one main action and training) and the actions taken by players at any department interact with the actions they will take or have taken at every other department and are related to short-term performance goals, long-term final goals, factory goals, and vehicle demands. Every action is intricately linked to every other action and every action must be performed with a plan in mind for the cascade of possible effects it could potentially be used to trigger.

And on an even more basic level, each department's worker placement spot not only determines your access to a particular type of action, but also determines a) the number of action points you have to spend on that action and b) your turn order for the next round. As such, your choice of action space interacts with the extent of your ability to perform actions in that department and the potential and realized actions of other players and/or Sandra. If you want ensure you can visit a particular department on your following turn, on this turn, you have to think about not only the per-requisites for that action (i.e. parts, designs, etc.), but also the actions that other players may take on this turn, the department Sandra will visit next turn (because players are not allowed to go into the department occupied by Sandra in the 2-player game), the actions other players may take on their next turn, and the way in which going first or last will affect your access to the various departments. Everything is connected!

And I still haven't come to the various resources in the game! They all have multiple uses! I did address the multiple ways shifts can be used in the various departments, but then there are the car parts, banked shifts, and designs. You need car parts to upgrade designs, which will score you points if you get cars of the same models into your garage for which you need more designs for those models. And while you want to spend banked shifts to maximize the number of actions you can take at each department, you also want to keep them because each is a point at the end of the game and either helps you gain more points when nice Sandra performs her evaluations or helps you avoid taking negative point when mean Sandra performs her evaluations. Yup, Kanban is as intricate as the most intricate of lacework and Peter was right; it is absolutely mind blowing that it came out of somebody's brain.

:) 2. Demands a lot of strategic planning and tactically responding to opponent moves
Players start the game with 3 performance goal cards in hand and the board starts with 4 performance goal cards on it. These initial goals help to direct your initial strategy and somewhat narrow down your focus over the course of the game. There are many ways to make points in this game, including achieving performance goals, assembling vehicles, having tested designs for vehicles in your garage at end-of-day evaluations, having lots of banked shifts when playing with nice Sandra, banking shifts, and being at the top of the various training tracks. As such, we have generally found it useful to use the performance goals to guide our strategies, as they generally provide additional points for aspects of the game that already help you make points. They also help to break the game into a few smaller, manageable chunks in terms of strategy. Because the overarching goals (i.e. the goals set out by the final goal tiles and the general mission to get lots of cars into your garage with tested designs) require some breaking down. These performance goals present shorter-term strategic goals that direct the types of designs you acquire, the departments in which you train, etc. and can be some of the most lucrative sources of points, as is fitting for a game about trying to please the manager!

In addition to the various goals, players have to build their strategies around other players' strategies and tactically respond to other players over the course of the game. If you see somebody going for a particular goal or a particular type of vehicle, you might want to stay away from that type of vehicle or goal in an effort to maximize your points with some other type of vehicle or goal. Or you might want to use the other player's actions to help you achieve the same goals (for example, you could steal a vehicle a player just assembled if you have the design for that particular model ready)! So at any given time, you not only have a number of long-term and medium-term strategic options that are established by the goals set out by the game, but you are also faced with numerous short-term tactical considerations generated by other players' actions.

:) 3. Brilliant and elegant way of tightening the 2-player game
The two-player game is played by pretty much the exact same rules as the 3/4-player game. The only exceptions are the use of the 2-player pace track overlay and the fact that players are not allowed to go into the department occupied by Sandra. These simple modifications reduce the number of available worker placement spaces each round and ensure that the duration of the game is appropriately scaled.

The fact that players are not allowed to occupy the same department as Sandra and that Sandra's movements are predictable may make the 2-player game slightly easier than the 3 or 4-player game, but it also makes the 2-player game more strategic and predictable, allowing players to plan their sequence of actions in anticipation of Sandra's movements.

:) 4. High replay value
Kanban is a deep, rich game and as such, it will require many, many plays to fully explore. It may take an entire game for players to simply become familiar with all the possibilities and then another few games to come to fully understand how to best manipulate those possibilities to their advantage and actually "play" the game. This is great because it means Kanban offers a deep and challenging experience and abundant ground for exploration.

Second, there is an insane amount of variability built into the game that will affect the strategies you pursue. There are the factory goal tiles, which tell you which areas you should pursue to gain easy chairs at meetings (innovations, cars, and/or certifications) and to what extent, there are the demand Tiles, which tell you which car colors you want to push out onto the test track in order to gain chairs at meetings, there are the variable final goal tiles, which give you a variety of conditions to strive to meet at the end of the game, and then there is the gigantic deck of performance goal cards, which give you shorter-term strategic goals. And there are MANY more of each of these things than will be used in any given game, making each game play out somewhat differently. The final goal tiles are particularly interesting, as they seem to have the greatest effect on the ways players focus their game and they all focus on very different aspects of the game.

