Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra

The Game

Stained Glass of Sintra is the second of three games in the Azul series. I have played the other two and enjoyed them both. So I was not going to pass up the opportunity to play this one. 

The mechanism for claiming tiles is similar to those in the other games of the series. At the start of a round, you randomly seed the discs with four tiles. On your turn, you may take all tiles of one colour from a disc or from the centre of the table. When you take tiles from a disc, you move all the unclaimed tiles to the centre. So tiles will keep accumulating at the centre. The first person to take tiles from the centre is penalised. As a consolation though, you get to be start player next round. A round ends when all tiles have been claimed.

Each time you claim tiles, you have to place them on your player board. The top half of your player board is made of eight window strips, randomly arranged every game. The bottom half is one wide piece with eight doorways. Tiles you claim are used to fill the windows. You have a pawn above your player board. It starts the game at the first (leftmost) window. You may move it rightwards at any time. Whenever you place tiles, they can only go to a window below your pawn, thus the need to sometimes move it to a suitable window so that you can place tiles. Based on this photo above, if I claim three pink tiles, I can't put them in the first window, because that's to the left of my pawn. Instead, I will probably move my pawn one step right, then place those three pink tiles in my fifth window. 

On your turn, you only have two options. The first one is to claim tiles. The other is to not claim tiles, and instead move your pawn back to the leftmost window. This is the only way your pawn ever moves left. 

Whenever you fill a window, you pick one of the tiles and move it to the doorway below. You discard the other four tiles. You score points as indicated below the doorway, and every window to the right that has been scored before scores again. You then flip the window, because you still need to fill the other side. The window is only completed after you fill both sides. Only then you will remove it from your player board. 

The game is played over 6 rounds. From Rounds 2 to 6, a different colour will be assigned as the bonus colour. For Round 1, the bonus colour is randomly assigned. Whenever you complete a window, if it has tiles in the bonus colour, you score 1 point per such tile. 

At the centre of this board you can see the penalty table. Every time you are penalised your marker moves down one step. The penalty gets more severe the further you go. The first player in a round who claims tiles from the centre of the table is penalised. Whenever you claim tiles and are unable to place them, you are also penalised for each such discarded tile. 

At this point two windows had been completed and had thus been removed. At game end, there is an end game scoring. There are two ways to play this, and you pick one before starting the game. In this game, used the first option. The doorways are grouped into four pairs with four spaces each. For each pair, if you have 2 to 4 spaces filled, you earn 3, 6 or 10 points. 10 points is a lot. In this photo, my rightmost group had 3 spaces filled, so I would want to fill in the last one to score 10 points. 

The other way to do end game scoring looks at your number of completed windows, this is 2 in this example. You also look at the colours of the tiles in your doorways. Pick a colour with the most tiles. In this example it would be 2, whether you pick red, white or green. Multiply these two numbers to get your score. In this example it's a paltry 4 points. I would not be playing this way if we were using this scoring method. 

The Play

Despite sharing the same tile claiming mechanism, Stained Glass of Sintra feels rather different from its siblings because of how the player boards work. Every time you complete a window, all windows to its right score again. To maximise this, you would complete the rightmost window first, then gradually work leftwards. However to do this means you need to choose to reset your pawn frequently. Resetting your pawn costs you one precious turn. This is a dilemma. 

If you want to minimise resets, then you would want to move your pawn as slowly as possible, filling your windows patiently and gradually from left to right. That is not easy to do, because the tile availability will rarely align well with your player board. You are torn between conflicting needs. Sometimes when there is a good opportunity to grab many tiles at once, you may have to move your pawn many steps to position it at the right window which can take that many tiles in that particular colour. Sometimes you may not even have such a window, and if you were to take those tiles, you would end up being penalised. 

Managing the timing of your reset is important, and one reason is to avoid missing opportunities like the above. You know that as your pawn moves right, you will have fewer and fewer options. You can only use windows below your pawn and to its right. You often need to deliberately plan your reset. 

The reset is sometimes good. Sometimes it buys you time. If you get into a situation where any set of tiles you take will lead to a penalty, doing a reset gives you a much needed break. Other players may take those tiles you don't want. You may be making some of your windows available again, thus saving yourself.  

