Just One

Just One is a game from 2018. It was nominated for many awards, and it won many too, the most prestigious one being the Spiel des Jahres (2019). This is a party game and a cooperative game. The idea is simple. Every round one person plays the active player and needs to guess a word. That word is known to everyone else, and everyone must give a one word clue to help the active player guess the word. These clues are written down independently. The twist is before showing the clues to the active player, they are revealed among the other players at the same time, and if any of the clues given are the same, these repeated clues must be hidden. If there are too many clashes, the active player may end up with just one clue or even none at all. As clue givers, your dilemma is you don't want to give clues which are so common that someone else would be giving the same clue. Yet if everyone avoids those obvious clues, then the clues you give might end up to be too obscure to help the active player. A full game is played for 13 rounds, and you try to get any many correct guesses as possible. Each round, the active player can only make one guess. Everyone takes turns being the active player. 

These two words below were the only two clues I had when I was the active player. What would your guess be?  

My guess was "alien", and I was right. That wasn't too hard. 

The words to guess are printed on cards. Each card has five words. The active player draws a card and shows it to everyone else without looking at it himself. He then states a number from 1 to 5. That determines which word on the card needs to be guessed. In one round we had this card below, and the word to guess was the fourth one - "cycle". 

These were the clues we gave - "wheel", "race", "repeat", "life". Would you have guessed it correctly? As you can see, we are making use of the fact that some words have multiple meanings, or are commonly used with some other words. 

Here are some other examples of cards in the game: 

The game is certainly playable as a family game, just that depending on the age of the children playing, you have to adjust how you give clues. 

We prepared a stack of 13 cards when we set up the game, because the game is played over 13 rounds. If we made a correct guess, we placed the card face-up. Otherwise, we placed it face-down. We were not doing so well. 

One of the words we had to guess was "drag". Other players gave clues like "pull" and "movement". I gave the clue "queen", because there is a term "drag queen". Some players did not understand at all why I gave this clue. Thankfully the active player understood and made the correct guess. In this case "queen" was an important clue, because he had to find one word which was associated with every single clue. The other clues were closely related, and many words were related to them. However to find a word which also related to "queen" was not easy, and the active player realised it was "drag". 

As you play, you kind of get a feel for what kind of clues your friends tend to give. I became known as the guy who gave quirky clues. So others would try to avoid giving such clues. Maybe one person will always give the simplest and most straight-forward clue. Others on the team can somewhat collaborate by letting him give such clues and avoiding such clues themselves. 

Try to guess this word. The answer will be shown at the bottom. The clues are "junior", "student", "starting", "school", "foundation", "pupil". 

Here's another one: "vision", "light", "dark", "underground", "car", "drill". 