Third, there are two different game modes - Nice and Mean Sandra. These two modes are, in fact, completely different and bring different aspects of the game into focus. Nice Sandra forces players to prioritize banking shifts and staying ahead on training tracks in the various departments over manufacturing considerations, while Mean Sandra brings the more interesting automobile development and manufacturing-related considerations to the forefront. As I will address in the :soblue: section, I consider Nice Sandra inferior to Mean Sandra, but I'm sure there will be players who will prefer the relatively simpler game generated by playing with Nice Sandra. The fact that the two options are provided is great for players who like to mix things up and allows players to customize the experience to their preferences.

And finally, players may further customize the experience to their preferences by deciding to play with the easier or harder sides of their player boards. The harder side provides fewer bonuses for parking cars in your garages, while the easier side provides more bonuses.

See!? SO MUCH VARIETY!!!

:) 5. Thematic
Kanban is essentially about work...work at a car factory. Doesn't that sound like a lovely theme!? :P Who wouldn't want to work at a car factory!? :P :P :P Right? It smells like flowers and sunshine and you get to sit around in comfy chairs working standard hours! Right!? :P Unlikely. But I do think the game does a very good job of bringing the theme to life through its mechanisms. The stress of trying to conform to the manager's demands in each department, trying to bank shifts and yet maximize time in each department, and trying to keep up with the changing goals from meeting to meeting are highly evocative of workplace demands. And the fact that the more certified you become, the earlier you speak in meetings is just so clever! Because if you're certified, you certifiably have something more important to say! :P

Everything in the game is imbued with theme and the rulebook does a good job of conveying the meaning of the actions that players take in the game.

:) 6. Short play time and fast pace for the level of depth and strategy found in the game
Kanban plays in about an hour with 2 players and provides a mind-melting pot of options each turn. And it is fast paced owing to the fact that players only take a single action each turn! It's really a marvel to experience!

:) 7. Great components
The artwork and graphic design may be overly busy (see below), but the components themselves are excellent! I love the colorful wooden cars and the meeples. Some people may not find the thinner player boards appealing, but I appreciate that the fact that they are unobtrusive and reliably lie flat. I prefer thin to thick cardboard player boards.

:soblue:

:soblue: 1. Graphic design
Kanban is a complex game built on a simple system. But rather than showcase the simplicity of the underlying system, the unnecessarily busy artwork makes the game appear more complex and unapproachable than it really is. This may be a matter of personal preference, but I prefer clean lines and simple art over intricate and detailed artwork with intricate and detailed icons in complex games. I will say that after some experience with the game, I do find the artwork to be pleasantly vibrant and functional, but I don't think that it helps make the game approachable to first-time players. I found the divisions between the various departments unclear. Different underlying colors for the different departments rather than just very tight outlines would have gone a long way to differentiating them.

In addition to the overwhelmingly busy board art, we also had some trouble with the art for the test track. We couldn't agree on how many areas the test track was split into. There are only two lines on the track, which seem to split the track in 2, but then there are the two cherkerboard spaces, which may or may not serve to split the track further into 4 or 6. We concluded that the chekerboard spaces did indeed serve to split the board further after consulting a video, but I do wish that I didn't have to do that. I'm quite used to interpreting icons in complex games but still found the test track a bit confusing, so I think it's worth mentioning.

:soblue: 2. Rulebook
Much like the overly busy board art, the rulebook does not make the game at all approachable. Again, I have read MANY and I mean MANY rulebooks (many more than games I own) and after going through the Kanban rulebook, I didn't feel at all ready to play the game. Yes, the game is complex, but I think the rulebook made it seem even more complex, with its various bubbles and sidelines strewn about all over the place. I do think that the rulebook is complete, but it is disorganized. Needless to say, it made for a frustrating first game.

:soblue: 3. Some people will definitely find the game too complex to be fun
Several of my BGG friends have complained that Kanban feels too much like work to be fun and I can understand their complaints. It isn't an easy game to learn and the ease of learning is not helped by the rulebook or graphic design. It takes several plays to come to know and appreciate everything involved and even when you become familiar with it, the game still demands an incredible amount of planning and thinking. But I enjoy the level of planning and the mechanisms involved and have happily overcome that initial learning hurdle. Still, Kanban is definitely heavy and demanding and it probably is not a game you will want to whip out after a long, hard day at work, but if you are like me, you just might...:P

:soblue: 4. Don't play with nice Sandra
We played Kanban 3 times prior to turning on the "mean" version of Sandra, only to find out that the nice version was actually the meaner one. Nice Sandra is far too nice the player who is ahead on the training track, making it far too easy and lucrative to simply race to stay ahead on the training tracks and max out your bank shifts and rake in the points. Of course, it may not possible to win the game JUST by doing this, but these very simple actions become more of a focus than they should, making the more interesting aspects of the game less appealing options and generally dumbing down the game to its detriment. While I appreciate the option of playing with nice Sandra, I wouldn't really recommend doing so, as mean Sandra really isn't very mean. It is very easy to avoid her "scorn" by having at least 5 shifts in the shift bank, meeting her expectation of having at least a training level of 2 in each department, or avoiding being last on the training tracks. And her "scorn" is typically not very scornful at all. The loss of a few points early in the game before you've had a chance to develop your training or shifts has far less of an impact than the benefit of oftentimes 10 points given to the player ahead on a training track by "nice" Sandra. Ultimately, what I'm trying to say here is that nice Sandra actually makes being behind on the training tracks A LOT more painful than mean Sandra, especially late in the game. Just avoid her. Nice Sandra is really the devil in disguise and mean Sandra is simply misunderstood. Trust me. And trust the designer because mean Sandra was how he intended the game to be played.

