New to Me – May 2023

It’s June.

I’m amazed that we’re almost half-way through the year already.

But it’s also time to look back at May and the gaming that I did (which I did in general already)

With Mother’s Day taking up one Sunday, it was another sparse month for new to me games, which didn’t make the Cult of the New to Me happy.

What did make them happy is that one of my two new games was from 2011!

They gave me a lot of these.

Which made me feel good (Ted always makes me feel good)

Hopefully June will be better, though we do have Father’s Day coming up.

So, without further ado (all of my ado was eaten by some feral Beast anyway), let’s begin!

Omen: A Reign of War (2011 – Kolossal Games) – 3 plays

Designer: John Clowdus

Artists: JJ Ariosa, Chris Byer, Justin Hernandez, Mike Riiven, Sandro Rybak

Players: 2

I have the Olympus edition of this game, which I received in a math trade, so it doesn’t have the beautiful cover shown here (from the most recent edition, I think).

This is a really strong 2-player card game, though, another one of those “lane” dueling games where you play cards on opposite sides of a center card, trying to have the most strength.

In this game, the center cards your vying for are cities, and you are placing cards that represent Oracles, Soldiers, and Beasts in order to “win” the cities when they become embattled.

The turn sequence is quite interesting.

You first take a Wealth phase where you can take any combination of three cards/coins. However, if you take all of one or the other, you get four.

Then you enter the Surge phase, where you can play any number of cards from your hand to the cities (there are three, even though all of my pictures only show one) as long as you can afford them.

The cost in coins for each card is the number in yellow in the top right corner.

For Soldiers, when you play the card to a city, you do the effect on the card. The Fervant Seductress, for example, forces the opposing player to reveal their hand and discard all revealed Oracles.

Beasts, when you pay their cost, you either play them to a city or you discard them for their effect.

If I had discarded the Scarred Minotaur, then my opponent would have had to reveal their hand and discard all Soldiers.

There is a 5-unit limit for each player in each city, and a Beast counts as two units, so you have to keep that in mind.

In the Portent phase, all of your Oracles activate, in any order.

Oracles often give you a benefit and then have you reveal the top card of the deck. If it’s an Oracle, then you get something else.

Then there’s the Feat phase, where you see if you meet the requirements for any of the six available feats.

Each player has their own copy of the feats, so it’s not a race, other than the fact as soon as somebody has achieved five feats, the game will be over.

Finally, we get to the rough stuff.

In the War phase, you check each city. If your opponent has 3 units in the city, or if anybody has 5 units, the city will become “war-torn”.

Don’t forget that Beasts count as two units.

You add up the strength on both sides (the red number on each card) and whoever has the most gets the top card of the city (the Reward card) in their hand.

Each Surge phase, you can play one Reward card from your hand.

Then, the winner discards all but one unit from the city (so no Beasts can remain) and the loser discards all but two units (so it could be a Beast).

Finally comes the Offering phase.

In this phase, you can discard one (and only one) card from your hand. Then, you can gain the number in the blue on the discarded card in any combination of cards and coins.

Discarding the above card will get you 4 coins, 4 cards, or any combination thereof.

The game will end when either somebody has achieved their fifth feat or if two cities have had all of their Reward cards earned.

Scoring is pretty easy. You get 2 points for each feat achieved, two points for each Reward card in your hand and one point for each Reward card you have played.

The tricky thing is that your hand limit at the end of your turn is 7, and Reward cards count.

So if you win a lot, you may have to play your Rewards just to free up your hand!

This is a really cool game and it moves pretty fast too.

It’s a great lunch time game, taking 30-45 minutes to play.

The push and pull in the cities is neat and I like the decisions you have to make because of how each card operates.

Do you discard that Beast for its powerful effect?

Or do you play the Beast because it will overpower opposing forces in a city.

But if you win the city, the Beast will get discarded.

The feats are pretty basic, which is really the only thing that’s kind of “blah” about the game.

There are also Spirit and Hero cards which change things up a bit. We tried one game with them and they’re pretty cool.

Overall, I really enjoy this game and will have to do a review of it at some point.

Distilled (2023 – Paverson Games) – 1 play

Designer: Dave Beck

Artist: Erik Evensen

Players: 1-5

Distilled is a brand new game from Paverson Games about making spirits (and I don’t mean killing people).

In the game, each player is a distiller from a different part of the world.

Each distiller has its own special ability as well as signature drink that they can produce.

Players get their own distillery board where they’re going to be placing their upgrades, items, ingredients, and keep track of the drink recipes they have.

All players can produce Vodka and Moonshine, but the rest, you have to get the recipe for first.

There’s also the board where points are tracked as well as the drink labels for when you produce a drink.

A turn starts with the Market Phase, where players take turns buying cards from the market or recipes that they will be able to produce.

You can buy one card/recipe on your turn and you can only buy two basic ingredient cards. However, everything else you can buy as much as you can afford.

The more advanced Ingredients are in the second row, but there are also Items you can buy (mainly bottles and barrels that will either help you store your booze or sell it) and upgrades that will give you special bonuses during the game.

Then comes the Distill phase, where you are going to produce a drink.

In order to do so, you need at least one Water card, one Yeast card and one Sugar card.

Sugar cards will let you add Alcohol cards to your stack.

Then, you shuffle all of the cards you are using for this drink together and remove the top and bottom cards of the stack (this follows real distilling where parts are removed in the production) and put them back in your ingredient pile.

Then you see what you have produced!

Each recipe requires a certain amount of a certain type of sugar (nothing but Vodka will accept multiple types).

Rum requires two Plant Sugars, for example.

Cachaca only requires one Plant Sugar.

It’s kind of a push your luck thing because you include all of the sugars and other cards in what you are producing, but since you have to remove two cards, you may not have enough sugars for what you want.

But as long as you have the recipe for the smaller one, that’s fine too.

From Whiskey on down in the drink list, you also need barrels to store your drink in to age it at least one turn.

If you don’t have a barrel, it doesn’t matter if you produced whiskey. It’s gone if you don’t have anything to store it in.

When you age a drink, it will get flavour cards added to it.

These cards will add to the amount of money you get when you finally sell it.

They’re not all good. One of the cards is basically unwashed socks! (you don’t want your drink tasting like that).

Each drink produced will give you points when you sell it. Some drinks (moonshine, vodka, gin and cachaca) can’t be stored and have to be sold immediately. They will get you a few points and some much-needed money.

You will also get more points the longer you age a drink before selling it, based on how many turns you’ve aged it.

That can be quite lucrative too.

There’s more to the game, of course. Like end-game scoring cards and in-game goals that will get you points as well.

With money being kind of limited based on what you can sell, you have to decide if you’re going to invest in any upgrades for your distillery.

They can be quite handy, but they can be expensive too. Maybe you should spend money on better ingredients?

Or not?

It’s up to you!

This was a fun game and one I’d like to try again.

It’s another one where you have to really focus on something and not spread yourself too thin.

Then again, I came in second with 118 points, so maybe I did do something right!

This one will hopefully hit the table at least one or two more times.

Only two games this month, but they were good!

What new to you games did you play in May?

Let me know in the comments.