Altay: Dawn of Civilization

Altay is a civilisation and 4X game built on a deck-building engine. It is played on a simple map. Each player starts with just one small village. They defeat barbarians around them and build new settlements, expanding their territory. 

The map shows different terrain types. Specific terrain types that you control can help you boost your production of certain resources. Some territories with banners are worth bonus points and may be contested more fiercely. In this screenshot many territories still have defense tokens. These are the barbarians you need to defeat before you can settle those lands. These tokens are worth points, and some give you a resource when you claim them. 

There are four different tribes in the game, and they have different starting decks. You can categorise this as a deck-building game, because everything you do is subject to the cards you draw. During the game you can buy better cards to improve your deck. There are ways to remove weak cards too. 

Some cards simply generate resources for you. Resources not spent at the end of your turn will be converted to gold. In future turns, you can spend 5 gold to buy any single resource. It's a poor exchange rate, so ideally you try not to have any leftover. Some cards allow you to build a new village or to upgrade one. Every player has a number of village tokens, and the game ends when one player uses all his tokens. In battle, when you defeat your opponent you take one of his village tokens from the map. These are worth points. 

This is one example of a card you can buy. Some cards have point values (purple banner). This Worker card can produce one of three resource types. It gives you good flexibility. 

Some cards allow you to attack or defend. You can attack either a neighbouring barbarian, or a neighbouring opponent village. The village you attack from counts for your attack strength, for example when attacking from a size 2 village (you can call that a town), your base strength is 2. When you are attacked, you can play military cards to defend yourself too. 

You are going to construct buildings for your civilisation. These are divide into three tiers. Each higher tier building must be supported by a lower tier building. You can never have more buildings of a higher tier than a lower tier. All buildings have special abilities, and the gold tier ones help you score points at game end. You also get your own unique gold tier building, and that's something you can plan for from the start. You don't necessarily have to build it, but since it's something you already know from the start, you probably want to customise your play around it and plan to score many points from it.

The Triumphal Arch is a gold tier building - a monument. Buildings often take several turns to complete, as you accumulate the required resources. You can only work on one building at a time. 

So far I've played two games of Altay, and both were 3-player games. The first one was rather lopsided. Han and Jon started next to each other, and fought a lot in the early game. That left me free to develop my civilisation without any interference. I happily bought better cards and grew my empire on my side of the map. By the time they declared a truce and separately expanded towards me to contain me, I already had a strong lead and proved unstoppable. The second game was more normal. 

It is tempting to build big cities, because of their military strength. They are easier to defend, and they are strong in attacking adjacent territories. You can effectively create kill zones next to them. However  one way you score points is based on the number of territories with your villages, so if you are only controlling a few territories, you will lose out on this part of scoring. This is a little tricky. Building many small villages can give you many points, but they are more vulnerable. 

The deck-building mechanism is simple, compared to typical deck-building games. It is the core engine of the game. It's nothing fancy, so if you like deck-building games, you may not find this particularly interesting. It is linked to the board play, and not many other deck-building games have this. As a civilisation game, it feels a little generic and symmetrical. The tribes do start with different decks, and depending on which tribe you use, certain strategies might work better. The game system works. You get a decent civ game built on a deck-building engine. Come to think of it, I can't think of any games done this way, so I applaud this. I just get the feeling that the game works but it doesn't excite me. Logically and mechanically sound, but it doesn't tug the heart strings. Maybe the fictitious tribes don't work for me. Your mileage may vary. 

Fishing

Fishing is a deck-building trick-taking game from mad scientist designer Friedemann Friese. The game is played over eight rounds. Every round you score points based on the cards you win. These cards are shuffled, and they go to the bottom of your personal draw deck. In the next round, you draw cards from your personal draw deck. Your draw deck starts empty. In the first round, if you don’t even win enough cards to add to your draw deck, you will get some help. This is where things start getting interesting. When your draw deck runs out, it means you need help, and the game will help you by letting you draw powerful cards from reserve decks. There are several reserve decks, each containing cards more powerful than the previous. How many of these decks will be used in a game depends very much on how the game goes. Due to how more and more powerful cards get into circulation, the landscape of the game changes as you play.

It is probably not accurate to describe this as a deck-building game since you don’t have much control on what cards get added to your deck. You just know the cards which get added becomes stronger and stronger. 

Cards come in four suits. The reserve cards will introduce a trump suit. In the reserve decks there are also cards with higher numbers than the starting cards, and also some cards with special powers. One special power in the game allows you to steal one card from the current trick, even if you don’t win it. Another power lets you become the start player for the next trick.