:soblue: 5. BEASTLY setup!
There are many, many chits and pieces to arrange on the board and this takes time. Lots of time. I'm willing to put this time in for a game as brilliant as Kanban, but had it been a lesser game, I would have been furious with all the pieces.

Final Word

To be perfectly honest, my first few games of Kanban were flooded with confusion. There always seemed to be something we were doing incorrectly or something we didn't fully understand and we kept having to reference the rulebook and internet in order to clarify things. Kanban is undoubtedly an incredibly complex game and yet, at its heart, it is surprisingly simple; it's a worker placement game that gives each player 1 worker and 5 types of worker placement spaces.

Vital Lacerda is a designer who specializes in layering complex systems upon very simple ones and his ability to create intricate such interconnections between actions and resources in his games is unrivaled. With Kanban, I think he has outdone even himself. This is his most complex game by far, and yet, it is his simplest at the same time. ( @.@ ) Yes, that's what I'm going with. Kanban is simple and complex and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love heavy games, you know that I love complex games, you know that I love games that challenge me to think in different ways and make my head hurt. Kanban is a perfect example of my favorite kind of mind-bending game. It's richly thematic, strategic, deep, challenging, and compulsively replayable. The long setup and initial learning hurdle are a small price to pay for the level of depth, strategy, and variability on display here. Of course, the complexity will not appeal to everyone and some will find this game about working to feel too much like working to be fun, but I'm not in that camp. I adore the amount of planning that I am forced to do by the number of goals and interconnections between the various actions. I love trying to please the pink lady. I love moving all the bits around the board. I love making cars! And I love trying to keep my opponent from stealing cars from under my nose! I love it all and I never thought I could love work! And especially not work in a car factory! Vital proved me wrong!

MINA'S LOVE METER :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: ALL LOVE ALL THE TIME

***

Above and Below

The Overview

In Above and Below, players attempt to rebuild their uprooted villages in safer lands with a single home and 3 villagers. However, they soon discover their chosen land features an underground tunnel network. Players must build their villages above and below ground in this worker-placement, dice-rolling, set-collection, choose-your-own-adventure game.

In Above and Below, each player receives a player board that represents his village. This board has 3 sections on which villagers are placed. The leftmost section will contain 3 starting villagers and represents "ready" villagers. These villagers may be used during the action portion of the game. The second section represents "exhausted" villagers. This is where villagers are used after being sent to perform an action. The third second represents the "injured" area. This is where villagers are sent when the player chooses to overexert them in order to reach a "lantern threshold" during an underground expedition.

The player board also features a goods row and related income/point values, which determine the point-value of the goods contained therein and the round-by-round income of players. The same goods are stacked in each slot.

The game is set up by arranging 6 "star" buildings and 4 "key" buildings on the table and shuffling the above-ground and below-ground building decks and drawing 4 cards from each to put on display. The cave deck is also shuffled and placed face up on the table. The main board is populated with villagers, players' markers are placed on the "reputation track," the round marker is placed on the top slot of the round track, and 1 cider token is placed on its respective location on the main board.

Above and Below is played over the course of 7 rounds and in each round, players alternate taking actions and then gain income once they have passed. To take an action, a player must use at least one villager and place him/her in the exhausted area of his player mat. The available actions are:

1. Explore - Place two villagers on one of the cave cards, roll a die, and have an opponent read the associated story, which will present you with some options. The options will include "torch" thresholds to succeed. Your villagers feature one or two die faces, which indicate the minimum number of pips you must roll to receive the corresponding number of torches. Each villager contributes the number of torches corresponding to ONE of the die faces on it (either the higher or lower one). After rolling one die for each villager (and using an re-roll abilities on your buildings), you determine whether your exploration was successful or not. You have one last resort option to help you reach the torch threshold. You may injure one of your villagers to have him/her contribute one extra torch to the mission (the villagers are good at taking one for the team :P). If the exploration was successful, you may receive a reward and will receive the cave card to add to your tableau. If it was unsuccessful, you receive neither a reward nor a cave card, but you may receive a consolation story prize :P. Either way, the villagers that went exploring go into your exhausted area.

Underground buildings and caves

2. Build - Exhaust a villager with a hammer icon to build a building. You have to pay the coins shown on the buildings and must have an explored cave if you would like to build an underground building.

Above ground buildings

3. Harvest - Exhaust any number of villagers to harvest goods from your buildings, placing them in their goods slots on your player board or putting them up for sale.