I found it challenging to coordinate completing windows with the bonus colours. I think it's a nice-to-have. Do it if the stars happen to align, but don't force it too much. This game mechanism does give you a bit more to think about. No one minds a few extra points here and there. It's just that it may not be worth the effort centring your strategy around it. The end-game scoring though, is something you want to plan ahead for. That takes conscious effort if you want to score anything half decent from it. 

You can decide to play with or without keenly observing your opponents. Naturally if you watch your opponents, you will do better. You can grab the tiles they want. You can delay taking tiles you know they don't want. If you feel competitive, by all means be so. If you just want to relax, the game is still enjoyable when you just focus on your own needs. It's an adjustable depth game. 

The Thoughts

I am pleasantly surprised that the three games in the series give me significantly different experiences, despite how similar the tile claiming is. The player boards make all the difference. Player interaction is all centred around the tile claiming. If you look for different types of player interaction, then you won't find them. However the different player boards and and how they work do give you different spatial experiences. They are all great family strategy games. 

Comparing the three of them, I find Summer Pavilion more forgiving, because you collect tiles into a batch and only then decide how to allocate them for placement. You also have 4 holding spaces to hold tiles for the next round. There risk of penalty is less. However you may enjoy the excitement and urgency of the penalty mechanism. If you want that, go for the original Azul or Stained Glass of Sintra. 

Dancing Queen won 1st place!

The results for the BoardGameGeek 2021 9-card nanogame print-and-play contest have just been announced, and I was ecstatic to find that Dancing Queen won the Best Overall Game.  A big thank you to all those who supported me and voted for me, and also those who helped me with playtesting the game and reading the rules. A shout out to Allen for the multiple rounds of adjusting the graphics and layout for me. 

• Contest results
• Dancing Queen contest entry and discussion thread
• Dancing Queen game page on BGG
• Rule book 
• Download the print-and-play file 
• Play at Tabletopia (free to play)
• Play at Tabletop Simulator (software required)

I also won Best 2-player Game, Best Rule Book and Best New Designer. 

The Game

Dancing Queen is a short 2-player game which uses only 9 cards. You are attending a dance party, and you may bring your friends, whether boys or girls or both. You have in mind a dance you want to do. Different types of dances require different numbers of boys and girls. If you manage to perform the dance you secretly wished for, you become the winner. Beware that the boy your friend brought might turn out to be a girl dressed up as a boy!

When I started designing this game, I had Love Letter as my muse. It is a microgame with only 16 cards, and it is a design I greatly admire. Dancing Queen turned out to be something rather different, but I tried to apply a number of guiding principles I learned from Love Letter. Every card has a purpose. No card is wasted. 

Every card in Dancing Queen is a dancer. When you play a card, you play it face-down, so your opponent wouldn't know what you have played. You will play at most 4 cards, and one of them is designated to be your lead dancer. The rest are backup dancers. Each card has a girl half and a boy half. Depending on how you orient the card when you play it, you determine the gender. The half pointing at your opponent is the gender of the card. In this photo above, the player has played two girls, while the opponent has played one girl and two boys. 

A complete game takes about 20 minutes. You will play several rounds. The winner of a round gets a trophy (yellow cube). Whoever reaches 4 trophies first wins the game. At the start of a round, both players simultaneously play a card, and these are the initial lead dancers. After that you take turns either drawing and playing a card, or proposing to end the round. Whenever you decide to draw a card, you must immediately play it, either to add a backup dancer, or to replace your lead dancer thus demoting him (or her) to become a backup dancer. When you play the card, you must also decide its gender. Some cards allow you to transform another card on the table, from boy to girl or vice versa. 

When a round ends, both players reveal their lead dancers and score points accordingly. Higher scorer wins the round. The scoring methods all depend on the game situation. E.g. the pairs in play are all same-gender pairs (like in the photo above), or there is an even number of cards in play. Some cards have an instant-win condition. If the game situation matches the condition exactly, you win the round immediately. E.g. the Spice Girls card requires exactly 5 girls (and no boys). If your lead dancer is the Spice Girls and there are exactly 5 girls in play, you end the round and win a trophy immediately. 

The 9 cards in the game all have two halves, so there is a total of 18 different winning conditions in the game. 

Youtube rule explanation: 

Malaysia Board Game Design Competition 2021

 

There's a public category and a student category. Theme is unity of Malaysia. No restriction on genre or number of players. Game must be playable within 1 hour. Further details here! 

