To try to get back into our game playing routine (which is still a struggle) we decided to play a new game right away for the week, a simple card game (Cauldron Master), and later in the week we played another new game that was much more time consuming (My Father’s Work). We also returned to our favorite gaming pub up north and played a game on our 10 x 10 list (Merchants Cove) on Saturday. We are working on doing better and are excited to get back into our gaming routine. With that being said, here are the two games for the week.
CAULDRON MASTER (2017)
We got a jump start on playing games for the week. On Sunday’s we go to my parents house for family dinner which usually involves playing a game. My wife wanted something light and I wanted something new, so after about ten minutes debating which direction I wanted I saw Cauldron Master by Alley Cat Games (the publisher of one of our favorite island hopping games Tungaru) on a shelf still in shrink and grabbed it so we got something light and new.
BGG Description
Play as a coven of witches conniving to concoct potions to entrance the local population in Cauldron Master! Each turn players choose from one of their 5 witches in a blind reveal mechanism. Each witch allows the collection of ingredient cards (to collect as sets) and condiment cards (to increase the value of specific sets). However, each witch picks specific types of cards and incorrectly deduce who earlier players pick and you may be left with nothing to pick up! The "recipe" cards included also give secret bonuses for concocting specific ingredient/condiment (potion) combinations which allow for great replayability and strategic depth.
—description from the publisher
Weight 1.67/5
A Little More Info
The game is simple and easy enough to play and does not take long at all to go through a deck. Our two player game took about 15 minutes and that was doing things turn-based.
How does the game play? Each round has five phases that goes quickly and is the following: 1) Select a witch, 2) Player Order, 3) Pick ingredient cards, 4) Create potions, and 5) End of round.
Each player has the same five witches and on a turn you select one of them and place it face down in front of you (phase 1). Once everyone has selected, the cards are revealed. The person who played the lowest number gets to do the selected action first (phase 2). If there is a tie for order, the player with the “Favour of Hecate” card goes before the other player who played the same number.
The person with the initiative then gets to select cards according to the action on their witch card and put the cards into their personal cauldrons (Phase 3). Each player has a cauldron that holds two, three, and four ingredients in it. If you fill up a cauldron to its capacity, you proceed to the scoring section of Phase 4. Scoring is easy because each ingredient card tells you how many points each set is worth. There is also bonus points for completing a recipe from your bonus card.
After this is done, Phase 5 consists of discarding your witch you played (don’t worry, you get it back after the 5th round), replenishing the ingredient pool and passing the “Favour of Hecate” to the next player. The game is over if there are not enough ingredient cards to fill the pool and complete another round. The winner is whoever has the most points from completed cauldrons.
What we like about the game
The game is your typical set collection game that plays extremely fast. The rules are simple and not hard to follow at all. It is small and portable and does not take a lot of table space.
What we don’t like about the game
This is our personal preference, but it has no effect on the actual game itself…
There are three types of red cards with three of each, there are four types of orange cards (more yellow to us) with four of each, and five types of green cards with five of each.
With knowing this you need to strategize ahead of time which witch to play so you don’t miss out of the card you may need to complete a set. But again, you never know what ingredient cards are coming until Phase 5.
MY FATHER’S WORK (2022)
This was a major Kickstarter project that we backed and I believe the only (maybe we have one other, but I would have to check) game that requires an app to play. We like games that don’t rely on technology so we can “disconnect” and enjoy face-to-face interactions with other people. So how did we like this game? Read on, my friend, read on.
BGG Description
The walls were lined with iron shelves, each metal slat overfilled with glass jars containing formaldehyde and grotesque curiosities within. Pristine brass tools and refined metals of a quality I had never before laid eyes upon were strewn across sturdy slabs of rock and wood, their edges sharp with use. However, my eyes were soon drawn to a sturdy writing desk, its mahogany eaves inlaid with thin strips of copper, the center of which contained a well-worn leather-bound book. My father's journal — passed down to me and representing years of knowledge and countless experiments. And inside that weathered tome, atop the pearly parchment oxidized yellow at its frayed edges, were the deliberate quill marks of a crazed genius outlining the ambitious project he could never complete in one lifetime — his masterwork.
Without realizing it, my hands were shaking as I clutched the book to my chest. At once, I felt an ownership and anxiety for the scientific sketches scrawled so eloquently on those frayed sheets. It was at that moment that I began my obsession: I would restore this laboratory to its former brilliance and dedicate my life to completing my father's work!
In My Father's Work, players are competing mad scientists entrusted with a page from their father's journal and a large estate in which to perform their devious experiments. Players earn points by completing experiments, aiding the town in its endeavors, upgrading their macabre estates, and hopefully completing their father's masterwork.