4. Train - Exhaust a villager with a feather icon (because teachers love to write with quills!) to hire another villager, paying its associated cost in coins and placing both villagers in your exhausted area.

5. Labor - Exhaust villagers to gain 1 coin for each. The first player to exhaust a villager for this action also gains the cider token on the main board, which will allow them to get one of their exhausted villager back into their ready area during the cleanup phase without having a bed for that villager.

6. Take a free action - Players are able to put a good up for sale at a price of at least 3 coins, buy a good from another player, and/or refresh any of the two building rows for 1 coin without exhausting a villager.

At the end of the round, players gain income shown on their player boards, rest villagers by using their available beds and cider markers to move them from the exhausted to the ready area, heal injured villagers with potions to move them from the injured to the exhausted area, replenish eligible goods slots on their buildings, and replace the cider marker and missing villagers for hire on the main player board.

The game ends at the end of the seventh round, at which time points are gained for
a) Goods on the goods track - Each good is worth the number of points shown above it
b) Buildings - Each building is worth 1 point
c) Reputation - The reputation track shows point thresholds, which will either give or take away points. Also, the player furthest ahead on the reputation track will gain 3 points in the 2-player game.
d) Card bonuses - Some buildings provide points and some buildings provide conditions for additional points

Reputation track

The Review

:)



:) 1. A visual delight
Ryan Laukat's art is always a feast for the hungry eyeballs and Above and Below puts Ryan's awesome skill on full display! The game is gorgeous and the icons are clear and intuitive and become second nature after a round or two of the game.

:) 2. Innovative
I'm not one for storytelling games or very light games, so I could be mistaken here, but Above and Below seems to be one of few games that aptly integrate a story element with strategic gameplay. The story element is thematically woven into the game, as players only read stories and make choose-your-own-adventure-style decisions when taking the explore action to delve underground and underground spelunking is, of course, bound to end up in all kinds of strange random encounters and adventures!

The underground portion of the game may also be vital to succeeding in the game, as underground adventures can often bring more lucrative rewards than similar above-ground actions, making it almost impossible to go through the whole game without having at least one underground adventure, though it is certainly possible to minimize engaging in this aspect of the game.

:) 3. Strategic and challenging
So Above and Below is innovative and strategic!? Yup. There is plenty of strategy here. Yes, it is simple strategy, but it is strategy nonetheless. The game starts with 6 face-up "star" buildings, which are very expensive to purchase, but also present the most lucrative point-making possibilities. These star buildings provide goals for players to pursue (e.g one provides 3 points + 2 points for every above-ground building at the end of the game) and build strategies around. However, because these buildings are unique, it may important to try to ensure you aren't pursuing the same goal as another player, to pursue several goals, or to ensure you collect lots of money very quickly in order to avoid disappointment when the building you wanted is taken by an opponent. This "race" isn't very prominent in the 2-player game, but player-induced chaos will be higher at higher player counts, reducing the viability of developing a strategy entirely around one of these cards.

The star buildings can lead you to focus on collecting many citizens, collecting many above-ground buildings, collecting many below-ground buildings, collecting goods or certain types, etc. As such, they can supplement or supplant the basic strategies in the game.

In addition to the end-game-goal-like star buildings, which open a host of scoring opportunities, Above and Below presents players with many basic and reliable ways of making points. Players can focus on collecting a wide variety of goods and then trying to collect lots of the same goods that are in the most valuable good slots. They can try to shoot up the reputation track by going underground or collecting torches through cards. And they can buy scoring buildings.

This strategic options presented by this multitude of end-game scoring goals are magnified by the multitude of options for achieving them. To make money (the ultimate resource), you can try to increase the variety of goods you have, raising your round-by-round income, you can delve underground and hope to get some coins, or you can simply exhaust your villagers to gain coins. To rest your growing village, you can buy cards with more beds or you can try to collect cider. And it isn't exactly easy to manage either of these two resources. Money can be incredibly tight, demanding that players make some very difficult decisions about the value of one building over another when building or one villager over another when hiring villagers. And beds can be expensive, so you will want to get cider, but trying to be the first to use a villager to collect a coin can be a challenge and "wasting" a villager for one coin may not be the most efficient of actions. While it isn't an incredibly difficult game, Above and Below can present a surprising challenge.

:) 4. Variable
In addition to its abundance of strategic options, Above and Below features an impressive amount of variability to make each game feel a little different than another. Only 4 of 9 key buildings are used in any game, it is nearly impossible to build more than 1 star building in any given game, there are 200 + underground stories to read, and only a small selection of above ground and underground buildings will be available in any given game. All these things will make some strategies more attractive than others in each game and make each game play out somewhat differently. The fact that players have the option to pay a coin to cycle through the building cards on display will give players some control over the available buildings, but the value and scarcity of coins, especially early in the game, will force players to minimize their use of this action and for the most part, try to make the most of the available options, which will be different in each game.