Lost Ruins of Arnak

The Game

Lost Ruins of Arnak is one of the hottest games in 2021. It has just been nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres. When I first heard of it, the setting did not grab me at all. It seemed like a very typical run-of-the-mill Eurogame. I hadn't intended to try it. However this game has been everywhere and getting a lot of good buzz. My curiosity overcame my resistance. I was still rather sceptical even after reading the rules. I had to sit down to play to understand what the fuss was all about. 

In Lost Ruins or Arnak, you play archaeologists who have just discovered an island belonging to a long lost civilisation. Think Indiana Jones. You will explore the various sites on the island. Those which are further inland will require better transportation tools. You will also study the main temple on the island. The game uses both worker placement and deck-building. You only have two workers, and you don't ever gain more. Workers are used for discovering new sites and collecting resources at sites. The deck-building improves what you can do in the game. The game is played over 5 rounds, and every round you get to draw 5 cards. Some actions require transportation tools, which are available on cards. Some cards provide basic resources like coins and compasses. Some cards provide special actions. Everyone takes turns performing actions during a game round, and the round ends when everyone is unable to perform any more actions (due to running out of cards and resources) or chooses to pass. You then shuffle all cards used in the current round to the bottom of your deck, then draw 5 cards in preparation for the next round. 

The main game board is on the right, and one player board is on the left. Along the top of the main game board is the card purchase area. On the left half of the board you have the various sites to be visited for collecting resources and sites waiting to be discovered. At game start, the five beach sites are already discovered. On the right is the temple you will study. Everyone has two markers at the temple. You perform research to advance your markers. That's done by simply spending the required resources. Every step you take gives you some benefit, e.g. collecting some other resources and gaining an assistant. The higher your markers go, the more points they will score for you at game end. Once you reach the top, you may spend resources to buy temple tiles, which are worth points. 

This is the card buying area. There is a magic staff here which indicates the round number (it's Round 3 now). Cards to its left are artefact cards, and to its right item cards. Since the magic staff keeps moving right, there will be more item cards in the early game, and more artefact cards in the late game. Artefacts are purchased with compasses, and items with coins. Artefacts may be used immediately upon purchase, for free, but in future you need to spend a tablet whenever you use them. Items are put at the bottom of your draw deck when purchased. Most likely you will draw them next round. They are free to use. Both artefacts and items have point values (bottom right of card). 

Your player deck starts with only 6 cards. You will use it up quickly since you draw 5 cards at the start of every round. The basic currencies are coins and compasses. The lightning icon means free action. On your turn you may play those cards with lightning icons as many times as you wish, to take the corresponding resources, and these don't count as the main action of your turn. There is one or more transportation icons at the top left of every card. You spend cards as transportation tools when you place your worker. The transportation cost depends on the location you are sending your worker to. There is a hierarchy of the transportation modes. Airplanes may replace any other form. Cars and ships may replace walking. If it's a place you can walk to, you can drive there too. 

To discover a site, you not only need to pay the transportation cost, you also need to pay many compasses. When you discover a site, you first claim a statue (worth 3 victory points) and the benefit printed on it. You then draw a site tile to be placed at the site, and you gain the benefit stated on it. You don't know what you'll get beforehand. Finally, you draw a guardian tile. Guardians are monsters which guard a site. If you are able to defeat a guardian, you earn points and gain a single-use power. Guardians don't immediately hurt you. Only at the end of the round, if you are forced to leave a site without defeating its guardian, you will gain a fear card. Fear cards are weak cards which clog your deck and they cost you 1VP at game end if not removed. It is best to discover a new site early in a round, when you have more resources and thus are more likely to be able to defeat the guardian. 

In the screenshot above, this guardian draw was a lucky one, because two of the three resources required to defeat it happened to be already provided by the site itself. The player only needed to have one compass to defeat it. 

This is a site tile. This particular tile lets you draw a card and gain an arrow head. 

You have two markers at the temple, a magnifying glass and a book. The book may never overtake the magnifying glass. Icons on the right tell you what benefit you gain whenever you move a marker to a particular row. They also tell you how many points the marker will score at game end. Some spaces here are seeded with bonuses, and only the first person to reach these spaces get to claim these bonuses. The victory points for reaching the top of the temple are different depending on the order of arrival. So despite no blocking at the temple, there is still a race element. 

