Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends

 

Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends is a 2013 game from Vlaada Chvatil. This guy is a genius. He made Through the Ages, Galaxy Trucker, Codenames, Mage Knight, Space Alert, and many more. Most of his games are very different from one another. Tash-Kalar too is very different form his other titles. He makes bold publishing decisions. 

The basic premise is you are two teams of fighters in an arena. There are several game modes, and I have only played one of them. You have pawns that you can deploy into the arena. There is a basic action of deploying a common pawn on any empty spot. Your fighters come in three levels - common, heroic and legendary. You can deploy common fighters directly, but heroic and legendary fighters can only be summoned by fulfilling conditions on your spell cards. One thing that's very unusual in this game is you can't move your fighters anywhere you like. Your fighters can only move as the result of triggering spells, and spells are triggered when you have fighters positioned in specific orientations. 

You have your own deck of cards, representing your faction. In your hand you will have basic cards, advanced cards, and a catch-up card. Configurations on basic cards are easier to achieve. Those on the advanced cards are much harder, but the effects of these cards are more powerful too. The catch-up card can only be used if your board position is much weaker than your opponent. 

You can activate a card when you have fighters on the board which fulfil the criteria. Some cards let you deploy fighters, or upgrade fighters, or kill enemy fighters. You rely on these cards to get yourself heroic and legendary fighters. Cards allow you to move fighters too. 

Red and green spaces on the board are sometimes relevant to card effects. Red means danger, and usually that's where fighters get killed. Green means life, and sometimes fighters get deployed or upgraded here. In the screenshot above you can see that the light green faction has all three levels of fighters. Most of the time fighters can only kill enemies of the same level or lower. If you manage to kill enemies on your turn, you score them at the end of your turn. You gain 1 point for every two common fighters, 1 point for every heroic fighter, and 2 points for every legendary fighter. In the game mode I played, we raced towards 18 points. 

This advanced card is quite hard to activate because two of the fighters in the configuration must be at least heroic fighters. You need to find ways to either upgrade common fighters in those positions, or somehow move heroic fighters into position using other cards. 

Tash-Kalar is certainly an interesting game. There are tons of team-based tactical battle games, but I have never seen anything quite like this. This is certainly refreshing. I wonder what it feels like to play this game at a higher skill level. When you know your own deck well, you will be prepared for the kind of configurations you will need. You will place your fighters in the patterns you expect to need, before you draw those cards. When you know your opponent's deck well too, you will try to place fighters to prevent them from making the patterns they need. In the game I played, since it was my first game, I played in a mostly tactical manner. I just tried to make use of the cards I had. I tried to use them under situations where their effects would be maximised, e.g. being able to kill an enemy fighter. It is satisfying to plan a combo play of your cards. You can use some cards to set yourself up to use other cards. It feels great to pull off those advanced cards. 

Tanglung

Tanglung is a 2-player abstract game by Mark William, published by Malaysian publishing house Luma. "Tanglung" refers to Chinese lanterns which are carried during the Mid Autumn Festival.  

I absolutely love the production of the game, especially the attention to detail. The insides of the box are decorated. I adore the art! 

A game is set up like this. The two corners will always be roosters, and the players each start on a rooster. Other cards are random, and the four central cards are face-up. On your turn, you must move your player pawn - the matchbox - to another card. You move based on the movement rule of the card you are on, or you can also choose to use the rooster movement (one step orthogonally). After you move, the card you were on is discarded. The board shrinks. If you move to a face-down card, you flip it face-up. 

There are several ways you can win. If your opponent is unable to make a move, you win. This might be because the board has shrunk too much, or you are blocking him. If you light the last lantern, i.e. you reveal the last face-down card, you win. If you bump your opponent twice, you also win. When you bump into your opponent, his pawn is temporarily removed from the board. Next turn, he must place his pawn on an empty space. 

There is a fan in the game. Some cards let you place or move the fan. The fan blocks movement. It can be used to stop your opponent from moving. You can also force your opponent to go to a position where you can bump him. 

The gameplay feel is that of an abstract game. You have to think ahead a little about your opponent's possible moves. You do not have perfect information though, because of the face-down cards. You do know the card distribution and the movement rules of the cards. This allows you to plan somewhat. 

The pawns (matchboxes) are different on the two sides. The full health side shows a full matchbox, while the "injured" side after you have been bumped once shows only one match remaining. 

Tanglung is a short but thinky game. 

Bombastic

 

Bombastic was first explained to me as advanced tic-tac-toe. It is a two-player-only abstract game played using 9 tiles laid out face-down in a 3x3 grid. Four of the tiles show a circle, another four a cross, and the last one a bomb. Each player is assigned an icon, circle or cross. Your goal is to reveal exactly three of your icon in a row on your turn. Beware. If you ever reveal the bomb, you lose. 