:) 5. After a while, all the stories start to seem the same
This may seem like a negative and it may very well be a negative for some players, but I've actually found it to be an advantage, giving the game longevity. Many of the stories involve similar encounters with similar kinds of people/beings and after a while, it becomes difficult to remember which cloaked stranger, crooked hag, or glowing eyed monster you've dealt with before and which you haven't. This means that the 200+ stories in the game are really do not limit its replay value.

:) 6. Fun
Above and Below is simply joyous. It is filled with whimsy and wonder and delightful little adventures that will bring out the kid in every adult and make every kid feel like a little champion. And at times, it presents players with moral dilemmas that can be used as fun learning experiences for the kids in the group as well.

:soblue:

:soblue: 1. In a 2-player game, the sale action isn't really interesting and it isn't used
This is the most minor of complaints and one that may be particular to our situation or group think, but we have not found the option to put goods up for sale to be useful or used in any of our 2-player sessions. Money is tight and it hardly seems like a good idea to hand your only opponent 3 coins for a good. With more players, this option may be more interesting, but we haven't found it to be very interesting with only 2.

:soblue: 2. The underground part of the game may be too random for some people
Going underground can be a bit of a crap shoot. You know you're probably going to end up getting some money or some item, but you don't know for sure. The only thing you can reliably count on obtaining by succeeding at an expedition is the cave card itself. Indeed, my first ever exploration ended up with my getting absolutely NOTHING for succeeding at an encounter, which was followed by Peter's getting a bunch of cash. That soured me a little on the whole underground bit initially, but I decided to take exploration for what it is (i.e. a random, quasi-push-your-luck aspect of the game) in subsequent exploration actions and game sessions and have enjoyed the game much more for that. Exploration action may not always seem "fair," but they tend to even out and the more you explore, the more familiar you become with the general outcomes of the choices and with the value of undertaking the explore actions. This eases some of the randomness and makes it easier to stomach, even for a control freak like me!:P

:soblue: 3. The stories aren't really continuous and it is possible to have conflicting story experiences in the same game
In the interest of not spoiling any stories for anyone, I will not refer to any specific instance in the game, but I will say that it is entirely possible to experience conflicting stories in the same game, which can seem a bit strange and lacking in continuity, but it doesn't really diminish the experience very much if you go into each exploration thinking of it as a discrete interaction wholly unconnected from the previous one.

Final Word

Above and Below is like a pleasant romp through adventure land that for some reason reminds me of the Gummi Bears cartoon. I'm just a 33-year-old child and I love many child-like things, but light games that are longish in duration tend not to work for me. And yet Above and Below works. Why? Because it's not actually a mindless, utterly random box of nothingness. Yes, it does feature a story book that presents players with random choices that may or may not give them the benefits they seek, but these stories are layered on top of a sound tactical and strategic game system that is as enjoyable to play as those stories are enjoyable to read and experience. Above and Below is that rarest of breeds of games that sits comfortably alongside Fantastiqa in my collection as a game I can look to when I'm tired or sad or just need to see a friendly face I don't need to take too seriously but also one that I can look to when I want a game that will make me think. It's whimsical and clever and built on a foundation of love. And all I have is love for it! :heart:

MINA'S LOVE METER :heart: :heart: :heart: SOME LOVE

***

Flip City: Reuse

I loooove Flip City. Its simple charms and informed push-your-luck mechanism really appeals to me when I'm tired or not in need of a fierce brain burn.

The Overview

Reuse is a very small expansion to the innnovative and furiously fast (with 2 players :P) push-your-luck, "deck-building" game, Flip City. In Flip City, players play cards directly from the tops of their decks to create tableaus of buildings that give them income and allow them to add more buildings into their decks or improve existing ones by flipping them over. However, some buildings also make citizens unhappy and having 3 buildings of these in your display automatically makes you go bust, eliminating your chance to buy or flip buildings.

Reuse introduces 2 new flippable buildings to Flip City - the Plumber Shop/Renewal Agency and the Flea Market/Recycling Bin.

The Review

There really isn't much to say about Flip City: Reuse other than that it's more Flip City and more Flip City is more :). It presents a few more options for players when buying, flipping, and playing cards and thereby provides a few more strategic options when racing for one of the two win conditions (i.e. having 8 VP showing on cards played in a single turn or playing 18 cards with a Convenience Store).

The Plumber Shop is interesting because a) it allows you to force each opponent to discard the top card (more interestingly) or bottom card (somewhat less interestingly) from his deck and b) gives you 2 coins! Sadly, it comes with the unfortunate side effect of making your citizens unhappy, but I think that's a small price to pay for the extra cash and ability to get rid of a good card you see on top of an opponent's deck. Just stack your deck with Churches and you're golden! And the Plumber Shop turns into the Renewal Agency, which provides 3 cash to spend on flipping cards! I think this card can be exploited to be a great source of revenue on its own. And it is cheap and cheap to flip, unlike base game cards that provide this level of income.