The game has an interesting ebb and flow. If you do poorly, you will get to draw new powerful cards, and they can help you greatly in the next round. It might not be a good idea to intentionally lose all the time. It is still important to score points. The special power card which can steal someone else’s card is important. This is one way you can improve your deck without needing to lose too much or taking too many weak cards. 

Whenever you win a trick, you place the cards in the pile on the left, so that you can keep track of how many cards you have won in the current round. When the round ends, you shuffle these cards and add them to the bottom of your draw deck, on the right. 

These are some of the the reserve cards from the strongest reserve deck (5 stars). 

For 4 players, these are the hand sizes for each of the 8 rounds.

You can do a fair bit of card counting. By observing which cards your opponents have won, you know what cards they have in their decks so you can somewhat anticipate them. This is a strategic element in the game. 

Fishing is a fun twist to the trick-taking genre. I like it! 

After Us

After Us is a game with The Planet of the Apes vibes. Humanity has collapsed, and now apes are starting to evolve intelligence and develop a new civilisation. 

This is a deck-building game, and the cards are used in a clever way. Every turn you draw four cards and must arrange them in a row with their sides touching. Cards have complete and incomplete boxes. Complete boxes give you resources or let you do certain things. Incomplete boxes are on the left and right sides of the cards. They give you resources or let you perform actions only if they are matched up with another incomplete box on the adjacent card. This is why the order you arrange your cards is important. You need to decide which half boxes to combine and often you need to sacrifice some of them. Some half box combinations allow you to convert one resource to another or to points. How you want to form the combinations depends on your strategy or situation. 

As you gather resources, you can spend them to buy new cards. In game terms you are recruiting new apes to your tribe. There are four ape types and they are generally better in a specific area. Gorillas help you remove weak cards from your deck. Mandrills help you score points more efficiently. Orangutans help you collect batteries which can be used to activate human artifacts. These are special powers randomly set up for every game and they are available to all players. Chimpanzees allow you to reactive powers already used in the current round. They are flexible. 

Ultimately your goal is to reach 80 points. This is when the game ends and whoever has the most points wins. As you tune your deck, your ability to score points improves. Managing your tempo is important. You need to be watchful for when the game might end. If you take too much time perfecting your deck but someone else goes quick and dirty and barely hits 80, you will lose because your engine is not ready. If you are going for quality, you need to make sure you can hit 80 in the same round as your fastest opponent. At that point if you have developed a strong tribe, you will outscore your rivals. 

This is a mid weight strategy game. It is mostly deck-building, the twist being how you need to line up your cards. I like that it brings a new idea to the table. 

Aquatica

Aquatica is set in an underwater world. You have a team of fighters with various abilities. You use them to capture locations, which offer various rewards. Locations need to be developed, and they are worth points after being fully developed. At every step of development they provide some benefit, which help you in different ways. There are four objectives in the game. The earlier you complete one, the more points you score. When a player completes all four, the game ends. The game can also end by the location deck or the fighter deck running out. 

On the game board you lay out locations you can claim and fighters you can recruit.

You start the game with all fighters in hand. On your turn you simply play a fighter card to use its power. Once used, the fighter goes to your personal discard pile and you can’t use it until you do a reset action that returns all cards to hand. One type of action you can do is to recruit a new fighter. This augments your hand. So there is a bit of deck building in this game. 

This is the fighter who lets you reset your hand of fighters.

Locations can be captured by force or by cash. Some of your characters provide these. You can control at most five locations at the same time. Every location has a little development track, with each space offering some benefit. Some spaces give you extra strength or money. Some simply help you advance on the development track of another location. Some let you score locations which are fully developed. Managing your set of locations is interesting. They can help you a lot, supporting the fighter you play. You also want to develop them quickly so that you can score them and free up space for new locations. 

Location card. Cost on top, development track and benefits at the bottom left.

Location cards are tucked into slits in your player board. The topmost exposed icon is your next development step and also the benefit you can gain.  

These are the four objectives you must work towards.

Aquatica is a pleasant mid-weight strategy game. It is mostly a card game. You have much freedom to plan your actions because you have access to all your fighters unless they have been recently used. The locations you capture help you in making big moves, and planning such big moves is satisfying.

Orleans

The Game

Orleans is a bag-building game from 2014. That was an era not long after Dominion the pioneer deck-building game was released in 2008. Bag-building, mechanism-wise, is the same thing. It’s just that the physical components are different. In Orleans, instead of cards in a deck, you have chips in a bag. Poker chips, not potato chips. Chips are workers of different types. Every round you draw a number of chips from your bag and use them to perform actions. Once they are done, they go back to the bag. 