On your turn you have two options. You either attempt to win, as described above, or you perform a card action. The game comes with a deck of cards, and you always have two face up. On your turn you can pick one card to use. The cards have all sorts of powers, allowing you to peek at tiles and to move them around. It is by using these cards you figure out which tiles are yours, and which are your opponent's and the bomb. You and your opponent will gain different information. You can mess with your opponent when you get to shuffle some of the tiles. It is a race to be first to reveal a set of three icons. Sometimes you have to gamble a little, if you sense that your opponent is close to knowing where three of his tiles are. 

Bombastic is a light filler. There is a memory aspect. The game is quite tactical. You try to utilise the card powers as much as possible. It is a scramble to find three of your tiles, and sometimes you have to risk the bomb. 

Toy Battle

Toy Battle is a two player abstract game. My first impression is this is a game when you play with not only those tiny green toy soldiers but also with unicorns, dinosaurs and robots, and you make proper rules for a battle game in your living room, which you can imagine to be any world - space station, beach front or graveyard. The game comes with many different boards, each with a different layout and usually some unique rules. The core rules stay the same. 

You and your opponent start at opposite ends of the board. There are two ways to win. Capture your opponent’s base, or score a required number of stars. In case the game ends due to a player running out of units, the tiebreaker is the number of stars. Players have the same set of troops, numbered from 1 to 7. There are three units of each troop type. However a few units are removed randomly at the start of a game, so you can’t card count accurately. You don’t even know your own exact unit count. 

You start the game with some units in hand. The rest are in a draw pool. On your turn you either deploy a unit, or draw two from the pool. When deploying units, they must be connected to your base, whether directly or through a connected chain of friendly units. You can attack an opponent unit which is weaker by placing your unit on top of it. He might counterattack by placing an even stronger unit on top of that stack. The fact that opposing units stack up is interesting. If you use the knight power to remove your opponent’s piece from the top of a stack, it may reveal your unit, and suddenly the board situation goes strongly in your favour.  

After deploying a unit, if your units fully enclose an area containing stars, you claim them. 

As you can imagine, the fun comes from the unique abilities of many of the units. The skeleton and the unicorn let you draw units from the pool, saving you some turns. Normally you need to spend a whole turn to draw two units. The robot lets you randomly discard a unit from your opponent’s hand. The knight lets you remove an adjacent opponent unit, even if it is stronger. The toy soldier lets you immediately deploy another unit. The pirate monkey is a paratrooper and can ignore the supply line rule when being deployed. There is one funny unit type - rubber ducky - which has no number and can beat any other number. However it is also vulnerable to all other numbers. There are many clever ways you can use your units. 

The beach

Swimming pool

Graveyard

Islands

Rainbow!

At first the game sounds a little chess-like. Information on the board is open. You can calculate several steps ahead where your opponent might deploy his pieces and how you might respond. This sounds a little dry, like most perfect information abstract games tend to be. However Toy Battle has important concealed information. You may know how many units your opponent has in hand, but you don’t know what they are. And the powers of the units matter a lot. This is a game with surprises and uncertainty. 

Capturing the opponent base is not easy. However it is an important threat you can use to force your opponent into making defensive moves. He can’t ignore the threat. Your eventual goal might be to grab more stars, but your opponent has no choice but to address the other existential threat. 

I first played the digital version, then later played the physical.

You get a Scrabble style tile holder

The game box was smaller than I expected

The small unique powers on maps create interesting combinations with some of the powers of the units. One of the maps let you return a unit to your hand. That means you will get to use its power again. Getting a skeleton back lets you draw another two units! 

I talk about many fun combinations and clever moves, but this is a quick game. You only have 20 units in your pool. The game is like potato chips. When you finish one game, you get the urge to start another. 

Leaders

Leaders is a 2 player abstract game played on a hexagonal board made of hexagonal spaces. You each start the game with just one game piece - your leader. In the first few rounds of the game you will get to recruit minions from a market of three options. Every minion in the game has a unique ability. You will eventually have four minions, after which you do not recruit any more. Your goal is to capture the opponent leader. You do this by having two of your pieces next to it, or you force it to be fully surrounded by pieces, regardless of whether your own or your opponent’s. 

Leaders wear crowns

On your turn you get to move all your pieces once. Your minions have all sorts of powers. Some can move more than just one step. Some move like rooks, moving in a straight line. Some jump over others. Some pieces can move other pieces, for example pulling or pushing them. Some pieces protect others from being manipulated. 

This is a perfect information game. You know exactly what powers your opponent has. You need to move and position your pieces to capture the opponent leader which protecting your own. In many ways this is like chess. 

Checkmate! White leader captured by black minions.