I keep thinking of Just One as a game from India, because Jaswant is a common Indian name. The concept is very simple. Yet it is captivating. A clever idea implemented well. This is something casual gamers and non-gamers can quickly get into. It's an excellent game for a social setting because all those clues will trigger much discussion. It's a great ice-breaker. 

~~~ Answers ~~~

Clues: "junior", "student", "starting", "school", "foundation", "pupil". Answer: "primary". 

Clues: "vision", "light", "dark", "underground", "car", "drill". Answer: "tunnel". 

Innovation: Cities of Destiny

I continue my ongoing online games of Innovation with younger daughter Chen Rui, who is now away from home. We have moved on to playing with the expansion Cities of Destiny. I'm sure later we will cycle back to the others. Although the latest rules for Innovation have been implemented on both Yucata.de and BoardGameArena.com (available if you participate in early testing), we are still playing with the older rules on BGA. I think they work just fine. 

I had thought the Cities of Destiny expansion would be rather simple. I had played it a few times in the past, and it was mixed in with other expansions. I only skimmed the rules, and since it was mixed with other expansions, I didn't assess it closely by itself. That's a problem of being sloppy when I play games online. The cards from the Cities expansion do not have any dogma powers. They all have six icons instead of four. Cities can help you in gaining majority in icons. You get to draw a city card when you play a new colour, or when you splay a colour in a new direction. 

Cities introduces some new icons. The arrow icons let you splay your stack in a specific direction. The flag icon counts as an achievement if you have the most cards visible in that colour. This is a temporary achievement. It counts only when you fulfil the condition and the flag is still visible. 

Plus signs let you draw cards

The special achievements that come with Cities are along the lines of melding a city which lets you splay in a direction when the stack is already splayed in that direction, or tucking a city with a fountain or flag icon. You don't draw cities that often, so these are not easy to achieve. 

This was one unusual situation. Chen Rui had four Age 10 cards, but her top green card was still an Age 1 card, the city of Jerusalem. Also she had many cards in her blue and yellow stacks, but till now they were still not yet splayed. 

We now play with the variant of requiring one extra achievement to win the game. This makes our games go a little longer. We reach the later ages more often. It's always exciting to get there. Many of the powers in Age 10 are crazy. 

In this particular game, Chen Rui and I were tied at 6 achievements. We both needed two more to win. I had this Kuala Lumpur card in hand and it had a fountain icon. The fountain icon counts as an achievement as long as it is visible. It is better than a flag because it doesn't require you have the most cards in the colour. On my turn, I managed to claim the Age 9 achievement, and then play Kuala Lumpur, to gain two achievements on the same turn. That ended the game. Chen Rui told me she could have gained two achievements too on her turn. She had Taipei city, which also had a fountain. It also had two clock icons, which would help her achieve the special achievement requiring 3 icons in all 6 types. So she just needed one action - to play Taipei. This was one very close game! 

Cities of Destiny introduces the endorse mechanism. You can use the dogma power of a card twice if you have a city which has the icon associated with the dogma, and you are willing to spend a card. Endorsed dogmas pack double the punch. 

This expansion is not as simple as I expected. I had thought it would feel like a mini expansion. It feels close to a full expansion experience. I am quite happy playing with just this one expansion by itself. It doesn't need to be combined with other expansions to make a more satisfying game. And hey, Kuala Lumpur is in the game. That's certainly a plus! 

Shackleton Base

Shackleton Base is a heavy eurogame about developing and operating a moon base. This is a worker placement game in which you build domes, attract employees, mine resources and make money. Every game there will be three corporations out of seven in play, and they determine the human enterprises happening on the moon. Working on projects for these corporations is how you score points.

Every round you draft cards which will decide the types of workers and resources you get, and also your turn order for the round. Workers come in three colours, red, yellow, and blue. If you place them on the main map to collect resources, the colours are important. Red workers collect money, yellow workers collect natural resources, and blue workers collect corporate specific resources. When you place workers to do construction, buy cards or perform corporate specific actions, their colours matter less, but you will get a bonus if you use the preferred colours. 

Only those three on the left are workers. The astronaut in white is in use when the space tourism company is in play. These are tourists and not workers. And they look impatient. You can almost see their frown. 

This is your player board. These tiles are domes, i.e. habitats you can build on the moon. You need to spend resources to build them, and once built, every round you need to pay for maintenance. When you build a dome, you place it on the main board. The spaces opened up on your player board become available accommodation for workers. Workers which are placed on the main board to collect resources will be attracted to domes, with priority given to players with the most domes where they work. When you attract these workers to your domes, they generate resources for you or give you discounts. Placing the right kind of workers in the right spots gives you various benefits, including end game points. 

This is the main game board. Every hex can fit six domes. Whoever is first to build in a hex must also build a solar panel. You want to build domes because they allow you to collect resources from the hexes. When you place a worker on the main board, he is placed facing a row of hexes. He collects resources from every hex in that row which has a dome. If you have a dome in a hex, you get the resource for free. If you don't and you are making use of others' domes, you have to pay them. Due to this mechanism, there is a tendency to want to build domes in straight lines. 