Some levels at the temple let you recruit assistants. Assistants are single-use-per-round abilities. If there is a particular assistant you fancy, you will have to race the others to get him or her. 

Assistants who have been used in the current round are turned sideways. You reset them only at the end of the round. On the player board there are four hex spaces where you may place statues. Whenever a statue is placed, you get to claim some resources. However by doing this you will lose some points, as indicated on the hex spaces. 

This Ostrich is an item card. If you use the card power, you draw a card and then place a worker at a discount of one car. However if you use the card as transportation, it is worth 2 cars (top left corner). 

This Obsidian Earring is an artefact. On the left of the card you see a small tablet icon, which means you need to pay a tablet each time you use the card, except for the first use when you buy it. 

This is a fear card. Everyone starts the game with two of them. During play, you may add more to your deck. Fear cards can only be used as boots / walking - the most basic mode of transportation. Some actions in the game let you remove cards from your deck. You should aim to remove most if not all fear cards from your deck. 

You have many options throughout a round. Not all actions require cards. For some actions you only spend resources, like defeating guardians, studying the temple and buying cards. You only have two workers, and they are normally used for collecting resources at sites, or discovering new sites and collecting resources there. Sending workers out require transportation tools, i.e. cards. Playing some cards are a player turn action. Cards have a wide variety of abilities. 

Your main ways of scoring points are studying the temple, and discovering sites plus defeating monsters. Your cards will be worth points too. 

The Play

I played with Han and Allen on BoardGameArena.com. We tried both sides of the board. The advanced side is slightly more challenging, but there are only tiny rule additions. 

You only have 5 rounds, and each round you only draw 5 cards. At first I felt there was not much I could do with this. I didn't have many resources. The temple looked absolutely daunting. How the hell was I supposed to climb all the way to the top? Only as I played on that I realised my powers grew steadily and I could do more and more in each subsequent round. One reason is the cards I buy will let me do more and also more powerful things. Once more sites are opened up, we have better options for worker placement too. Gradually we abandon the beach sites in favour of the more attractive inland sites. In the screenshot above, we have discovered four inland sites. 

In general, this is still a game about collecting resources and converting them to points, and that conversion is done mainly through climbing the temple and discovering sites (and defeating guardians). These are the two general paths. What is fun about the game is towards the late game, your options widen and you get to plan more and more elaborate sequences of actions. You will have more cards, more variety in powers and more resources. It is an interesting puzzle to solve, how to order your actions and where to compete to get the most points. 

In this game, I (green) realised trying to move both temple markers was difficult, and decided to abandon my book marker. I focused on getting my magnifying glass to the top, which I eventually did. I managed to accumulate enough resources to buy a large temple tile too. 

Temple tiles come in 3 sizes, with the bigger ones costing more resources. The large tile is worth 11VP, which is a lot. The others are 6VP and 2VP. 

Deck-building plays a big role in the game. You won't have a huge deck, and you won't shuffle many times, likely just once per round. The deck starts with 6 cards and you draw 5 every round. Throughout a game you'll probably buy 6 to 10 cards. You will remove cards too, so your deck will not grow very big. New item cards purchased go to the bottom of your deck. This is before any of the cards drawn and used in the current round get shuffled and returned to the bottom of your deck. So most likely by the next round you will draw that new item card. You may even draw it in the current round if you have some draw card powers. Buying an item is basically planning your next round. Artefact cards can already be used upon purchase. They are then shuffled to the bottom of your deck together with all other used cards at the end of the round. If your deck is thin, which is likely the case, you may draw the same artefact card again next round. This is what's different about the deck-building in Lost Ruins of Arnak - instant gratification! You will get to use your new cards pretty soon. In most other deck-builders, it takes some time for you to draw your new cards.  

This was near game end. We had discovered six sites, two in the deepest part of the island, and four in the middle. Discovering the most distant sites cost 6 compasses, while the middle sites cost 3. 

This is the other game board. The main difference is some assistants are placed in the middle of the temple. When your magnifying glass marker reaches this spot, you get to recruit one of these assistants. The costs of moving up the temple are higher compared to the basic board. 

The magic staff is at the 5th position now, which means this is the fifth and final round. 

