New to Me – October 2023

October was a great month for new to me games!

That’s been a bit unusual lately, so I’m glad that this is back on the upswing.

Of course, with every improvement there comes a downside.

I played 5 new to me games in October, plus a new expansion!

But all of them were from 2023.

The Cult of the New to Me was not happy.

At all.

There was actually talk of a rebellion so harsh that it would make the latest Republican infighting look like a picnic on the beach with a bonfire and everything.

So I gave them a picnic on the beach with a bonfire and everything, and they all moved from rebellious to just disgruntled.

I’ll have to work on improving that next month. Considering one of my already-scheduled new to me games for November is from 2010 and one is from 2019, I may be able to do that!

Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was used as an appetizer for a US-Soviet summit meeting anyway), let’s see what’s out there!

Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa (2023 – GMT Games) – 4 plays

Designer: Jason Matthews

Artist: Terry Leeds

Players: 1-2

The first game this month is easy to write about.

Because I already did!

You can check out my review of the game here.

However, if this is you…

this is a great 2-player lunchtime game condensing the already great Twilight Struggle into a 45-minute push and pull in the Horn of Africa.

That condensing does make the luck element a lot more prominent than in the parent game, so keep that in mind.

Or, you know, you can just go read the review.

Amalfi: Renaissance (2023 – Sylex) – 1 play

Designer: Takeo Yamada

Artist: Urabe Rocinante

Players: 1-4

Amalfi originally came out in 2020, but I had never heard of it.

That means it didn’t exist, right?

Anyway, one of our game days, Amalfi: Renaissance was brought to the table (and it’s on Boardgame Arena too!).

Amalfi: Renaissance is a reworking of the game. Since I’ve never seen the original, I don’t really know what the difference is. (Editor: “Research! I give up…)

This is a game of resource management and chaining actions together and is ostensibly about establishing trading routes and sending your ships out to both trade and explore, all during the Renaissance (hey, maybe that’s where the name came from!)

That doesn’t really sound like it would go together, but in this case it does because you are sending ships out to get resources and then spending those ships to use those resources.

But then they’re still available to go get more resources!

Possibly.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Each player will have a starting deck of character cards. They come in sets, but once you’re familiar with the game, you can draft them instead.

The sets kind of ease you toward one of the possible strategies for getting points.

You also start with a player board and four ships.

You will be able to build more ships during the game.

You can also build Lighthouses which will let you get resources when a location has a ship sent to it.

This is actually a “feed your people” game, though it’s very light. You have to have enough bread at the end of the round to feed all of your ships (initially it will cost 2 bread but the more ships you build, the more bread you need). If you don’t, you’ll lose 3 points.

Not devastating, but not nothing.

The board has a bunch of locations that you can send ships to in order to get resources.

That ship is stuck until the end of the round, but your resources actually consist of moving your other remaining ships up into the resource box that you gained.

That does mean that you have to have enough ships to do that, or you don’t get the resources.

You can then spend those resources in order to play character cards from your hand, discover new locations that only you can use, or get some neato artwork.

The locations and artwork get you points immediately when you acquire them as well as giving you other things you can do on your turn (or maybe endgame scoring or long-term effects for character cards).

The artwork also gives you either a free (well, you did pay resources for the card, but you wanted the card!) action, or maybe just some resources or another ability (like putting a lighthouse out on the board).

Each turn, you will be doing something, either sending your ships out, or spending resources to play cards/get artwork/locations. Characters can give you an action once per round, or maybe an effect that will modify one of your actions (like paying fewer of a resource to get something).

The turn order is one of those “first to pass goes first next time” mechanisms, but most of the time you want to be doing stuff until you can’t anymore.

Unless you need that bread and your only action will be playing a card that costs a bunch of bread.

Once everybody passes, there are end-of-round scoring tiles that you’ve hopefully taken into account and been playing towards.

I do like how they all have a little cutout in them so that, depending on which round they come out, they might be worth more points.

For example, the first round, you’re only going to be getting one, maybe two locations discovered. So the above first-round scoring tile gives you 4 points per location rather than 2 as listed on the card itself.

