New to Me – August 2023

August was all set to be a banner “new to me” games month.

Hell, I was going to a convention! That’s always a great place for new to me games.

Sadly, it was not to be, with only three new to me games played.

Getting sick and missing a Sunday game day didn’t help in that respect.

The good news for the Cult of the New to Me was that two of the three games were from 2018 or older!

This got me many huzzahs.

And a cookie!

I think the fact that their leader has been walking the walk as far as “Cult of the New” games and not playing too many of them has actually increased their respect for me.

Either that, or they are secretly plotting a coup.

Whatever it is, I’m enjoying cult life right now.

So without further ado (all of my ado was given away for some fancy new machine anyway), let’s get started!

Age of Innovation (2023 – Capstone Games) – 1 play

Designer: Helge Ostertag

Artists: Álvaro Calvo Escudero, Lukas Siegmon

Players: 1-5

It’s no secret to anybody who reads this blog with any regularity (ok, so that means it’s a secret to a lot of people) that I am not a big fan of Terra Mystica.

It’s not that I think it’s a bad game. Far from it!

In my couple of plays of it, though, I have bounced so hard off of it that the ER doctors were concerned that I had permanent brain damage.

(Shut up, you in the back row).

When I played Gaia Project, which was supposed to be “Terra Mystica in space, but better!”, I tried it and bounced even harder off of it.

When Cal said he was bringing Age of Innovation to our Sunday game day, I was excited to try a new game…until I went to BGG and saw that it was “a Terra Mystica game” and that it’s basically the same game with some updates and new rules and such.

That turned me off and I rescinded my excitement.

The next week, Cal chided me (good-naturedly, we’re all really good friends) about my refusal to play it, saying that how could I do a board game blog and not talk about some of the latest hotness?

Which is kind of true (though some of the hotness I will never even get the opportunity to play anyway).

After thinking about it, I decided “heck yes, let’s do this” and we played it the next week.

And you know what?

I’d never suggest it and it will never be in my top games to play or anything, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I actually didn’t mind it.

After that long preamble, what’s this game about?

Well, it’s Terra Mystica with about 20% changes to the rules.

Next!

Oh, sorry, I guess I should say a bit more.

The board looks very much the same (I’m sure the details are different, of course).

You are still a faction that has a home terrain and you can only build your buildings on your home terrain. If you want to build anywhere else, first you have to terraform that space.

One difference, though, is that while there are different factions with variable player powers, the factions aren’t tied to the terrain.

You actually draft random pairs of faction and terrain type.

So maybe this time you would be the Desert Blessed, but next time it might be the Mountain Blessed.

The game goes 6 rounds (familiar) and each round has a specific goal in mind (familiar). As you can see from the player board, you still have power that you can spend to do actions, and you can gain power by your opponents building next to your buildings (familiar).

However, one major difference is the Innovations you can get.

Books are a new resource in the game, and you can spend books to do an action of some type, or you can spend them on innovations that will add to your abilities.

These can give you bonuses, like this one which gives you a priest (sorry, they’re scholars now) and lets you move your Shipping and Digging skill up one space.

They’ve also changed a lot of the terminology from the original (like priests becoming scholars). It’s no longer sending priests to the temples, but instead sending scholars to the Science Discipline tracks.

These will get you points at the end of the game based on who is highest in each track, and some movements will give you immediate power bonuses.

Another new concept is the “Competencies.” Whenever you upgrade your Guild to a School, you can gain a Competency.

These Competencies can give you some really cool stuff.

One of these gives you a book and a power movement each Income phase. Another lets you place an “annex” on a building, giving it one more power level for things such as gaining power from opponents’ building next to you or when forming a City. It also lets you count just three buildings for a City instead of four (the annex essentially counts as a building).

I do like the new stuff and I did find myself not getting as stuck as I did in Terra Mystica. The main reason I didn’t find those games fun (Gaia Project as well) was I kept getting trapped into basically not being able to do anything interesting. I’d do a little something on my turn and then everybody else would have massive turns.

