Game: Castaways

Players: 1-4

Playtime(setup/play/clean-up): 120 minutes

Set Ending: Yes

TL;DR-An awesome game that REALY needs a new instruction manual 77.5%

How You Play: Players take the role of castaways on an island.  Each turn they assign two meeples to different activities such as finding food or wood, resting, taking camp actions, building, or exploring the island.  The players must build enough objects to be rescued as well as fully explore the island to get free.  The players must work together to succeed, but one player with the most impressive story will win the game at the end.

Theme: This game oozes theme.  Every action you take feels like something you need to do and are things that feel right.  The only problem is the mechanics of the win and that will be below but that’s as it detracts from the theme.  I felt invested in my survival on the island.  I was sad when the tidal wave washed away the goat.  I fought the rest of the group when they voted to eat the dog.  I was scared when a shark ate my leg.  This was awesome!  4.5/5
Mechanics: The general mechanics of this game is a “choose your own adventure book” meets a Euro worker placement game.  That’s it.  There are decks of cards much like Agricola that are semi-random but seeded with different cards for each play through.  There is a bit of a random mechanic for getting lost on explorations, but you can mitigate that through giving up story point.  I like how the mechanics work.  The one area that doesn’t make much sense is that someone can win.  I loved the co-op nature of the game right until the end.  As a strait co-op game, this game is an instant hit.  However, the end point comparison feel a bit tacked on.  Honestly, when we played we decided to drop it as it really only serves to divide the players.  4.5/5

Art/Components:  It has good art that’s only a little racist.  You can tell that this game came from “Not America” because some of the things on it might not pass modern American sensibilities.  That said, it looks like old school Robinson Crusoe art.  The board is good quality.  The game has lots of fairly well designed cards (see instructions for why their only fairly well designed) and cute components.  Nice, plastic meeples, but as a board gamer, I’m not sure why these are plastic.  It’s not bad.  However, I want some wood!  I do not like chance!  4.5/5

Instructions: Here is where I whine.  This game was made by a guy in Spain, translated to German, then translated to English.  And the majority of the instructions are ok.  They get their points across, but the set up part is HORRIBLE!  The instructions are really only one page of a 10+ page book, but it took my group of college educated friends over an hour of reading and rereading to understand what they were trying to get across.  Holy cow!  Maybe you can “Rain Man” these instructions out, but honestly, it’s a major turn off.   As a point of advice, there are 105 cards marked 1-105, but these cards come from every deck in the game.  Make the deck of numbered cards FIRST AND SET THEM ASISE FACE UP.  Take all the cards marked “0” and set them aside.  Those “0” cards you will shuffle and draw a pile of eight from to add a few random story seeds to your game.  THEN separate the number “0” cards into their proper decks based on the back of the cards and then mix these new decks to randomize the exploration cards.   There.  I just explained that first set up page better than the instructions! 2/5

Final Thoughts: All and all a pretty good game.  I enjoyed it, even after the rocky start.  I had lots of fun and still miss my goat and dog!  Give this one a try, but have someone experienced with set up be your teacher.  77.5%

The obvious comparison-Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island vs. Castaways-Ok this debate is best summarized by the phrase: American Style vs. Euro game.  Robinson Crusoe is a great game also, but it’s very American Style.  The island set up in Robinson Crusoe is completely determined by random tile draw.  It’s not a “bad” mechanic, but in the game I played, the random really screwed over the players.  Also in Robinson Crusoe, all events are resolved by custom dice.  Again, not “bad”, but if you hate that then you will not enjoy that game.  Also Robinson Crusoe is also a fully co-op game while Castaways is has a competitive difference at the end.  A final difference is difficulty.  Robinson Crusoe has PUNISHING difficulty, while Castaways was relatively easy.  That difference in difficulty can drive players away.  My wife wanted to play Castaways again, but based on my play of Robinson Crusoe, she will not even touch that game.  If you can only buy one, then maybe my collection is the best reference.  I own Castaways after one play, but don’t own Robinson Crusoe after one play through.  Food for thought.