But they have to balance study and active experimentation because at the end of each generation, all of their experiments and resources are lost to time until their child begins again with only the "Journaled Knowledge and Estate" they have willed to them — and since the game is played over the course of three generations, it is inevitable that the players will rouse the townsfolk to form angry mobs or spiral into insanity from the ethically dubious works they have created. The player with the most points at the end of three generations wins and becomes the most revered, feared, ingenious scientist the world has ever known!
—description from the publisher
Weight 3.2/5
A Little More Info
The game is a story driven worker placement that does take a long time to play because you are playing through three generations of storyline. Each generation contains three rounds to complete.
As you progress through the storyline, the rounds do tend to get quicker as you become more familiar with what each location does. Oh, did I also mention that the town map changes throughout the gameplay too?
The best way I can tell you more about playing the game is to refer you to this video by JestaThaRogue. This will explain enough without spoiling the storyline in the game for you. He maybe a quick talker but this is one of better explanation videos we have seen.
What we like about the game
WOW! Where do we start with this?
First, the box is be-a-u-ti-ful and sturdy. The game materials are top-notch for us. From the cards, to the boards, to the miniatures, to the resources, and much, much more. On top of it all, the Game Trayz organizers allows the game to stay neat and organized and allows for quick and simple setup and take down.
Speaking of the miniatures, we love that you can selected which miniature will take the role of yourself, your spouse, two servants, and two caretakers. With a variety of male and female characters, you can mix and match who gets what role. There are a total of six different characters (four of each) so if you are playing with fewer than four players, you could double-up on a character. The roles of each miniature is distinguished by what base you attach to it. This also means that you can select a husband-wife, husband-husband, or wife-wife combo. The choice is up to you and is not pre-determined.
The next thing that we absolutely love is that the Village Chronicle Book (the town maps) is a spiral bound flip book and not one in which you attach stickers to alter the map permanently. Instead, as instructed, you flip from one page to another in between rounds. We really love this feature of the game.
Since we are a fan of sleeving the cards in our games, the Game Trayz organizers do allow sleeved cards to fit nicely in them (the exception are the four tarot sized player aids just sit on top of one of the organizer trays so the are not snug in place).
Now to address the resource items from the game. The knowledge cubes are your typical see-through colored cubes. The ingredient resources are awesome. From the glass bottles, to the metal gears, and the wooden animal and body (coffins) resources, each are made really well. We love that coffins have different patterns on them and the animals are not just paw prints but are a variety of different animals. The coins in the game are a nice-weighted metal coins and not cardboard or wooden and the metal gears are all different as well.
The player boards are dual-layered boards so you can set game components in them without having to worry items sliding out of place. The only minor drawback is that your journal markers are tall and can be tipped with a major bump of the table, so a lot of people just lay them down.
Now for the “elephant” of the game, the app. Most Kickstarter backers wanted to get their hands on the game before the app was completed so Renegade sent out the games. To “make up” for the app not being ready, they released a web-based text only demo scenario as an introduction to the game for those who wanted to play a game right away. (Click here to check it out.)
We waited for the app to be released before playing the game since we wanted to see the game with “all the bells and whistles.” As of right now, the Android app is still pending release but the Apple and Amazon apps are up and running.
Also for us, we were very apprehensive about playing a game that requires an app but we feel that this game is great with it and the app allows the stories to be told and altered without having to rely on multiple books and manuals to do the job. Thus making the focus on the game play itself and not page turning.
*** Sidenote: I love that the music from the app helps set the mood in the game.
What we don’t like about the game
There are just a few items to address here.
We do wish that there was an action summary card provided that would briefly explain the actions. This would have made our first game go a bit quicker. Early on we made a few mistakes.
And second, the printed knowledge cube icons needed to be done better. The white cubes that signify any color can be easily mixed with the grey occult cubes. Trying to figure out which is which did take up a few moments of time with each occurrence.
Those are really the only things we are not liking with the game.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We enjoyed playing both games for this week. From the quick and easy Cauldron Master to the long and horrifying (theme of the game) My Father’s Work, each game was a fun experience for us.
The one thing that I would say about playing an app-based game is that you should pick on by a company in which is well established and has a good record as a publisher. This is a main reason why we backed My Father’s Work. You want a reputable publisher that you know will be able to maintain the app for years to come.
Yesterday we were also able to show off the game to a member of our gaming group and was able to talk about the details of the game that we could without spoiling the game and they are excited to be to play the game with us in the coming weeks. They pointed out some of the same details about the components as we did.
It doesn’t matter if you want a long game to play or just a quick short one, keep on gaming and enjoy the time you have spending it with family and friends. During our move we missed this and it definitely showed.
I will say it again, we are looking forward to getting back into the habit of daily game play. Until next week, “keep your stick on the ice” (oh wait, that was Red Green, maybe I need to find an idiom).
No comments:
Post a Comment