This was one very handy artefact, which could be used to defeat a guardian. This helped me tremendously. In this particular game I defeated four guardians. That's a whopping 20VP! This game I wanted to work more on discovering sites and fighting guardians, since the temple research cost was high. This artefact aligned well with my strategy. 

I love this item card. I can use this to buy artefacts at a discount of 3 compasses. Although both compasses and coins are basic currencies, I find that compasses are of a higher value than coins. Saving 3 compasses is a lot! I can't imagine using this item card for its transportation value (1 ship, at the top left corner). 

The Thoughts

Recently I find myself quite tired of resource conversion games. Many popular games and many heavy Eurogames use such a mechanism - collect resources then convert them to points. Lost Ruins of Arnak is certainly such a game. Even after reading the rules, I was doubtful that I would enjoy it. Now that I have played it, it was better than I expected. It doesn't offer anything particularly new. The magic staff is clever but it's just a novelty and not a crucial part of the game. What's most enjoyable about the game is its deck-building formula. You get to enjoy your newly purchased cards very soon. You don't shuffle you deck many times. The fun of deck-builders is condensed. The tedium of deck-builders is removed, leaving you with a strong unfiltered dose. When I played A Few Acres of Snow, I greatly admired how the tedium of the deck-building simulated the difficulty of running a colonial war. Newly purchased cards take time to come up. It is hard to get the right combination of cards to do something efficiently. You are at mercy of the luck of the draw. I enjoy the hardships there. However, in Lost Ruins of Arnak, which does things in a completely opposite way, I find that I enjoy the quick satisfaction too. The key concept here is instant gratification. 

Lost Ruins of Arnak presses all the right buttons for gamers who like development games. You become more and more powerful. Your progress at the temple accelerates towards a climax. It all feels a little formulaic, but I must admit it works, and that's probably what matters most. I enjoyed the process. 

In the second half of the game, as you gradually build up your abilities, you find many tools at your disposal. You have many ways to slice the fish. You have your cards, your assistants, better sites, the one-shot powers of defeated guardians, and also statues to activate those spots on your player board. There are many possibilities and different sequences to consider to maximise your score. In the end it's still about scoring points, but when you have so many colour pencils to fill in your colouring book, you can't help feeling like a talented artist. That's basically how I felt when playing Lost Ruins of Arnak. 

The formula for hobbyist board games and heavy metal songs

I sometimes have a nauseating feeling that I am playing the same game over and over and over. I have been a board game hobbyist since 2003, and I mostly play heavy Eurogames. Board games is enjoying a golden age now. There are many new games being released every year. I find that among the popular heavy Eurogames, there is a certain sameness,  and that sometimes bothers me. At first I thought I could liken these popular games to pop songs. I later realised they are probably more like heavy metal songs. 

Hobbyist games (and by that I mean wargames, role playing games and collectible card games as well, not just heavy Eurogames) are still a small niche in the grand scheme of things. Declaring them pop songs would be flattering ourselves. Normal people play Monopoly and Uno, and at most maybe some Ticket to Ride or Catan. These are the pop songs equivalent. Heavy metal songs are a niche, but a big enough one. There are many metalheads out there, enjoying the same type of music. There are enough fans to support an industry. As hobbyists we tend to think of ourselves as better than muggles, not unlike how rockers and metalheads frown upon people enjoying sappy pop songs. 

Monopoly, the all-time favourite pop song

We think we are so cool, but we (especially the heavy Eurogamers) are mostly just accountants. Many of the games we play are elaborately decorated spreadsheets. Or project management training exercises. Or high school probability test papers. We are not really warriors or generals or vampire slayers. A heavy metal band is just people playing music, not very different from a string quartet. We think rock bands are cool and string quartets are boring, but they are in principle the same. They are people playing music and delivering a message, a story, and emotions. They hone their skills to play the best music they can, in the style they like. It's just that the band is packaged in an attractive bad boy or rebel image, while we think of quartets as being staid. Becoming a good string quartet is probably harder than becoming a decent metal band.  

Axis and Allies is just high school probability, right?!