The Flea Market is cool because you can leave it in your discard pile when you shuffle your deck and flip it to GAIN cash while it's in your discard pile! When flipped, it turns into the Recycling Bin, which doesn't do much other than give you an extra flip when you flip it back to its Flea Market side.

Overall, both cards introduce additional options for making and managing your cash, giving you cheap, alternative ways to race for the end-game goals.

Final Word

I quite enjoyed having a few more options when playing Flip City, but I would have preferred to see an expansion that introduces even more options and perhaps another route to victory. As it is, I would definitely recommend Reuse to anyone who enjoys Flip City, as it is cheap, small (i.e. easily fits into base game deck, but perhaps not if sleeved), and refreshes the game just enough to keep us Flip City fanatics occupied until the next expansion comes out!

MINA'S LOVE METER :heart: :heart: LIKE (because I love it, but I wish it were bigger!)

***

What's Not So New But Still Exciting?

Imperial Settlers
Peter and I love Imperial Settlers SO MUCH and we love it even more with the Imperial Settlers: Exploration Tiles and Imperial Settlers: Storage Tiles in play. These tiles definitely help to bring some balance into the game by giving the first player to pass/the player who is behind in points some benefit. However, that didn't seem to keep Peter's Romans from being defeated by Mina's Japanese! I was very proud of the way I played this game. I found the Garrison (a Japanese faction card that allows the Japanese player to spend 2 swords to remove one enemy card from the game) in my hand at the beginning of the game, and instead of dumping it or making a deal with it as I am wont to do, I decided to keep it around in case Peter got a really good faction card in play. And of course, he did! He got one card that allowed him to use rocks and a pink dude to make 4 VP in one shot! After two rounds of that, I managed to get enough swords to make use of the Garrison, so I built it and blew Peter's building to smithereens! And then I parked a Samurai on it for extra protection. Peter wasn't making very many swords and it was the second to last round of the game, so he didn't bother trying to destroy my Garrison, which ended up destroying another one of his point-making cards. :P I was just all-out evil in this game! :devil: I did feel a little badly, but not THAT badly because Peter would have won had I not done that. My main sources of points were the features that provide points for previously built red and brown buildings, of which I had at least 6 when I built them, so I was able to take full advantage of their power, buildings that gave me two points for having a pink dude eat an apple and one that allowed me to make points for discarding cards. And the building that made 3 points for having 3 samurai on my faction cards. That was it. I ended up winning with 80 points to Peter's 67. :) SO MUCH FUN! But I think Peter had a bit less fun than I did...:P

Greedy meeple

The Voyages of Marco Polo
Wow! WAY TOO LONG since our last game of Marco Polo! I love this game, but Peter KILLED me in the last game we played (and I mean seriously decimated!), so I didn't feel like playing for a while. Well, I finally gained the courage to stand up to Peter's contract-fulfilling forces and we played Marco Polo again! YAY! And this time, guess who lost!? :P NOT ME!

I got to pick my character first and went with Fratre Nicolao, who allowed me to take two favor tiles at one point during the game and gave me income of 1 favor tile each round. Peter went with Gunj Kokochin, who has two dice placement spots that only she can use. I ended up fulfilling a few more contracts than Peter and beating him to Bejing thanks to the awesome presents my piousness brought me! :P I do think that Fratre Nicolao is quite a bit more powerful than Kokochin. He just straight up gets goodies for doing absolutely nothing, while she has to place a die to get any benefit out of her power. Oh well. It was still fun for me!

The Prodigals Club
This was the fastest game of Prodigals Club ever! Both Peter and I were quickly racing to the bottom of the vote track, but I did a crazy good job of collecting forks and using them not only to race down the vote track, but also to push down my standing in society! I guess I was just going around stabbing people with forks? Or eating like a messy swine? Dunno. Either way, I was doing something with those forks that both angered the voters and made the socialites disgusted with me. The only thing I had trouble getting rid of were my possessions (I wanted to hold on to all those forks!), but ended up ending the game before the final round with only $14 worth of possessions, while Peter had 18 votes. :) Win!

I really want to try this game using Last Will as an expansion, but I got rid of that thing a long time ago because I didn't like it. Ugh. I hate re-acquiring games. :shake:

Troyes + The Ladies of Troyes
We don't play Troyes nearly often enough. Every time we play it, I am reminded of how enjoyable it is! In this game, we saw a number of cards we had never seen before (most of them from the Ladies of Troyes expansion) and I saw my favorite parapet! The one that gives 8 points for having the most cubes on it!!! Peter was so focused on increasing his influence and then using it to produce points that he completely neglected the parapets! This gave me an easy 8 points with only a single cube! And I kept churning out points with a character that gave me points for each white die in my district and I always had lots of them to appease my end-game objective noble! :) I won! :P

Merkator
Here's one for Team Peter! Peter is MUCH better at Merkator than I am and he loves to play it! I suggested it this week and he jumped at the opportunity to kick my butt! :P He managed to complete a string of contracts in Newfoundland and ended up racing for the Peace of Westphalia, but I got a nice building card called "Arsenal" (doesn't that sound lovely? :P), which gave me two points for each type of gun and shirt I had at the end of the game and I had them all! :) My collection of contracts wasn't too shabby either, so I didn't end up lagging toooooooooooooo far behind, but I did lose. As usual. :) I have to improve. Go Team Peter! :)

Fields of Arle
Fields of Arle! Peter suggested this because I wanted a heavy game and we couldn't agree on anything. It's rare for Peter to suggest Arle (he usually just declines it when I suggest it), so I jumped at the chance! YAY!