If that came out in the 4th round, it would only be worth 2 points per location because most likely you have a bunch of them.

The same with the Colonization tile. Three points per Lighthouse isn’t very good early when you probably only have one or two.

This gives everybody a little boost, which is nice.

There are also endgame scoring goals which you can work towards (as long as you remember them, which I almost didn’t in my Boardgame Arena play recently).

These give a decreasing amount of points depending on who gets them first, second, or third.

The location tiles that you can take give you a lot more options for your ship and, depending on some of your Characters, you might even be able to use one of them for free!

That’s always a good thing.

All of this continues over four rounds, and you are definitely spending at least the first round building up your engine a little bit.

After four rounds, total up the remaining endgame scoring and see who wins!

I have to say that I loved this game. It really seemed to click for me, and I’m not sure if it’s because the kind of yo-yo effect of your ships and resources or what.

If you can chain them together correctly, you can have many turns where you are moving some ships up into the resource area, spending those resources, and then moving some of those ships up into another resource area so you can spend them.

You can also dock ships for the round, which gives you 3 resources or bread, which you can use as part of your spending to get an artwork or location.

It’s just so intricate and I loved it.

I did fairly well in our one game on the table, but now I’ve played a game on Boardgame Arena too and I love it even more.

If you get the chance, definitely give this a try.

Barcelona (2023 – Board & Dice) – 1 play

Designer: Dani Garcia

Artists: Zuzanna Kołakowska, Aleksander Zawada

Players: 1-4

Barcelona is the new hotness in tile-laying games from Board & Dice and surprise! It’s not a “T” game with an unpronounceable name!

In the game, players are builders in mid-19th Century Barcelona, trying to implement the urban planning ideas of Ildefons Cerdà, who is now considered “the father of urbanism.”

You are working on a new expansion of the city, building buildings and an organized street and tram network that will attract citizens who want to move out of the old city.

(Fun fact: you can earn Cerdà points in the game and I continually kept calling them “Lacerda points,” so much so that I just gave up and ran with it).

Players have a player board with all of the streets you can build, your intersections, a storehouse for your money and cloth and where you will be removing cobblestones to both make room for more resources as well as scoring points in other ways.

The main board is Barcelona, where you are going to be putting your buildings out, along with a citizen board where you will be placing the citizen tokens you use to build.

This will act as the game clock, in a way.

There’s also a Modernisme board where you will be placing cobblestones and also where the public service projects are available.

On your turn, you will have two citizen tokens which can be one of three types: Working Class (green), Middle Class (pink) and Upper Class (blue).

You’ll place those tokens on an intersection on the board and take the two actions that are in the row and column of that intersection (kind of a reverse Targi). You don’t have to take the actions if you don’t want to, or can’t.

Once you’ve done that, you must build a building if you can.

You do that by seeing if there are any building lots with two or three corners of it adjacent to a citizen.

In the picture above, the open lot at the bottom has citizens on two corners of it. A building can go there!

You can build a Level 1 building with any two citizens.

A Level 2 building requires two citizens but one must be Middle Class.

A Level 3 building requires three citizens (so three corners) and one must be an Upper Class citizen.

You place each citizen used on the citizen track. You will also get points equal to the lowest number of points showing on the Citizen track (the picture above, you would get 10 points for a building). You also place one of your markers on it.

Then draw two citizens from the bag for your next turn.

If there’s a smaller level building already there and the right number of citizens for a larger level building are there, you can upgrade it with the same cost (you’re essentially overbuilding) and you can place your marker there as well.

Each time the edge of a section is reached on the Citizen track, scoring for that section happens.

You know in advance what is coming, so you can plan for it.

For example, the first round above, you would get 2 points for each cloth resource you have in your warehouse, up to 5 (so 10 points).

The scoring can be modified by your level on the Lacerda Cerdà track, where you can get twice, three times, or even four times the score. Or if you did a lot of upper crust things (he was a man of the people so wouldn’t like that), you might not get any points because the multiplier is zero!