One part that’s different is you don’t capture or eliminate opponent pieces. You can’t land on other pieces. Blocking can be a very effective tactic. Some powers require line of sight. Sometimes you will find that you are blocking your own pieces. Positioning them and moving them can be frustratingly slow if you don’t plan well. 

Both the games I played were short. Han and I were new to the game, and we were not good at defense. Your game pieces have a good variety of powers (and you get to choose your combination of powers) and since you get to move all pieces on your turn as opposed to just one piece per turn, you can orchestrate powerful moves. 

Asian Games: the Drama series, Watchlist, Folded Wishes

I shall continue to write about games I tried at the Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) in Penang. This time I will write about games from Taiwan and the Philippines. Drama Job Hunting is a party game from Taiwan. It is the fourth and latest game from the Drama series. It is the simplest version to date. It can be used as a children's game and for education purposes. 

If this game were to be translated to English, I think an apt name would be Drama Queen. 

Let me talk about the core idea in the series. Every round an options card is drawn and shown to all players. The card lists six items. One player will be the actor for the round. The actor draws a number card which will show a number between 1 to 6. Only he gets to see this. He must then act out the item under this number on the options card. He can't speak or use sound effects. He can only use gestures and facial expressions. The other players all try to guess the correct answer. After everyone has made a guess, the correct answer is revealed. Whoever gets it wrong is penalised. However if everyone gets it wrong, then the problem is the actor. The actor is penalised instead. You can decide up front what the penalty should be. So yes, this can be a drinking game. If you are not playing with children. 

In Drama Job Hunting, the possible answers are all occupations. This sounds easy but on some cards the occupations are similar, for example taxi driver, ambulance driver and bus driver. Generally this is easier than the other versions. This might not be very interesting for seasoned gamers. I find the other versions more enticing.

Drama Bar is different in that you can't use gestures of facial expressions. You can only use your voice. The options card shows a specific phrase you must say. The list of six items are the possible situations in which you say this particular phrase. Let's use the example below to better illustrate this.

The phrase you have to say here is simply "Sorry". The 6 different situations are: 

1. Accidentally touching someone on the bus.
2. Being late. 
3. Your girlfriend forces you to apologise.
4. Your phone rings when you are at the library.
5. You forget the person's name.
6. You are asking a person to let you pass through.

How are you going to express these different situations by simply saying "sorry"? Not so simple eh?

This one is "What time is it?"  The possibilities: 

1. Mom who is cooking in the kitchen saying this to Dad who is in the living room.
2. Your friend is late by one hour.
3. Your employee is late by one hour.
4. You are asking a passer by the time.
5. You have overslept and you are panicking, asking the person lying next to you.
6. You just remember that there is a show you want to catch.

When playing Drama Bar, you have to cover your face, so you won't be able to express yourself using your facial expression. This can be quite challenging indeed. So far this is my favourite among them all. 

I am guessing Drama Oscar is the first in the series. You need to act out an emotion, and that emotion can be caused by very different things. 

The emotion here is being secretly thrilled or tickled. The possible reasons are: 

1. You see your headmaster slip and fall.
2. You are a young and innocent lady and someone has just confessed their love to you.
3. You overhear a conversation and they are saying how handsome you are.
4. You are the top student and you see that you are top of the class yet again.
5. At the Oscars the host announce that you win the best actress award.
6. You hear on the radio that the Taiwanese baseball team has defeated the Korean team in a comeback victory. (context: this is a game from Taiwan)

Drama Arena is about kung fu moves and spellcasting. This is a version which gives you plenty of opportunities to be creative. 

You can even get two actors to perform at the same time, and they can fight each other. This one above is about casting a summoning spell. The possibilities: 

1. Summon the magical staff.
2. Summon the black tuna.
3. Summon the waiter.
4. Summon the giant peach. (I'm not sure whether this has any naughty connotation) 
5. Summon the Sphinx. 
6. Summon a portal. 

This card is for water magic. 

1. Dragon Shot.
2. Dragon Spiral. 
3. Waterfall Attack.
4. Water Storm. 
5. Rain Arrows.
6. Water Cannon. 

The Drama series is doing well in Taiwan, and they have four different versions now. Tom is interested to bring it beyond Taiwan. To do this in other regions and languages, a lot of localisation work will be required. If any publisher out there is interested, get in touch with him. 

Watchlist is a game from the Philippines. It is a real-time cooperative game that can be played in five minutes. One player is the undercover cop while the rest are regular cops. The undercover cop needs to help his team arrest all the suspects.