This time, while I still didn’t play optimally, I actually felt like I was doing something.

I still only formed two cities while everybody else did more than that, but I felt good about what I had done.

I wouldn’t outright refuse to play this again, like I would the other two games.

It was kind of fun!

(Though I think Cal took it easy on me, only beating me by 11 points, but Sarah won the game with a whopping 167 points).

Dokmus (2016 – Renegade Game Studios) – 1 play

Designer: Mikko Punakallio

Artists: Markku Laine, Sami Saramäki

Players: 2-4

I talked a bit about Dokmus in my Dragonflight post, but I’ll go into it with a little more depth now.

The board consists of 8 square tiles arranged in a big square with an opening in the middle.

Each turn, you will be placing three of your tokens out on the board, or at least using them.

But first, you will be drafting a Guardian card.

Whoever was first player last round chooses first, then it goes around the table clockwise.

These cards will determine turn order for the round as well as your special power.

The Number 1 guardian will just let you go first.

Number 2 lets you move one of the tiles into the open space on the board.

Number 3 lets you move one of your pieces one space.

Number 4 lets you rotate one of the tiles.

Number 5 will let you do any of those actions…but you will be going last.

Before or after you do the action of your guardian, you will be placing pieces down on the squares of one of the tiles. Tokens played have to be adjacent to another one of your tokens.

Good thing the tiles can shift, which will make it so you can move onto other tiles!

Crossing a river means you will sacrifice one of your three pieces (not placing it on the board), but you can place your next token anywhere along that waterway.

Placing on a forest means sacrificing one of your pieces too.

It’s a good thing that sacrificing pieces will also get you points, if you are the one who sacrifices the most!

Placing tokens next to temples will get you points at the end of the game. Placing tokens next to temples on all eight tiles will get you more points!

But discovering all of the temples on one tile will get you 8 points by itself.

It’s an interesting game where the board is constantly changing and sometimes you just need to take that first player so you can do what you want to do, even if you don’t get a power.

I enjoyed this. I had heard of the game but knew nothing about it, so I was happy to try it out.

I’d play it again, though it’s not near the top of my play list.

Unlock: Heroic Adventures (2018 – Space Cowboys) – 1 play

Designers: Mathieu Casnin, Thomas Cauët, Cyril Demaegd, Vincent Goyat, Dave Neale (not sure which one or more designed the scenario we played)

Artists: Laurent Bazart, Arnaud Demaegd, Mahulda Jelly

Players: 1-6

I’m not going to talk too much about this game, since it’s a secret story and I don’t want to spoil it.

However, the Heroic Adventures module of the Unlock series consists of three adventures: Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, and a Video Game one.

We played the Video Game one.

Players find themselves in a video game trying to rescure the princess!

The Unlock series is an interesting Escape Room style puzzle using an app for both a timer and for some of the things you have to do to continue.

Sometimes you will have to use a machine card, which will make you use the app to do something.

Maybe you’ll have to use the camera to scan a card and see something hidden on it!

Or the app can also give you hints. These hints will cost you time (you have 60 minutes) but will help you move forward.

Sometimes choosing the wrong way forward will also cost you time.

We managed to find an extra life (it’s a video game!) but I don’t know if it’s possible to actually “lose” the game other than running out of time.

Maybe it is?

We also managed to somehow move forward without hitting Level 5. This caused a lot of confusion when we couldn’t move past one of the final cards, because we hadn’t done Level 5! We finally managed to figure it out, but it was a bit annoying.

Anyway, if you like deduction games, these games will be right up your alley.

And it’s fun to play them in a group and try to solve the puzzles together.

We finished with 3 minutes to spare! Even with the hints we required.

I consider that a win (and so does the app).

So not much last month, but I already have one new to me game for September and we’re only 3 days in, so hopefully next month will have a bunch more.

What new to you games did you play in August?

Let me know in the comments.