These are the basics of the game, though I’m not going to get into the Modernisme tiles, the Sagrada tiles, and things like that.

Suffice it to say that these add to your points or will get you other benefits.

The game ends when one of the citizen tracks fills up. Each player who hadn’t had a turn yet that round takes a turn (so if the last player triggered the end game, no more turns!).

Then total up all the points and whoever has the most is the winner!

This was a pretty good game and I can see the appeal and why it’s becoming popular.

It does have a bit of a first player problem, but not in the sense it seemed to us when we played it.

I was first player and I was at a disadvantage because you cannot build on your first turn. Only one stack of citizens will be on the board and you need at least two.

However, after reading Boardgame Geek forums, I wouldn’t mind trying it again as first player. That player has to change their strategy just a bit, taking into account what will be scoring after the first round and being first to head toward that. Building will come, but if you start accumulating whatever the first round scoring is ahead of everybody else, you could be a step ahead of that.

I wouldn’t suggest having a new player be first player, for that reason. Unless you are like us and all of you were new.

Otherwise, I would definitely say you should give this a try. I enjoyed my first play of it and would like to play it again.

Spellbook (2023 – Space Cowboys) – 1 play

Designer: Phil Walker-Harding

Artist: Cyrille Bertin

Players: 1-4

Spellbook is another relatively simple, fast-playing game from Phil Walker-Harding.

This time, players are wizards trying to master some of the trickiest spells around.

You also have a trusty familiar that eats the magical essences that you are using to learn these spells.

Typical pet, getting in the way and demanding to be fed when you’re trying to do something meaningful.

You are trying to learn seven spells, all of which require different types of these essences (called “Materia”) to learn them.

You can try to learn an easier and less-powerful version of it quickly or you can study and study and study until you master the most complicated and powerful version of it.

Depending on which level of the spell you learn, you will get victory points at the end of the game and, if it has an ability, you will be able to use that as well.

On your turn, you will take a morning action, a midday action, and an evening action.

The morning action will be either drawing two Materia tokens from the bag or taking one from the Market.

Or, if you learned a morning action spell, you can do that instead.

For midday, you either store one of your Materia on your familiar (effectively feeding it) or you can do a midday spell action if you’ve learned it.

Finally, you can take an evening action, which is either an evening spell you’ve learned or you can spend the Materia to learn one of the spells you haven’t learned yet. You can’t “upgrade” a spell once you’ve learned it. You either have to learn the highest level or be content with a lower level.

Then a Materia is added to the market, with the entire Market getting cleaned out if it’s at 10, reseeding it with 5 new ones.

The game ends when either somebody’s familiar is full or when somebody has learned all seven spells.

Total up the points from your familiar and your learned spells. Whoever has the most points is the winner!

This is a neat game if you need something quick and easy to explain to people. It’s not an exceptional game, though. It’s very random with the Materia draws, though you can use three of the same symbol to create a wild one if you need it.

That does bring to mind one confusing aspect, which is kind of annoying in an otherwise easy game like this.

To learn spells, all you need is 2-4 tokens of the same colour as the spell.

However, to form the wild, you have to have three of the same symbol. It doesn’t matter what colour they are.

It took me a couple of moments to remember that easily, and if you’re teaching this to a non-gamer, it might take longer to absorb that.

Otherwise, though, it’s a fun game.

Zoo Vadis (2023 – Bitewing Games) – 1 play

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Kwanchai Moriya

Players: 3-7

I talked a bit about Zoo Vadis in last week’s Friday Night Shots post, but here’s a bit more.

Animals are being put in charge of the zoo and you and your fellows are trying to become the Zoo Mascot by popular demand.

This is a democracy, damn it!

The board is the zoo and divided into multiple areas and paths between them, all leading to the Star Exhibit.

Each player is a different animal and they get six of their pieces. They are trying to move at least one into the Star Exhibit at the top of the board.

Each animal also has a special power, but the twist in this one is that you can’t use it!

You can only sell that ability, negotiating it away for something else that will benefit you (like maybe somebody else’s power).

On your turn, you can either place one of your animals on a beginning area at the bottom of the board, or you can try to move one of your figures from one zone to a connecting one.