It's just sugar, salt and fat. Again and again. Why do people keep enjoying junk food? It is simply because our bodies have not evolved to adapt to the modern world. Our bodies are still the same as those of our ancestors on the African savannah. You see sweet fruits, you stuff yourself with them, because you don't know when you'll come across more. It's survival instinct. That's why unhealthy junk food businesses are able to keep us addicted. You may have heard of those four-chord progressions, and three-chord progressions in not just pop music, but also rock and metal music. Similar drum beats, similar guitar distortion effects, similar hoarse screaming. In hobbyist games, you have multiple paths to victory, collecting resources then converting them to victory points, building your city / empire / tableau, and combat resolution tables. These are things we are comfortable with. It's part of our psychology to enjoy progress. We devour the same stuff over and over because they make us feel good. Different name on the box, different artwork, different designer, different setting, but underneath all that, you often see the same soothing elements - victory points, accumulation of wealth, progress on tracks, filling up a map and so on. We are all subconsciously staying within our comfort zones, whether as board game hobbyists or as metalheads. It is natural to dislike and be suspicious of anything that goes against what we are familiar with. We build the echo chambers in which we trap ourselves, without realising it. 

Gugong - meet the emperor, and score victory points!

Miniatures. Oh the miniatures. That's consumerism. Games with miniatures do very well on Kickstarter, leading to more games with miniatures on Kickstarter. Not to say that they are all poor games. Beautifully sculpted miniatures certainly add to the gaming experience. The value of board games is the experiences they give us, and aesthetics is part of that experience. Miniatures are not always necessary, and sometimes they are used more as tools to help market a game than as tools which enrich the play experience, which is sad. Well, maybe I have never been a big miniatures person. They are not very important to me. Not every metal band needs to dress like KISS and have fireworks. I'm content as long as they don't go on stage in shorts and sandals. 

Rising Sun

What do game publishers actually sell to us? Yes, the most important one is the experience of playing a game. Then there's also the miniatures mentioned above. People like owning something pretty. Owning stuff is probably a compulsion that we inherited from our forefathers too. In periods of scarcity, mankind held on to what possessions it had to help it survive until the good times returned. 

One more way which board games make us feel good is they give us a learning curve. We love this learning curve. The process of learning a game and playing it competently is rewarding. Usually it takes a game or two to become familiar with a game. Sometimes after that's done, we feel we've seen all there is to it, and we move on to the next shiny new game. It doesn't matter that there is likely some further depth we have not explored. We've seen enough. There is no longer enough kick from further mastering the game. We need the next game to give us that kick. This is one way I explain why board game hobbyists keep churning through new games. This is like pop songs. People who listen to pop songs will always keep moving on.  

Imperial Struggle will certainly last you a little longer if you only plan to enjoy learning the rules, but it would be a shame not to explore this game beyond that. 

Some of the more recent games I enjoyed bring something new to the table. Not all of them are heavy Eurogames. I enjoyed the picture treasure hunt in MicroMacro: Crime City. I liked the different trick-taking experience in The Crew. I admire how Wolfgang Warsch came up with so many interesting new ideas - The Mind, Fuji and The Quacks of Quedlinburg. Even though Illusion was just so-so for me, I liked how different it was. I wonder whether it is because these games gave me more kick in the learning-something-new department. 

MicroMacro: Crime City

Hobbyist games are becoming a mature market. Like the movie industry, there are huge hits, and there are also large companies which cannot afford to fail. I imagine that's why many established companies go for safer designs. And miniatures. Business is business. These are real companies with real people and real livelihoods. Publishing games is no longer a small business or a side gig for them. Although it saddens me that many of the recent popular games don't thrill me, I am happy that there are still many other games and new ideas to be discovered. Go indie designers and new designers! 

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with people enjoying the same stuff over and over. It's their money and their time, and they are not hurting anyone else. They are supporting the industry, and making it possible for game designers, game artists and game publishers to earn a decent living doing what they love, creating what we all love. 

So yes, rock on, Mr and Ms accountant! 

Beyond the Sun

The Game

Beyond the Sun is a recent game from Rio Grande Games. When Eurogames were just starting to become popular in the English-speaking world, Rio Grande Games was one of just a handful of game publishers in the industry, releasing great games from Europe in English. Now there are many more publishers in the industry, and Rio Grande is no longer one of the the biggest names among publishers. I have bought many of their games, like Race for the Galaxy, Power Grid and Dominion. Beyond the Sun is the debut work of designer Dennis Chan. It has been well-received, and is already out of print! I am happy for Dennis and Rio Grande, since I have been a big fan of Rio Grande. Hopefully the reprint will come soon and more people will get to play this game. 