I placed a red worker here, and he is facing two occupied hexes, both with my (green) domes. 

Other than placing workers on the main map to gain resources, you can also place them here to perform three types of actions. Although the three action types are colour coded, you can use off-colour workers, just that you won't get a bonus. Generally you try to use workers of the matching colours. The yellow action is for construction. The red action is for buying tech cards from one of the three corporations. These cards give you all sorts of benefits and actions. The blue action is called the corporate action. You get to perform actions associated with the corporations and with the reputation track. 

For work on the Shackleton Base to be viable, the three corporations must be able to run profitable businesses. You build the basic infrastructure on the moon base, and this infrastructure needs to serve a purpose. For new players, a specific combination of three companies is recommended - a mining company, a space tourism company, and a research company. Corporations all have these round blue tokens which can be placed onto the main board. They represent resources which are related to the corporations. When you use workers to collect resources from the main board, these are the corporation-specific resources you can collect. The mining company introduces Helium-3 to the game. The space tourism company introduces tourists to the game. 

All corporations come with a set of project cards, and at any time three are available for purchase. These cards are worth points, but more importantly they also offer actions and abilities which directly or indirectly score points for you. 

This is a mining corporation. When in play, Helium-3 will be mined on the moon. This corporation offers opportunities for players to trade resources for points. 

Shackleton Base is a development game. You need to build domes so that you can collect more resources every time you deploy a worker to the main board. You also want to attract these workers (whether placed by yourself or others) to come live in your domes. They give you benefits when they are placed in the right domes. You need to decide how many of the three companies you want to work with. It's probably difficult to work with all three because you will be unfocused. Working with only one might not give you enough opportunities to score points. I think two is a good number, and you have to decide how much to get involved in each company. There is some cooperation among the players. When you are first to build in a hex, you know that solar panel you build can be used by others. Your opponents will be using your domes to collect resources, but you do get paid for this. When you place a worker on the main board, you have to consider whether this worker will later decide to live in your opponent's dome. There are several interlocking aspects you have to think about. 

One thing I learned the hard way was I should have deliberately planned to attract yellow workers to my domes to give me maintenance fee discounts. I noticed that everyone did that. I spent a lot of money on maintenance because I did not have yellow workers on my board. I fell behind in developing basic infrastructure. You want to get many domes out there, because domes on the moon mean better efficiency in collecting resources, and also more space on your player board for workers. 

I decided to focus on space tourism. It was fun. I bought several project cards which made a good combo. Space tourism helped me score many points during the game. Unfortunately my weak infrastructure meant fewer points scored at the end of the game. I did not do well at the end. 

Han (pink) was first to build the largest dome complex - 6 connected domes 

I built much capacity to bring space tourists on trips

Two large dome complexes

Workers living in your domes give you benefits, provided they are of the right type

Tourists (in white) can temporarily stay in your domes

Everyone gets a character card which gives you a unique ability

These are the components relevant to the research corporation

Game in play

Very satisfying to see my happy customers

This is an enjoyable heavy game. It feels to see how the base grows. It feels almost organic. While competing with other players, you also want to make use of what they have done. A blue token they have placed on the board is an opportunity for you to collect valuable resources. If they have charged up the communal battery, maybe it's time to use the stored power. Despite the competition, these is also a sense of building something together. You don't win by damaging what others have built. You win by making good use of what they have built. Much of the competition is in the form of grabbing opportunities and resources before you opponents do so, for example buying project cards, mining natural resources, fulfilling public contracts. Most of the game mechanisms here will be familiar to experienced eurogame players. What I enjoy in the game are the symbiotic relationships among players and how you balance working with the corporations in play. 

Blood on the Clocktower

Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game with the same concept and structure as Werewolf. It is an improved, more complex and more strategic version of Werewolf. In Werewolf you don't really have much basis for discussion or deduction. You rely on observing the facial expressions and reactions of your friends. In Blood on the Clocktower every town resident has a unique ability, and as a team the townsfolk have a lot of information to work with. You have more concrete data as a basis for discussion. 

