Kickstart Your Week! Edo, Garden Parties and Whalers!
Iki
Take a journey back in time to the great Nihonbashi, the greatest market in old Japan. This was the centre for trade and commerce in the then capital, Edo, and you will be looking to best capture the spirit of that time, Iki, which literally translates as “victory points”. Over the course of a year, you will set up shops, buy and sell goods and eventually construct glorious buildings to leave a permanent mark on the city. It sounds like a wonderful peaceful experience! Wait, do you smell burning…?
The thing with ancient Japanese architecture is its preponderance of wood and paper as building materials. That combined with the open fires of the many eateries in the market makes for a bad combination, and the market will regularly have fires eating their way through your stalls and buildings. So you better be training your workers to fight fires! Except you won’t have time for training! You need to be making money, you need to be hiring new traders, and you need to be getting hold of food to feed your shopkeepers or they’ll leave in protest! How do you do all that? Well, let me introduce you to Iki’s very nicely integrated rondel mechanic:
That central strip of the wonderfully illustrated board (based on an original scroll from the time period, the Kidai Shoran) is divided into sections that your big meeples will be walking around as the game goes on. When choosing turn order, you are also choosing how many spaces around the market you will move. Each location gives you an action, like buying food or training fire fighters, but you can also visit the stalls while you are there, generally for cheaper bonuses. This raises the experience of your opponent’s stalls though, making them more valuable at the end of the game, so you need to be careful where you go. And just like in a real market, you cannot travel backwards; anything you pass over you will not be able to visit again for a number of turns.
All the elements of this game, the rondel mechanic, where to place your stalls so that your opponents will want to visit them, fighting fires, all fits together into a neat puzzle that is entirely focused on the central board, unlike so many Euro games that move the action to individual player boards. There are so many elements to consider, the types of shops and how they interact with their neighbours, balancing your resources, moving quickly enough around the market but not so fast that you are always stuck going last in the turn order. It sounds like a fantastic puzzle that is very nicely integrated into it’s theme.
Iki shuts shop on August 11th.
[redacted]: Garden Party
Good morning Mr Hunt. Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to infiltrate the embassy and find the intel the ambassador is trying to sell, before it falls into the hands of enemy agents. Under the cover of a gala reception, explore the embassy, find the intel and your fellow agents, and extract the intel safely. Your IMF team is on the ground waiting for but… erm… we can’t tell you who they are. You’ll figure it out! This webpage will self destruct in 5 seconds…
Well not exactly. [redacted] is the successful game of spies, hidden information, lying, bluffing and cunning decisions. The in game interactions are based on secretive card plays, however, so while lying is always allowed, it is not needed for success in the game, taking some of the pressure off for too-honest board gamers. [redacted] has been sold out in Europe since the autumn, so this Kickstarter is the first chance for players to get their hands on the new edition.
In addition, you can get hold of the new expansion: Garden Party. It adds new board section and enough components to add a 7th player to your sneaky games. There are additional missions available, and new ways to escape the embassy. I’ve not had the pleasure of playing the original edition of [redacted], but it sounds really cool! If you missed the previous Kickstarter, go check this new one out! Meanwhile, [redacted] veterans should definitely take an interest in the new expansion.
The [redacted] Kickstarter will self-destruct on August 10th.
New Bedford
Set in the 1800s, in the Massachusetts town of the same name, New Bedford gives players the captaincy of a fleet of whaling ships and the opportunity to build the town itself. It’s part worker placement, part risk management, as players chose how far to send their ships. The further you go, the better the choice of whales to catch, but the longer they’ll take to get back. The initial town offers a selection of actions to perform, but new buildings offer new options for players in a similar system to Lords of Waterdeep. However, to build you’ll need raw materials and to buy them, you’ll need to be bringing in a good catch, keeping the games focus on the whaling.
To be honest, I initially felt a little uncomfortable recommending a game that glorifies the whaling industry. While it is set in the past, the fact that whaling still remains an issue across the world today is not something to be made light of. So I was impressed by the incorporation into the game of a finite supply mechanism. As the game goes on, the supply of whales in the ocean will get depleted and players will more and more often draw empty sea tiles. This not only draws the game to a close, it transfers a mature understanding of the impact of the period to the players. This is an excellent touch, that without would have had the game leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
The last catch will be coming in August 14th.
Worth a Look!
Keyflower – Keyflower is one of the most highly rated strategy games on board game geek. A game of developing your village in the new world, combining tile placement and resource gathering in a clever, deep game. This kickstarter is a pre-order for a new printing run of the game and its two expansions, but only for Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada. Sorry EU! Ends Aug 11th.
Darkrock Ventures – A lightweight worker placement game of asteroid mining. Mining one particular asteroid, in fact. Access to the various resources is determined by dice rolling, with a shared pool that can be combined with individual dice rolls so long as a player’s workers are in the right area. Watch out for pirates once players start exporting resources! Ends Aug 11th.
Greatest of all Mountains – In one of the most unusual themes I think I’ve ever seen, players will be mountains, trying to be crowned the greatest. They will first develop their own terrain, then build facilities and finally attract tourists over the course of 3 rounds. It’s a card based game with lovely artwork. Make your decisions carefully, as your choices in early rounds direct your strategy in later rounds. Ends Aug 12th.
Zpocalypse 2 – Defend the Burbs. Oh good! Another zombie Kickstarter! You’ll be defending your base from the encroaching hordes. There’s some miniatures, it’s cooperative. There is an interesting element of planning your day’s activities that is different, and for owners of the previous Zpocalypse game, there are now new skills and an increased player count. Ends Aug 13th.
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