In Beyond the Sun, humankind has developed interstellar travel, and is expanding beyond the solar system and colonising other star systems. In the beginning you only know basic starfaring techs, but as the game progresses, you will discover and learn new techs. You will build spaceships and send them to control and to eventually colonise new planets. The game ends when a certain number of objectives are achieved by players collectively. Whoever scores the most points wins the game. You get points in many ways, including developing new techs, colonising planets and achieving objectives. 

What stands out most in the game is the tech tree, on the right side of this screenshot. There are five levels of tech. Along the left edge of the tech tree board you have basic starfaring techs, and at the start of the game you already know some of them. To their right you have techs from Levels 1 to 4. At game start, the Level 1 techs are revealed but no one has learned them yet. You need to perform the research action to learn them. The lines on the tech tree determine how you can progress in technology. To discover any Level 2 tech, you must have learned all of its prerequisite techs. Whenever you learn a tech, you place one population die next to it. 

The core game mechanism is worker placement, and everyone has just one worker, i.e. like Le Havre. You don't restrict your opponents a lot. Usually you'll only delay them for one round. When you take a spot they want, they just need to wait for you to vacate the spot next round. You can't stay put. Still, at critical moments, even one round of delay can be crucial.  

Actions you can perform include researching, building spaceships, upgrading spaceships, moving your spaceships about and colonising. Along the bottom of the screenshot above there are four objective cards. Two of them are fixed every game, the other two are randomly drawn. Objectives include colonising four star systems, researching a Level 4 tech, and owning a specific amount of population, ore (ore is money) and spaceships. 

On a player's turn, you do just two things. First you assign your worker to a new spot to perform an action. Then you choose to produce population, produce ore, or perform resource conversion. 

These are the player boards, and I am quite fascinated with how they work. First, let's talk about the two rows of discs at the bottom. Those with leaves are farms, and those with gears are mines. At game start, these two rows are filled except for the leftmost spots. This indicates that your population and ore production capacity are both 1. As you move discs away and uncover more spots, your production increases. You can move discs away by performing automation, which moves discs to the automation row at the top of your player board. You can also move discs away by controlling and colonising planets. You will place one disc on a controlled planet, and two on a colonised planet. 

The cubes on your player board look like dice but they are not used that way. When in their columns, they represent available supplies. When you produce population, you take these supplies from their columns and turn them into population. When you build spaceships, you take population and convert them to spaceships. Let's look at the green player board above. In the farm row, two spots indicating production capability are revealed. This means when the player decides to produce population, he will take one cube from the first column, and another from the second column, matching the spots which indicate population production capabilities. He can produce two population because there are cubes in both of the leftmost columns. Now let's look at the red player. His population production capacity is 1, but unfortunately his first cube column is empty. If he chooses to produce population, he will not produce any, because there are no cubes for him to take. He will need to remove one more farm disc, so that he can produce population from his second column of cubes. 

Ore production works in a simpler way and does not depend on the cube columns. You just produce as many ore as indicated by the mine row. 

You are going to be kept most busy at the small star map on the left. At the bottom you see Earth. There are four planets available for colonisation, and three shipyard planets which you can use as remote bases for building spaceships. When you build ships, you will send them moving about the star map. Ship strength varies from 1 to 4. Highest total ship strength at any location determines control. If you control shipyard planets, you'll be able to build ships there, sometimes saving much traveling time compared to building ships on Earth. When you take control of a planet, sometimes you gain a benefit. You will also have the right to colonise it, at least until someone else wrests control from you. When you colonise a planet, you claim the card and put it in front of you, and you gain a benefit unique to the planet. You then draw a new planet card to refill the star map. Ships spent on colonisation are consumed and returned to your player board. 

You can always build ships on Earth. Control of Earth and the shipyard planets give 1 victory point at game end. Not a lot, but still worth considering. 

Every time anyone discovers a Level 2 or 3 tech, an event will be triggered. Usually it affects everyone. Sometimes there are choices involved, and the player who triggered it gets to decide how to resolve the event. He will try to resolve it to his advantage, naturally. This screenshot shows an event which affects a planet. Traveling to the planet becomes more expensive. You need to spend ore upon arrival. Allen placed the event on a planet where he already had presence, to deter Han and I from coming to compete with him. 