Having spend the day at the convention hall and night at the hotel, here’s my thoughts…

 

First event of the day-Narosia https://sites.google.com/a/legendsmiths.com/legendsmiths/ -My wife saw this one and thought, let’s do this!  This game is Hero system, and neither of us have ever played that system.  Its a great system!  It has some of my favorite things: action choice that affects time, speeds for characters that reflect extra actions, randomness that is mitigated by skill.  I loved the game.  Lots of great times here.  As for Narosia itself, its a setting that is designed to harkens back to the old games of yore.  Old school dungeon crawling with a compelling back-story reason for why your doing things.  It was a lot of fun.  The GM for the game was the main game designer, and that is always awesome!  Give this one a look make, some facebook/twitter/G+ friends and keep the pressure on these guys to make their game come out soon!

 

Next- Smash Up by AEG-I’ve seen this game explode on the convention scene, and I’ve wanted to play this for a while. I got my friend together and joined a group at the con.  The basics of the game are: take two different decks of creatures, smash them together, and play for terrain control leading to points.  First to 15 points wins.  It’s pretty easy mechanics wise and its theme is crazy and fun.  The differences come into play as each creature deck play drastically different.  Think of one deck that might work better if you have no cards in hand and a second deck that works by moving enemy’s around to different areas.  All and all, I wouldn’t turn this game down if it was brought to the table.  However, if you are looking for an eight hour Eurogame experience, this is not the game for you.  You have choice, but your choices are usually pretty limited.  Keep that in mind going in for a much better time.

 

Aside time with designer!-This is one of the major reasons I go to cons.  I LOVE meeting new game designers and hearing why they did what they did.  Plaid Hat Games is on the scene and they are selling their games at a discount.  They made the City of Remnants game.  I met with the main designer and when his words are “glad you’ve heard of my game, I made this, and we’re selling this at a discount” you get money.  The part of my brain the controls logic and finance shuts down and I just had my money away.  Take note game designers and game companies…..

 

After dinner, I demoed Sentinels of the Multiverse to my wife and a friend at the con.  This game is a complete co-op game where every person is handed a deck of cards that represents their hero; a villain plays a bad event/cards, the heroes respond with cards/powers, and then the environment does “something” (usually bad).  And this is how the game is played.  I love co-op games that are simple and fun with lots of replay.  Great game even though we were DESTROYED by Citizen Dawn at the Mars Base.  When we talked with some of the demo team about this game, they suggested that Citizen Dawn was the WORST villain to start with, and we should have started with the Baron.

 

The last game of the night was Castaways by Passport Games. I’m going to be working at this booth today and wanted to try their newest game, so they let me play a demo copy.  It was a bit of a problem setting-up the game because of some English language translation issues.  However, when we got rolling the game is amazing.  The best way to describe this game is a Euro worker placement game combined with a choose your own adventure book.  All players play castaways on an island.  You must work together with some options giving you narrative points.  The narrative points let you win, but if you only focus on points, everybody will lose.  Lots of fun, and I can’t wait to play again.

 

Well that was day two of Grandcon.  I can’t wait to see you all in the demo hall tomorrow.  Look for me at the Passport Games booth.  Hope to see you there!

GrandCon is a new convention in Grand Rapids Michigan.  I’ve been here for about 12 hours (including sleeping), let’s give this the run down on my thoughts so far.

 

Registration–GrandCon is run by a quality group of people who know what they’re doing.  They have made an interesting choice that, had I understood what I was doing, would have made things a little less troublesome.  When you register for the con, you have to create individual accounts and pay for all your stuff individually.  I don’t like this because I can’t buy my wife and I our stuff together, but it tracks what events each person attends.  Had I known, this would not be a problem, but when I got there, I got put in the problem line.  They staff was quick to help me get through my woes and my wife and I got our badges pretty quickly.  Keep this in mind if you go in the future.  I see the logic, but I don’t like the end results of not being able to buy multiple event tickets at once.  Every con has something a little different.  This is not a deal breaker by any means, but keep this in mind.

 

The Location-GrandCon takes place at the beautiful campus of Calvin College at the Prince Convention Center.  This place is amazing.  Also, the con price for rooms is ~$80 bucks. That is phenominal!  Rooms are GIANT.  Flat screen TV, FREE WIFI, walk in giant showers, and a couch.  Beds a good.  I’m pretty happy.  We’re a little out from the rest of Grand Rapids, and the roads to get here are a bit confusing, but I think it was well worth it.

