Draft & Write Records

Draft & Write Records is a paper and pencil game. Your put together a rock band, bringing together not only the musicians, but also producers and stage hands. You release albums and singles, you do shows starting with local pubs and hopefully eventually progressing to prestigious stadiums. Every player does this on his own player sheet. You check boxes off to mark your progress in the various aspects of running a rock band. You score points for the progress you make. To determine which boxes you can check, there is a card drafting mechanism.

The card crafting mechanism is similar to that in 7 Wonders. You get a hand of cards. You pick one and pass the rest to your neighbour. The card you choose determines which part of your sheet you get to check off. This process is repeated several times, until one last card remains and is then discarded. Then you start a new round with new cards drawn from the deck. 

Checking boxes off a sheet of paper is actually rather abstract. Some parts of the game are mechanisms unrelated to the theme. However, there are also aspects which make you feel like you are really putting together a band and managing their career, which is fun. The people you recruit each have four icons. These are used to represent whether people you bring to the team click with one another. Some spaces need to be unlocked before you can check them off, and to unlock them, you need money. That's pretty realistic. This is business. You need to worry about funding. You also want to release a good mix of albums and singles. You score points by multiplying these two. That kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

Let's look at some aspects of the player sheet: 

Those Polaroid photo slots in the middle are the spaces for your band members. Some icon spaces are linked. You want these linked spaces to have the same icons. You get a bonus for that. At the top right you have a grid of icons. You want to complete rows and columns (including diagonally) to score points or to get to check off other spaces. On the right side when you check off the bigger icons, you get to claim the bonuses between them. 

There are four public goals. They are evaluated at the end of every round, and multiple players can achieve the same goal. Goals are discarded at the end of a round if scored, and new ones will be drawn. One way the game ends is when any player completes 6 goals. When you complete a goal, you not only score points, you also gain some bonuses allowing you to check off specific spaces. Like many pencil and paper games, you can trigger nice chain reactions. 

Whenever you get to perform, you advance on these paths. There are forks, so you have to choose which paths to go down. The money icons mean you need to unlock those sections before you can pass through. 

I must say this is a lot of fun. I am not specifically a fan of pencil and paper games but I don't dislike them either. This one works for me partly because of the theme. I had a rock star dream once, many moons ago. The card drafting works well. It can be tough to choose between the incredible vocalist and the god-tier lead guitarist. Sometimes a plain producer by himself may not score many points, but if he clicks well with others on the team, together they can do amazing things. Should I pass on this good singer and hope to get an even better one who also works with the rest of the band? I only have one singer slot after all. Card drafting means sometimes you hate draft to deny your opponents what they want. There is a penalty mechanism in the game. If you are forced to take a person but you have no more slot, you will suffer a penalty. These penalties get more are more costly as you accumulate them. This is something to watch out for. There is no direct player interaction, but the hate drafting can sometimes be devastating due to the penalty mechanism. Most of the time this game is quite pleasant because you generally focus on building your own dream band. 

So yes, being band manager can be as much fun as being lead singer. 

I was aiming to perform at the Sydney Opera House (bottom left).

I almost completed the top right section!

Hadrian’s Wall

 

The Game

Hadrian’s Wall is a paper-and-pencil game. I was about to call it a roll-and-write, because each player gets a piece of paper and ticks boxes off it. However there is no dice. In this game you are not constantly reacting to die rolls and deciding what to do with them. There are cards drawn which introduce some randomness, but mostly you know what resources you are generating every round, and you carefully plan how to use them. You have more control and more long-term planning than the typical roll-and-write game this is mostly about positioning yourself as best you can to handle whatever the dice deal you.

The game is played over 6 rounds

Your personal game boards (there are two of them) are complicated and intimidating. It takes some effort to explain and remember what all the sections mean. Generally to mark any box you need to spend resources. Some boxes give you a benefit. Some are just steps before the next box which does. The benefit can be a resource, which in turn lets you mark other boxes. So you can create some chain reactions. Some boxes when ticked unlock sections with new functions. These are things you can plan for and work towards. 

This is just part of your first player board

This section has the four main victory point tracks. 

This is part of your second player board, showing three types of citizens.

These are the remaining two citizen types. 

Some boxes help you produce more resources at the start of every future round. More resources means getting more done. Ultimately some boxes give you points, and that’s how you win the game. 

Some tracks have dependencies on others and may not overtake them.

At the end of every round the Picts attack. They may attack the left flank, centre, or right flank of your army. If you have developed all the sections of your army enough to repel the Picts, you’ve done your job. However if any enemy gets through, you are penalised. The penalty gets more severe the more instances that Picts get through. So defense is something you must not neglect. 

The game is played over a fixed number of rounds. After the final round, the highest scorer wins.

The Game 

The game is intimidating at first, but once you get over that initial hurdle, this becomes a game with a lot to explore. Building the wall and training your army are a must. It is a matter of deciding how fast and how complete. You can do okay without completing everything but you’ll be in trouble if you are too far short.

The five classes of citizens is where the game opens up many possibilities for you to explore. The five classes offer different abilities and scoring opportunities. You can’t be everything everywhere. You have to choose. 

The game is pretty much solo. You don’t interact much with your opponents. It works well on BoardGameArena.com as an asynchronous game. In fact it might work better in this mode than playing in person. If you have a slow player and you play in person, everyone must wait for him to finish the round before you can start the next round. If you play in online asynchronous mode, just logout and come back the next day. 

This is almost a deterministic game. Little randomness, no hidden information. Your challenge is how to make the most of your resources. You have many options. There are different ways to increase your abilities and different ways to score more points. You choose some and you need to commit to work on them to get a worthwhile return on investment. One particular building type lets you reduce points lost due to poor defense against the Picts. If you go for this, you can afford to work less on defense. 

The game ends after six rounds. This is like life. There are many things you want to achieve but your time and resources are limited. So you must decide and utilise your resources well to maximise your score. Towards late game you will get a sense of which things are too late to start work on and which you need to prioritise to get the most out of. 

This above is what the end of one game can look like on the second player board. I have completed the advancement track for the first and fourth citizen types, and almost for the fifth as well. However I had only utilised the unique abilities of the first, second and fifth citizen types. I had planned to use type 4, but eventually didn't. Because... priorities. 

Of the four victory point tracks, I mostly ignored the purple track. Getting to 15 on a track allows you to build a monument. That's something to work towards too. 

The Thoughts

This is almost a solitaire game. You mostly work on your own boards. There is a lot to keep you busy. There are many different strategies to pursue so there is replayability. Every game you can only specialise in a couple of functions provided by specific citizen types. Each new game you can try different functions and different combinations of functions. There is fun in creating chain reactions. If you utilise your resources well, you can spend them to generate more resources which you then spend to do more things. It is fun to do this kind of planning. It’s all open information so it’s up to you to analyse your board situation and find those opportunities.