I thought I was doing so well in this game. I developed a steady income of flax to make shirts and maxed out my cloth-making powers and filled my storehouse with equipment and carts to ship my cloth and turn it into shirts. However, I utterly failed to sufficiently develop my board with buildings until it was way too late in the game. And I didn't build a single 15-VP building! NOT ONE! :( Ugh. It was awful and I only managed to make 112.5 points. Peter did a bit worse with his animal breeding strategy, but that didn't make me feel any better. Must play more Fields! Must outdo my previous high score!

Core Worlds + Core Worlds: Revolution + Core Worlds: Galactic Orders
Core Worlds! Yay! I never have trouble getting Peter to play this game, even if I do usually end up winning by a mile! This game went very well for me. I had Chancellor Augustus. Typically, I forget about Augustus' power when I'm playing with him and go for some unit other than Infantry, but in this game, I focused almost exclusively on Infantry and Heroes. Also, in this game, I ended up acquiring a bunch of Advancements because their price was reduced in two rounds of the game AND I got a Hero whose strength was determined by the number of Advancements I had. Everything came together very nicely for me! Plus Balthasar + Heroes = lots of energy!!!! :) I just love all the crazy combinations in this game! This was the first time I made Infantry work for me (i.e. I got the Infantry scoring Core World) and I'm really happy about how well it worked because it was something I always felt I SHOULD be doing with Augustus, but I never did. Win for me! :P

Rococo
Rococo is not one of Peter's favorite games. And no, that has nothing to do with the theme. He actually likes the theme! He decided he was going to be Jimmy Choo last night. I had to be Roksanda Ilinčić because she's the only famous female Serbian fashion designer I could think of. :P Anyway, Jimmy and Roksanda decided to compete at creating ball gowns and coats for the ladies and gentlemen of some French royalty thingy and guess who prevailed!? Aha. The girl. Peter has a lot of trouble with strategy in this game. He seems to think it's enough to put out a bunch of dresses and secure the fireworks spaces. He doesn't build many other statues and doesn't typically hire many new people. Meanwhile, I hired half the deck and netted 11 points on one end-game-scoring schlub alone! He wasn't very useful because he was the weakest worker, but he was 11 points! Roksanda doubled Jimmy's score and then some! Jimmy was sad.

Ginkgopolis + Ginkgopolis: The Experts
I am CONSTANTLY begging Peter to play Gink with me! And he finally agreed! Well, actually he agreed to play Alhambra, but then I somehow managed to turn it into Gink :P.

We had played with the expansion in the past, but only with the experts and the keep one card rules. This time, we decided to use the events and the green spaces as well. I had the Inspector who gave me points for creating new districts, enlarging existing ones, or joining two different districts of the same color, while Peter had the Mayor who allowed him to change district colors without paying resources AND gave him 1 point per district in the city at the end of the game. My Inspector also gave me some nasty "quality control" events, which allowed me to force Peter to lose points or resources for resource tiles he had on and around a card I played. Sadly, I only manged to control Peter's quality once because I was being stupidly cheap with my hand refresh chits. :( Blah. I was also all over the place, not focusing on district majorities enough. I was too enchanted by the shiny new green spaces. We ended up in a tie!

Madeira
Madeira is another game I rarely manage to convince Peter to play with me because it breaks his brain. For some reason, he just can't seem to wrap his head around this one. I think Kanban has quite a bit more going on than Madeira, but he had little trouble with Kanban. It might just have something to do with his thematic inclinations. Cars > random Portugese archipelago in days of yore. :goo:

Back to the game, I had shipping goals early in the game and managed to fulfill them well, while Peter struggled with his goals, getting 0 points for one of them in the second scoring. :( That really set him back. While I was avoiding pirates like the plague, he kept taking them on. I was afraid I would have to take on pirates because I had very high wood demands throughout the game. SHIPS ARE EXPENSIVE! Pirates tend to be Peter's downfall, but this time, he managed to get rid of them all before the end of the game. However, he just couldn't catch up after losing out on that scoring tile in the third round. Sadly, I don't think this session convinced him that he needs to play this game more often. Theme can make or break a game for him and in this case, it definitely breaks it. I had a lot of fun and really wish I could play it more often...Oh well. Back to the shelf it goes. I will keep trying.

Steam Works
Steam Works has increased tremendously in my favor since we developed our little variant. It now takes 30 minutes to play and is incredibly tense and quite a bit more variable. I have written about it in the past and it's described on my review of the game, which can be found here. I'm sure some people will find our variant unnecessary or unsatisfactory for whatever reason, but I would not have kept the game without it, so that's why I mention it.