 

Gaming-My wife and I walked around, saw one of our friends, and hopped into a game of “Trains.”  Its great to see a thriving dropin gaming community.  Makes me happy.  This place has the GenCon game library.  The room with the library is full to the gills, but I love seeing gamers gaming and making new friends.  Lots of RPGs on the schedule and lots of board games.  No digital, but I’m not a digitial gaming con guy.  At the rate this FIRST YEAR con is going, I expect them to top GenCon in a few years based on the line-up of guests alone….

 

Guests-I’ve never been much of a panal person (takes away from the gaming time!), but this place has an amazing guest line up.  Go check their line up on their website.  Its pretty impressive for a  non-estabilshed con to get this many headliners to show up and be at this con.

 

Ok, that was the general.  Let’s do a mini review of a game I played-“Trains” by AEG.

 

Trains

Playtime-30-60 minutes.  (Even a first time game!)

Style-Deck building, terrain control, and world development

Basics-In this game you play different groups developing the train routs in Japan. That sounds boring, but its is far from it.  Players get a deck of cards that are money, lay tracks, and build station.  Stations get you point, laying tracks build from across the board, and money is used to pay for the tracks and new cards.  The deck is very much like Dominion, except the terrain control element makes the focus different.  You can get point cards in your deck, but the real focus is building your cross country rail lines to new stations.  The limiting factor for the game is every time you build, you generate waste that goes into the discard pile and slows you down.  That helps prevent the run away victor problem and makes you think about how you play.  As a turn you can buy/use cards/build rail/build station all at the same time and are not limited by the number of action you can perform or you can discard waste.  You can see the learning process AEG went through from seeing “Dominion” and making “Thunderstone and Thunderstone Advance” and it pays off in a well designed game.  The game we played in had little inter personal fighting, but that may change with different cards and different maps.  A really interesting fact is in this game you basically play alone.  Others build stuff and  you can build to it for points, but its not like in “Dominion” or “Thunderstone” where others can add stuff to your deck.  In this game you play your cubes (rails) pretty much without the other plays interference or objection.

Thoughts-OK AEG, you’re getting money.  This game played quick, was easy to learn, and was a game my wife will play again.  It didn’t have the “Dominion” problem of there is only one way to win or the problem of the person who’s played the most times will win.  I won my first game, the teacher was close behind, and my wife was hot on our heels.  No tooth and nail, drag out fights for my first game at this con, no stress, just playing my own game.  You will get a full review so as the game is only $60 at my local game store.

TL;DR-And now the low point of the adventure path 2.5/5

Plot-Spoilers ahead!- The pirates are Full Free Captains of the Shackles, but now must prove that they are truly made for the Shackles and become members of the pirate council.  Before this, they undertake an investigation to find who is feeding information to hated Cheliax.  After the mystery, they are sponsored to undertake a race through the eye of Abendego.  Finishing the race, the players are almost true members of the council.

GM Impressions-Well, my players were mostly bored at this point.  The characters are mid level in this adventure, and this is where most campaigns die, and this one almost made mine go out too.  The nature of this adventure is basically fun, but my players really didn’t enjoy the island hopping and social side of this adventure.  Also, some of the plot does not make sense as extremely powerful groups know the answer and will only help the PCs if they perform a few fetch quests for them.  This kind of killed the momentum of the previous, awesome adventure.  I was bored, and the players were bored.  Nothing in  the story really fed my interest and the PCs had a hard time finding aspects to keep things going in their own right.  Its not a bad adventure, its just not as much fun as the other parts of the adventure path.  The adventure does finish with the amazing race through the storm.  That really woke the PCs up, and gave me something to keep them going.

Good-This adventure finishes with a phenomenal race in a typhoon.   Also, there is a chance to real build the work of the adventure path.

Bad-If your PCs don’t want world building, then they will get bored.  My PCs decided to ask for a simpler way to get out of the fetch quests.  Your PCs may to if they are the killy-killy stab-stab types.  Keep that in mind

Final Thoughts– This is the low point of the path.  It’s not “bad” as Paizo doesn’t do much bad, but coming of the high of the previous adventure, it’s the low point of the path  (not Jurassic Park 3 bad compared to Jurassic Park 1, but Star Wars 6 compared to Star Wars 5).  Keep in mind the wants of the PCs and you may have to do some heavy lifting as a GM to keep the pace going 2.5/5