There are two teams. The bad guys are the demon and his minion, and they try to keep their identities secret. Their goal is to kill most of the townsfolk. If the demon can survive until there are only two players remaining, the demon team wins, even if the minion is killed. The good guys are the townsfolk. Their goal is to kill the demon. In order to do that they need to work out who the demon is. Game rounds alternate between day rounds and night rounds. Night rounds are when the demon gets to secretly kill a town resident. Day rounds are when the townsfolk can vote to lynch a person suspected to be the demon. This game requires a facilitator who does not participate in the game itself. Being facilitator in this game is much more complex than being one in Werewolf. You have much more work to do and more information to manage. In night rounds everyone closes their eyes and the facilitator gives instructions about who should open their eyes and convey or receive information without the rest knowing. 

In a day round, the townsfolk get to discuss who they think the demon is. They can vote to kill the person. This is how you kill the demon. One difference from Werewolf is you don't necessarily have to pick someone to kill if you are not sure. If none of the accused get enough votes, or if they are tied in votes, nobody dies. Another difference from Werewolf is dead people continue to play. After you are killed, you are still allowed to speak, just that you don't have your powers anymore. You are even allowed to vote, but from the moment you are killed until the end of the game, you can only vote once. People who get killed are usually the good guys. Since they get to continue to speak, the demon cannot silence them by killing them. The demon needs to be careful not to expose himself, because all these dead people still have one vote each, and if they band together, they can get him killed. I think this aspect makes the game better than Werewolf. There is no player elimination. Everyone is engaged till the end. 

The best part of the game is the character powers. Every character has a unique power. Only the facilitator and you know which character you are. There is no card indicating who you are. You don't have anything to prove you are who you say you are. Players may declare who they are, but whether the others believe so is a different matter. Certainly the bad guys want to pretend to be good guys. 

Here are some of the townsfolk characters. The fortune teller gets to pick two players every night, and she will know whether the demon is among them. There is a weakness to her power though. One specific town resident will be mistaken as the demon. All of this is handled by the facilitator. The monk protects one player every night. If the demon attempts to kill that player, the protected player is saved. The washerwoman starts the game knowing that between two town residents, one is a particular character. 

These above are the townsfolk. There is another type among the good guys, and they are called the outsiders. They are on the same team as the townsfolk, but their powers are liabilities. Their existence helps the demon. One outsider is the drunkard. He doesn't know he's drunk and he believes he is someone else. He thinks his information is correct, but it may not be. As you can see, the existence of this character can really mess with the townsfolk. All of this needs to be managed by the facilitator. 

The demon's minion can be one of four characters. The poisoner gets to disable and confuse the power of a town resident for 24 hours. The scarlet woman can take the place of the demon if the demon is killed early, allowing the game to continue. 

Although the townsfolk collectively have much information which help them figure out who the demon is, the demon and his minion do get tools and information to help them too. For example the facilitator will let the demon know about three specific characters which are not in play. This is helpful because the demon can pretend to be one of these characters, and there won't be any town resident who can verify that he is lying. 

Part of the facilitator's toolset

I did a 7-player game. I drew the demon, and that made me rather nervous. My minion was Sam. I didn't know which character he was. Right off the bat we got into a rather sticky situation. Xiang Yang was the empath, and he was seated exactly between Sam and I. The power of the empath was he could sense how many evil persons were next to him. He sensed two, which meant it must be both the demon and his minion! Game over?! This sucked big time. Another problem was Han was the washerwoman, and at the start of the game, he knew that between Xiang Yang and I, one was the empath. This meant his information matched what Xiang Yang claimed. I knew for our game the soldier was not in play. I was prepared to say that I was the soldier. The soldier could not be killed by the demon. So I planned to say that I couldn't reveal my character early, because I needed to lure the demon to kill me. He would fail, and I would have given us one more precious round. I didn't dare to deny what Xiang Yang had said, because Han's input matched his. If I went against two of them, I would arouse suspicion. So I said I believed Xiang Yang was the empath, but I said that his information was wrong, and that he must have been poisoned by the poisoner. Thankfully there was such a character in the game, and I could make use of this to wriggle out of this tight spot. At the time I had no idea whether Sam was the poisoner. It turned out that he was. 

In the first night round I promptly killed Xiang Yang. It felt too dangerous to have him seated right between Sam and I. In hindsight, that might not have been wise. The townsfolk might have interpreted that this meant what Xiang Yang had said was true - he was sitting between the demon and the minion. I could have let him live, and then let the poisoner do poisoning every round. Then what Xiang Yang said would become inconsistent, and it would just be considered gibberish. In fact he might end up being suspected. 

Game in progress (photo courtesy of boardgamecafe.net)

Joon Lam was the slayer. Once per game the slayer can attempt to kill the demon. He just has to point, and if that player is the demon, the demon is killed. During our discussion, Joon Lam was convinced that Sam was the demon. Sam did try to defend himself somewhat, at least to try to put on some show. I did not try very hard to dissuade Joon Lam. Sam wouldn't have been hurt anyway. I did not egg Joon Lam on either, so as not to appear too keen. The end result was the slayer wasting his holy water and Sam needing a towel for his wet face (figuratively speaking). 