Anyway, in this game, I was the pretty blonde explorer lady who is very good at scouting for machine parts! I scouted out all the best parts and built the best machines and my machines generated a lot of competition. Peter kept using them and I kept using his in retaliation (he had a nice one that made money and then used that money to make points). I ended up winning, but I think my win was mostly influenced by the fact that I ended up pumping out more machines than Peter despite the fact that his guy let him take a part and build in one action!

The Castles of Burgundy
Castles of Burgundy! Peter wanted a game that would allow him to rest his mind and we have played Castles of Burgundy so much that it's pretty automatic, so we went with that one. I was rolling very poorly the entire game and so was Peter and both our brains were clearly fried as we didn't even manage to reach 200. :( I got to 198 or so, but I consider any score below 200 a failure. So I won, but I lost. Bah. Must play again when we are not so tired and our dice rolling hands are in a better mood!

Le Havre: The Inland Port
It was getting late one night, but I still wanted to play games, so I suggested the mini version of Peter's favorite, knowing that he would agree, despite wanting to go to bed! :P I'm devious!

Initially, I was planning to collect lots of clay and money and go for the clay anchor building and the big money building, but I only succeeded in getting the clay anchor building, failing get the big money building or enough clay to really leverage the clay anchor building. But I did get the Dock, which provides points for anchor buildings, so things kind of evened out. Peter ended up winning by ONE POINT!!! ONE! I wanted a rematch, but it was almost 1 am and Peter does not play games at 1 am. :P Plus, he wanted me to go to bed because I was still sick.

FUSE
We Mina won this week (i.e. didn't just wipe the bombs off the public display, but also off our own private displays)! On standard mode! Peter was outraged when he realized we had two 6-point bombs to deal with, but we ended up winning with 3 seconds to spare and 84 points! :) Yay!

***

Fresh Cardboard

1. Nations: Dynasties - I love Through the Ages more than Nations, but I love Nations too, so I picked up this expansion as soon as I saw it was in stock! Very much looking forward to more civ-building goodness! :)
2. Apotheca - Apotheca looks like a beautiful, quick-playing puzzle and I can't wait to try it! :) I didn't back this on Kickstarter, but regretted that decision and knew I would have to pick it up as soon as it came to stores. Plus, it's small and relatively low priced, so I had no excuse!
3. Saint Malo - Saint Malo may seem like a weird game to throw on here out of the blue, but I've actually been considering it for a while (ever since Village, actually) and finally decided to get it. I don't know how successful this will be because it is quite light and seems limited in terms of strategy, but it may be a winner if it's quick enough.
4. Yedo - Another surprise! Well, after Imperial Settlers, Peter wanted a Japanese themed game but didn't want IKI or Nippon and I realized I didn't really have many games about one of my favorite places in the world, so I decided to take a chance on this one. Let's hope we find it to be ok with just 2 players.
5. Scoville - Peter has been bugging me about this game forever! Peter loves hot peppers, even if his tolerance for hot foods is far lower than mine! :P Well, I finally got it, mostly in anticipation of the Labs expansion, which looks super cool!
6.Animals on Board - Animals! This looks very cute and quick and fun! I split you choose doesn't always work with only two players, but I am curious to see what they have done to try to make it work in this case.
7.Piratoons - This game looks very very very very pretty! And pirates! And quick and light. It is an auction game and may not be the best with two, but I know that Peter will enjoy the theme and cuteness so I figured it would be worth a shot. :)

***

Next Week...

Look forward to Apotheca and some other stuff! I'm really excited for Android: Mainframe, so that might have to happen! :P I'm definitely looking forward to a week of less crappy feeling!

***

:) :heart: :) THANKS FOR READING, FRIENDS!!!!:) :heart: :)

***


MINA'S LOVE METER

Burn it! - I dislike this game so much that it makes me angry. (I rate these 4 or less on the BGG scale)
:( Dislike - I don't like this game, but I can see why others like it.
(5 on BGG scale)
:heart: Some like - I find this game somewhat appealing, but it doesn't really grab me. I am glad to have had the opportunity to try this game, but it is unlikely to stay in my collection for very long.
(5.5 to 6.5) on BGG scale)
:heart: :heart: Like - I like this game and appreciate the design. I am happy to play this game occasionally when the mood strikes and enjoy doing so.
(7 to 7.5 on BGG scale)
:heart: :heart: :heart: Some love - I love this game. It's not perfect, but it really appeals to me and I will play it frequently.
(7.5 to 8 on BGG scale)
:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: Lots of love - I really love this game. The design really speaks to me. I want to play it most of the time.
(8 to 9 on BGG scale)
:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: All love all the time - I ADORE this game and can see myself playing it many times and for many years. I would go to sleep clutching it in my arms and want to play it all day every day...only not literally because that would be insane.
(9 to 10 on BGG scale)