The various buildings on your player board require specific combinations of workers types to work. If you don’t have that combination in hand, you can’t work the building. You can still choose to assign some workers there and hope that next round you will draw the remaining workers you need. But those workers sent will be idling this round. 

One thing some buildings let you do is to buy new chips (workers). This augments the composition of your bag. There is also an action which removes chips from circulation. Your chips are boatmen, traders, soldiers, craftsmen, scholars and the like. When you recruit a new worker, you get to advance on a specific track. There are many tracks in the game and as you advance you get various benefits.

You will have opportunities to construct new buildings. These are new places you can assign your workers and they give you new abilities. 

One aspect of the game is a map showing towns around Orleans. You have a pawn on the map and you can travel about to claim goods and to build trading posts. Goods are worth points at game end, and trading posts too. 

The game is played over 18 rounds, and events happen every round, sometimes causing trouble and sometimes presenting opportunities. That’s another aspect you have to handle. 

The Play

The game gives you many strategic options - which kind of workers to go for, any buildings which you want to get, how do you travel on the map, which of the tracks to pursue. It’s interesting to manage your pool of workers. You want to tune your worker mix to best serve your strategic direction. Sometimes your needs change and you need to tune again. 

Competition comes in many aspects. You race to grab buildings. On the tracks there are spots offering citizens (which help with map scoring) and you need to race to grab them. Movement on the map is a race too, because there are plenty of goods tiles to be picked up by whoever passes by first. There is a finite number of workers of each type. It is possible that they run out and you can't recruit any more. That's another thing you race for.

Worker retirement involves some competition too. When you want to remove a worker from circulation, you need to place it on an Important Deeds board. They go there to retire. There are different sections which give different rewards. Naturally you want to go for the bigger rewards most of the time. One twist is the player who places the last worker in a group gets a citizen. Now you need to be careful not to set up for your opponent to gain a citizen. 

In a two player game there is less competition on the map. We went in different directions and did not interfere with each other. By late game we had established many trading posts and claimed many goods tiles. 

This is a development game. Everyone starts with the same capabilities, but as you play you augment your abilities in different ways. It is satisfying to watch your powers grow. 

The Thoughts

Orleans is a little different from typical deck-building games. Many deck-building games have two currencies, one is like money which you use to buy other cards, and the other is like strength, which you use for defeating monsters or beating up your opponent. Card deck-building games usually have cards with nifty powers. In Orleans, you simply have different types of chips, which can be used in different combinations for different purposes. The dynamics are different, and that is refreshing. You are constantly adjusting your bag composition, and it is satisfying to be able to see things pan out. The "reshuffling" happens very soon, because once a worker completes their task, they go back into the bag. Instant gratification! 

War Chest

The Game

War Chest is a two-player abstract battle game with a deck-building element. You send soldiers to fight on a hex-based board. You win by controlling 6 bases on the board. 

Each player has four different troop types, and they are all unique. So there are 8 different soldiers in play. The soldiers have different abilities. Generally they don't differ by attack strength, defense strength or health points. Think of all of these as being just 1. So this is like chess. Anyone can one-hit KO anyone else. Let's talk about the deck-building element first. 

At the start of the game, for each of your troop type you have some discs. Some are in play, but some are not yet in circulation. You need to perform a purchase action to bring them into play. Every round, you draw three discs from your bag, and you and your opponent take turns spending a disc to perform an action. The disc you spend determines what you can do. You can't see the discs in your opponent's hand, so you don't know what he can possibly do that round, until he actually performs actions. Most of the time you can see the disc spent when he acts, so you can keep track of how many discs in which colours he has spent. However sometimes the disc spent is hidden, so you may not have full information. 

Actions you can perform include deploying a soldier, moving a soldier, attacking with a soldier, fortifying a soldier, buying a disc, and changing the turn order. Most (but not all) discs belong to a specific troop type, which means you can only use it on that specific soldier. Every cycle that you go through the discs in your bag, you know how many actions one soldier can take. It is limited by the number of discs that soldier has in your bag. This is the deck-building in War Chest. 

The troop types have various unique abilities. For example, light cavalry can move two steps instead of one. The lancer makes a long range attack, but it can only make such long range attacks, which must be in a straight line. They can't do a normal melee attack. The ensign can move other soldiers on the same team. This is a supportive role. When you kill the opponent's soldier, he is not lost permanently. Your opponent can resurrect that soldier by spending the associated disc, redeploying him to a controlled base. 