Cubes placed on the left of a tech card indicate the players who have learned the tech. There are four categories of techs, e.g. red is military, yellow is commercial. Whenever you discover a new tech, its category must be the same as its prerequisite techs. You will draw tech cards until you have two viable options. You then get to pick one. 

Some techs give you an immediate benefit. Some give you one or more action spots. The higher level techs give you more powerful actions. In the screenshot above, the new action spot allows you to pay ore to discover a Level 3 tech. To do this you must have also learned the relevant Level 2 techs. 

The tech tree is where you will unlock more and also more powerful action spots, which will help you compete on the star map. You mostly do stuff on the star map, fighting for control of planets and then colonising them. The techs help you do these effectively. 

The Play

I played with Allen and Han on BoardGameArena.com.

I had originally intended to play a newbie game without using unique factions. However the default setting uses factions. I realised the faction powers are just small tweaks in setup and don't introduce any rule change. They are newbie friendly. 

Most of our activities were on the star map. We were always competing to control planets because we all wanted to place our discs. We needed to do that to increase our production. We couldn't attack one another directly. The worst we could do was wrest control and send our opponents' discs back to their player boards, and maybe disrupt their colonisation plans. The star map was all about area majority competition. We competed to have more ships and more powerful ships than one another. 

Whenever you colonise a planet, you will be sacrificing ships. That makes you suddenly much weaker on the star map. You need to build up your strength again by commissioning new ships. There is a cyclical nature and a tempo to the competition on the star map. Your job is to make the most of these and eke out a slight advantage over your opponents. 

Managing your population is important. You don't have that many cubes to play with. If you are low on population, you won't be able to build enough ships. You have to manage the cycle of cubes on your player board becoming population, then becoming ships, then being consumed and eventually returning to your player board. You need to have enough cubes in circulation. You will spend population on researching techs, so you are under pressure to increase population production. Discovering techs tie down your population cubes permanently. 

Although ore production is not as complicated as population production, you still need to make sure you don't fall behind. Many actions require ore. In the screenshot above, Han (blue) had maxed out his ore production. 

Allen was red. One of his events gave him a proprietary tech, now placed below his player board. Only he could use the action spot on this proprietary tech. 

At this point Han (blue) controlled four planets on the star map. This was good for him because it kept four discs off his player board. In our game the most distant shipyard planet was seldom contested, simply because it was far and it was a hassle. This was good for Han because it meant his disc stayed there safely for a long time. 

You have to be selective about the techs you learn. It is not a good idea to try to know everything, because learning techs requires population, and population is in limited supply. You should focus on what helps you the most. One important action in the game is colonisation. Initially only one tech allows colonisation. Later there will be more which allow colonisation, but the colonisation actions are not all equal. Some colonisation actions are more costly. Knowing more than one colonisation tech is usually good, because that means you have flexibility and there is less risk of getting blocked off from doing colonisation. 

Our game was in the final round now. Along the top you can see that together we had achieved three objectives, which triggered game end. Han (blue) and I (green) had both colonised four planets, and we had almost removed all our discs. Both of us did much automation and had many discs in our automation tracks along the top of our player boards. 

We played twice, but unfortunately did not manage to discover a Level 4 tech. 

The Thoughts

Beyond the Sun has a sci-fi theme, which is not very common. The tech tree is the star of the show, so the theme is appropriate. The core mechanism is worker placement. What the tech tree provides is more and better action spots for worker placement. Most of the real action happens on the star map. Most actions enabled by the tech tree are to help you compete on the star map. If you only look at the star map part of the game, it is quite simple, and it is rather abstract too. It's a symmetrical, perfect information board. It cannot stand on its own as a game, at least not a very interesting one. However, it gives context to the tech tree. The techs you learn greatly help you compete on the star map. The star map and the tech tree need each other. Together they make the game. 

I greatly admire the design of player board, especially how population production works (wait, that sounds dirty...). Removing discs from the player board is closely linked to the competition on the star map. You have to compete fiercely to remove discs so that you can improve your nation's productivity. I like how the cubes change form from supplies to population to spaceships, and eventually get recycled. It's clever and it creates a challenging problem for the players. 

This is a development game. It is satisfying to be able to perform more and more powerful actions, and to grow your production capabilities. It is fun to orchestrate your space colonisation efforts and claim those trophy planets!