Eu Vin was the fortune teller. Every night he could point at two persons, and Jeff the facilitator would tell him whether the demon was among them. This was done in the evening when everyone had their eyes closed, so no one knew who he pointed at and what answer he received. In fact, we couldn't even be sure he was indeed the fortune teller and all this happened at all. We had our eyes closed. In one night round Eu Vin pointed at Sam and Joon Lam, and Jeff signalled at him that the demon was among them. Eu Vin was given this answer not by mistake. The fortune teller's power had a weak point. One of the townsfolk would be mistaken as the demon. In our game, that error was Joon Lam. Eu Vin was convinced that Joon Lam was the demon, and asked everyone to vote to get him killed. I, of course, quietly supported the motion. So another innocent person was killed. Well, technically the townsfolk didn't know that yet. They could only be sure that the demon wasn't dead yet since the game continued. It might have been the minion getting killed. The identities of the dead were not yet revealed. 

Crunch time was the day round when we had four players remaining. If the townsfolk didn't manage to kill me, by night there would be only three left, I could kill one more to get to two players left, and I would win. This time Eu Vin was convinced that I was the demon. He proposed that I be sent to the gallows. Joon Lam was already dead. In this game most of the dead are townsfolk, and most of the time they are honest. They can still speak, and since they usually have no more reason to lie, you have to be careful about arguing with them. I stayed away from any such argument. Joon Lam said he was the slayer, and since his attempt to kill Sam had failed, it meant Sam wasn't the demon. I said in a matter-of-fact manner that with only four of us left still alive, the possibilities would be Eu Vin, Zackler and me. I said I thought Eu Vin was the demon, and that I too wanted to nominate him to be hanged. Up to this point, none of the three dead people had voted yet. Their votes could be make or break. Since Eu Vin had nominated me first, the voting to kill me went ahead first. With four players alive, only two votes were needed to get me executed. There were exactly two votes. In this game to vote means to support hanging the person. There is no vote for disagreeing. If you disagree, just don't vote. I had also nominated Eu Vin, so we had to vote for him too. Naturally Sam and I voted. We had two more votes from the townsfolk, making a total of four votes. I escaped the hanging, and Eu Vin was executed. That meant game over for the townsfolk. The demon and his minion won! 

This game gave me a lot of anxiety. I was nervous but I had to act calm and innocent. Looks like I'm a pretty good liar. I managed to convince the townsfolk of my innocence. Blood on the Clocktower is an improved version of Werewolf. It addresses several shortcomings of Werewolf. Werewolf is simple, and if that's what you are looking for, it will still work for you. In Blood on the Clocktower you have much more information to work with. The game is more strategic. You have more basis for discussion and deduction. You are not deciding on who to lynch based on gut feel. There is some logic and reasoning. The townsfolk have more information, which makes things harder for the demon. However the demon also has more tools to balance things out. There is more information, but there is also possible misinformation. The designer has done a lot of work balancing the game. This game must have been a huge undertaking to playtest thoroughly. I am truly impressed. If you like social deduction games, you must give this a go. 

Still lots of discussion and debate after the game

Jeff (in green) was a great facilitator 

Demon (me) and poisoner Sam

Steam Power

Steam Power is Martin Wallace’s magnum opus Age of Steam simplified to become a family game. Well, not exactly. Indeed much is simplified, but some elements in Steam Power are just different. Some are a little like Brass. 

In Steam Power, you build your own rail network. You also build factories. Every city allows one specific factory type. When you build a factory, you place five goods next to it. Anyone can use these goods for fulfilling contracts. Your factory will score points at game end only if all its goods are used up. Your railroad network doesn’t score points directly, but they give you access to factories. When you fulfil a contract, you can use any goods accessible by your network for free. You can use goods outside your network but you’ll need to pay for using your opponent’s railroads to bring these goods to your network. 

The game ends when a player completes his 11th contract. You score points for completed contracts, fully utilised factories and major cities you connect to. During game setup, two unused city tiles augment the values of specific factory types. This creates variability from game to game.

Network building is competitive. You want to claim territory and access to cities. Access to major cities does give you points, but it is access to factories which is more important. You get to use goods at these factories for free. You are not limited to build factories within your network. You can build in others’ networks if you foresee there is demand for your goods and your opponents will be willing to use your goods even when they know they will be helping your factory score. 

This is a very clean design. Building factories is free. Building tracks is free as long as you avoid hills and mountains. You don’t use cash often, and this cuts down a lot of tedium. There is much board play. You have to analyse the distribution of goods production to decide how best to start and grow your network. There is a race to expand your network. There is also a race to fulfil contacts. You must watch your opponents and make sure the game ending doesn’t catch you off guard. 

Steam Power is quite a different beast from Age of Steam. It is lighter and the pace is brisk. It is not as unforgiving but it is still competitive. This works as a family strategy game. This deluxe edition that I played is very pretty and welcoming.