Bases are scattered around the board. Each player already controls two at the start of the game. You control a base when your soldier occupies it. You can spend a disc to lock a base, allowing you to retain control even if your soldier leaves. However such a base is still vulnerable to your opponent's soldiers. 

The Play

The game looks chess-like, but a big difference is how you must manage your bag of discs and keep track of your opponent's bag too. You don't know exactly the discs in your opponent's hand, and thus you don't know what moves he can make. I was rather sloppy when playing the game, probably because I played in asynchronous online mode. I didn't properly keep track of Han's bag. Not even my own. It is no wonder I fared poorly. I wanted to do something with a specific soldier, but I forgot I had run out of discs for him. My tempo was off. I did not deliberately tune my disc distribution. I probably should have planned more deliberately which discs to buy and even whether to buy at all. If I focus on only getting more discs for one or two soldier types, they might become more nimble because there are more of their discs compared to the others. 

The Thoughts

War Chest is not quite my thing. Partly because I'm not really into chess-like games, and partly because I am sloppy with keeping track of the bags and discs. Because of that, it feels like I am highly restricted in what I can do. 

Dominion - digital version

 

I recently found out that the digital version of Dominion is out. When Dominion was first released in 2008, it was an important game in the history of boardgames, because it was the first deck-building game. For quite some years after that, many other game designers made other deck-building games. By now, I rarely hear of pure deck-building games, but there are still some boardgames or card games which use the deck-building mechanism as part of the game. 

I own a physical copy of Dominion. I have bought one expansion too - Seaside. When I recently checked my records, I was surprised I hadn't played it for 12 years. Many years ago I played another digital implementation. I played against AI's. It was convenient and fast. Being able to play many games let me understand and appreciate it in more depth. I have great admiration for the game.

This latest digital version is well made. I have played in on my phone and on an iPad. The iPad works better. It's a bit too small for me on the phone. Workable but slightly clunky. The base game is free to play. The expansions need to be purchased. Even with the base game you already have many combinations to try. A game of Dominion uses only 10 card types. The base game gives you 25 card types. You can do a lot of mixing and matching. 

If you have not tried Dominion before, give it a go! 

Challengers!

The Game

Challengers! is the 2023 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, i.e. the German Game of the Year in the Expert category. I had already noticed it when it was first released. I thought the premise was interesting and I wanted to give it a go. After it won the award, I thought I shouldn't wait any longer. So I asked Allen and Han to try it out with me on www.boardgamearena.com. Challengers! is a premium game, which meant I had to restart my subscription to be able to play it. The monthly subscription is MYR 24 (~USD 6), which is a good deal. If I only spend MYR 24 for a gathering with friends, I'm happy. Since I had subscribed and the minimum was one month, after our online meet-up I went online by myself to play more with strangers. 

Challengers! supports up to 8 players. It is a deck-building game. The game is run in the format of a tournament. Every player controls one team. You will play a series of 7 matches, and earn fans (score points) from the matches. Once everyone has played 7 matches, the two teams with the most fans enter the grand final. Whoever wins the final wins the game.  

With four players, each will match up with a different opponent from game to game. You match the same team 2 or 3 times. When the number of players is an odd number, every round one team will be matched with a robot team. No one is left idle. 

Everyone starts with the same card deck of 6 cards. Before every season match, you have a chance to do deck-building and alter your deck. By the time you get to the 7th match, your team may already be completely different. The deck-building mechanism is very simple. You get to draw 5 cards from a specific deck, and from there you get to pick 1 or 2 cards, depending on which round you are in. While picking cards, you have one chance to discard all your options and redraw the same number of cards. After making your selections, you may also discard any number of cards from your deck. This is so unbelievably simple that I had to read twice to make sure I didn't misunderstand. 

There are six families of cards in the game, and every time you play, you will use five families. Cards are divided into Levels A, B and C. The higher level cards are more powerful. In addition to the card value, some cards have special abilities.  

To appreciate how to deck-build, you need to understand how a match works. Let's talk about that. At the start of a match, both teams shuffle their decks, and the starting team draws a card. A flag token is placed on this first card drawn, representing that the starting team has control of the flag. The other team plays the attack role, and tries to claim the flag. The attacking player reveals cards from his deck one by one, until the total value matches or exceeds the card holding the flag. Once this happens, the flag changes hands, and the attack and defense roles change. 