There are two sets of cards in the game and they are almost exactly the same. The only difference is one deck is in colour, and the other is black and white. The undercover cop gets the black and white deck, and the regular cops get the colour deck. At the start of the game, the undercover cop draws a certain number of cards from his deck. These are the suspects he must help his team arrest. The colour cards are distributed evenly to all the other players. The process in the game is everyone asking questions to the undercover cop to identify the current suspect. The undercover cop can only answer yes or no. You ask questions like whether the suspect is male or female, whether they are wearing a hat, whether they are holding something in their hand, and so on. One of the regular cops makes a guess by playing one of his cards. Only correct guesses will score points. 

Since this is a real-time game, the undercover cop will get bombarded with questions from all the other players. Whether the cards are coloured or black and white doesn't seem like a big deal, but this does pose a challenge. Some things in the drawings may be interpreted differently when there is no colour. 

Folded Wishes is a game that has gone beyond the Philippines and has reached the international market. Ludus is the original publisher, and B&B Games is the international publisher. 

Folded Wishes is an open information abstract game. Your goal is to arrange four of your pieces in a straight line. You will always have one tile in hand, and on your turn you will play this tile at one position along the edges of the play area. You place your game piece on this tile. You then push the tile into the play area, shifting that whole row of tiles. One tile will get pushed out from the other end of the play area. You'll pick this tile up for your next turn.

All the tiles have small icons and these are special powers you get to use. Some let you move your game piece, some let you move an opponent's piece, and some even let you swap your piece with an opponent's.

You can complete missions to earn additional powers. Missions come in the form of having your pieces arranged in specific patterns. When you earn a new power, the new power is linked to tiles in specific colours. You can only use these powers when you play a tile in that particular colour.

The game is chess-like, because this is a perfect information game. There are many tactics and strategies to explore.

Tranquility

The Game

Tranquility is a cooperative game and an abstract game. It has cards numbered 1 to 80, which needs to be played onto a 6x6 grid. If you manage to fill the grid before the deck runs out, you win. 

Players cannot discuss their hands or communicate in any way. This is supposed to be a silent, zen game. On your turn, you either play a card or discard two cards. At the end of your turn you draw back to your hand limit. The numbers in the grid must go from smallest at the bottom left to highest at the top right. Within each row, the numbers must increase from left to right, and the number range in a row must be higher than the row below it. So effectively this grid is a single 36-space row where numbers must go from low to high. When you play a card, if the adjacent spaces (left and right, including wrapping around to the next row) are empty, you play the card for free. If there is an adjacent number, you must pay a fee in the form of cards being discarded. The fee is the difference between the number played and the adjacent number. So if you play a 23 next to a 24, you must discard 1 card. Cards discarded like this will be lost forever, because there is no reshuffling of the discard pile. 

In addition to the number cards, there are some start cards and some finish cards in the deck. The term start card is misleading. You don't actually have to play it at the start. You just need to make sure you have played one during the game. Else you can't win. Playing a start card requires some thinking. When you do it, you will draw several cards, and you will also be forced to discard several cards. It is a time for difficult decisions. The finish card only needs to be played before you finish. You must make sure you have at least one left, so that you can play it after filling the grid. This is how you win. 

The Play

The card deck is your life points. You must complete your mission before you run out of life points. Conserving cards is important. If you need to make payment all the time, the cards won't last. You also need to be careful not to discard cards which you might need. If there is a space between two numbers, but all the cards that can fit have been discarded, you will lose. It certainly helps to card count. I'm too lazy to do that. I only try to remember some of the important or easy-to-remember numbers. E.g. if I have placed 79 in the second last spot, I will keep in mind not to discard the 80 when I draw it. 

In the early game I try not to play cards next to other cards, to avoid the need to discard cards. You know roughly which number should go where, but this is not exact math. Whether you have placed a number at a good position depends on the card draw. You can only take your best guess and hope things work out. 

The first game I played was a two-player game with Han. We weren't sure about the strategy and fumbled along, figuring things out as we played. Needless to say that game didn't go so well and we lost with two spaces we were unable to fill - this screenshot below. 

Afterwards I tried this as a solo game. Now that I understood the strategy, the game felt pretty easy. I won pretty comfortably. I think the game is easier as a solo game. With two or more players, you don't know what cards your teammates have. I wonder whether the game is too easy as a solo game and doesn't quite work. This screenshot below was taken shortly before I won the solo game. I knew I still had cards smaller than 4, and it was a matter of when I'd draw one. I already had a finish card on standby. 

The Thoughts

This is an abstract game. It is a simple cooperative game. I don't yet have a good grasp of the difficulty of winning. I believe it will be more challenging and also more interesting with more players. I don't think it works as a solo game because it seems to be too easy. But take this with a grain of salt - I have only played it once solo. The game is for 1 to 5 players. BGG says it is best with two. I'm not sure whether it is because I won the solo game easily, I find the game a little dull. It is a light game that casual players can easily ease into, and it's cooperative so if you have non-gamer friends who want to play a peaceful, non-competitive and simple game, this might work.