One important rule is if two or more cards are used to capture the flag, these cards don't remain splayed. Instead they are stacked together so that only the most recent card is on top and visible. Only this card is holding the flag, i.e. defending the flag. The values of the other cards are ignored. 

When a card or a stack of cards is defeated, all the cards must be placed at the bench. Each team has a bench with 6 slots. Every slot can fit one specific card type (i.e. exact same name). If you have multiple copies of the same card in your deck, when defeated they go to the same slot. The bench size is an important element of the game. You lose if you need to place defeated cards at your bench, but you are out of space. What this means is you tend to want to keep your deck to just 6 types of cards. 

The other way you win is by controlling the flag when your opponent is no longer able to attack. That means he has run out of cards. 

You realise that during a match, there is actually very little control or decision-making. You are mostly flipping cards. Victory is determined by what cards you have and the order they turn up. The most important decisions in the game are made when you pick cards to add to your deck. Cards from different families have different characteristics. Some cards jive well together. Usually it is good to have many cards from the same family. 

When you win a match, you earn a trophy, and each trophy is worth some points. As the game progresses, the trophies are worth more and more points. There is escalation. Even if you lose a few early games, you still have a chance to catch up. Some cards let you score points directly. Trophies are not the only way. After 7 matches, you total your points, and the two highest scorers get to play in the final. You don't get new cards for the final, but you still have one chance to remove cards. At the final, you don't bother about scores anymore. Whoever wins the final wins the game. 

The Play

Challengers! is a quick game. Well, I say so because I play online, and the computer takes care of all the tedious bits. Not that it is very tedious. There will be multiple matches running concurrently. You will be occupied with the match you are in, and you won't be able to spend too much time watching other matches. However it will be somewhat helpful to take a glance and have a rough idea who is having what kind of deck. It may affect your decision when your build yours. You may want to know who you will be matching up next, and adjust your card picking decisions based on that. Let's say you expect to face a team with many high cards. If you have a card which discards the top card of your opponent's deck, that can be quite a blow to them. 

Picking cards is interesting. The mechanism is simple, but it often presents difficult choices. The option to refresh your card choices is genius. Sometimes the cards you draw look mediocre, and you decide to refresh, only to get an even worse set of choices. Yet sometimes when you decide to refresh, you get cards which are perfect for your current deck. When picking cards you will consider how they can help one another. You want to make combos. However the order cards are drawn is random. You can only hope they appear in a good sequence and at the right time. If your opponent's flag holder is a measly 1, it would be bad news if you draw your mighty 5 to defeat it. It is also bad news if your opponent has a 5, and you draw 2, 2, 5 to defeat it, because you are spending three cards to beat his one card. 

This was when I played against the bot player. There are bots of different strengths - their decks vary slightly. Experienced players can choose to play against stronger bots. One bot card has a strength based on the round number, which means it gets stronger and stronger. By Round 7 it is strength 7, which is pretty strong. 

In this particular game I had 9 types of cards in my deck. I kept this many because I had a card which could remove cards from my bench to a discard pile. This reduces my risk of losing due to my bench being full. However it still depends on the timing of the card draw. If I draw that card too early (no other cards are on my bench) or too late (the bench has already gone bust), it wouldn't help me. 

At the final, only two teams will play. The others can only spectate.

By Round 7, my starting deck had been completely replaced. I picked many cards from the movies family (green). 

Some cards let you remove cards from your bench to a discard pile. That greyed out stack of cards near the top right is the discard pile. By default it is not used. Only specific card powers let you use it. 

The Thoughts

The biggest difference between Challengers! and other deck-building games is the lack of control. That sounds like a bad thing, but it is not. Instead this is what makes it refreshing and unique. The luck of the draw is what you have to contend with. This is the premise which makes the game interesting. When you pick cards, you have to think with a very different mindset. You won't get to choose when to play any specific card. You are at the mercy of the draw, and you have to manage that. 

Many of the card powers are linked to the fact that cards turn up at random. Other deck-building games don't have most of these powers. Some powers let you look at some of your cards and rearrange them in an order you like. Some cards give you a bonus if they happen to be at the bottom of your deck. 

Challengers! won the Kennerspiel des Jahres, which is the expert gamer category, but to veteran gamers this is just a mid-weight strategy game. There is a healthy dose of strategy, but this is a game which gamers can play in a relaxed, light-hearted manner. There is a significant luck element. You don't need to overthink it. 

Challengers! is a pleasant surprise. Definitely worth giving it a go. It did not disappoint.