In order to do that, though, you have to have a majority in that area, which includes the neutral peacocks and the open spaces remaining!

The tigers have 3 figures in the 7-space area on the left of the picture.

However, they have to have 4 votes in order to move a figure out of the area, because you have to include the empty spaces.

In order to do this, they can offer something to the hyenas or the…whatever the purple animal is (yes, this is quality journalism here) in order to get the required 4th vote.

They can offer money (which is VP) or maybe their special ability, which the other player can save to use whenever they need it.

Or maybe a combination of both.

In addition to whatever you offer, for each vote they give you, they get one VP from the bank as well, so it can be lucrative for them.

Once you get enough votes, you move one of your figures to a connecting area, but only if it has an empty space.

You also collect the VP token on that path, unless it’s covered by the Farmer.

Another action you can take is to move the Farmer to cover a path. This will allow somebody to move out of the area without having majority votes, but they don’t get the token when they do that. (The Hyena’s special ability is to let somebody move the Farmer and then move their figure in the same turn).

Another action is to move one of the Peacocks (oh, and you can just spend VP directly to the bank to get a Peacock’s vote, since they are mercenaries neutral parties).

The game ends when all of the spaces in the Star Exhibit are filled. This can include Peacocks!

If you don’t get a figure in the Star Exhibit, you can’t win no matter how many VP you have.

The winner of the game is whoever has both a figure in the Star Exhibit and the most VP tokens.

As I said in my Friday Night Shots post, I don’t really do negotiation games and this is nothing but negotiation!

But I really enjoyed this one and would willingly play it again.

If you get a chance to play it, even if you don’t like negotiation, I would give it a shot.

Expansion

Ark Nova: Marine Worlds (2023 – Capstone Games) – 1 play

Designer: Mathias Wigge

Artist: Mathias Wigge

When this expansion for one of my favourite games was announced, I was very excited. Even more excited when I found out more about what was in it!

I’ve already reviewed Ark Nova, so no need to go into the minutiae of how to play the game.

Let’s just talk about what cool stuff this expansion includes.

The first thing, of course, is aquatic animals and aquarium enclosures to keep them in.

These work similarly to the Reptile House and Aviary, except that you can build them immediately. You don’t have to wait to upgrade your Build card first.

These marine animals still take up a certain amount of space in the aquarium. The good thing is that you can build both the 5-space one (for 10 dollars) and the 2-space one (for 4 dollars). You’re not limited to just one (though you are limited to one of each type).

Each aquarium also gives you a water icon in your zoo if you need it.

Some aquatic animals don’t just live in water, though. Like penguins!

The African Penguin can live either in a standard enclosure or they take up 2 spaces in an aquarium.

What’s that “wave” symbol on the card?

When a card with a wave symbol is revealed in the card row, the first card in the row is automatically discarded. That’s a way to churn the card row, which is nice.

Some of these marine animal cards have what are called “reef” abilities (the symbol in the top right under the tags).

When you play a card with a reef symbol on it, all of your other previously-played reef card abilities also trigger.

So when I played the first card above, I could spend an X token to get 5 dollars or spend 5 dollars to get an X token.

When I played the second one, I could do that again. But I also just got a free X token. You can do them in any order, so I could gain the token and then spend it to get 5 dollars.

When I played the Southern Blue-Ringed Octopus, I could do both of those again and I also was able to take 3 dollars.

If you get enough of these, they can provide some nice little benefits, though you shouldn’t build your game around them.

The final major addition is the ability to draft two asynchronous action cards at the beginning of the game.

Thus, you could get these two.

The Build card is standard, but also lets you pay 2 dollars to cover a water or rock space on your board.

The Animals card gives you the Hunter 4 action if, after playing your animals, you no longer have any animals in your hand.

Others give you different benefits.

This is a nice bit of asymmetry on top of your different player boards (if you are playing with different boards) that adds a great new element to the game.

The expansion also includes some new conservation project cards, some cool new sponsors (including this one, which I made great use out of)

and some different universities and bonus tiles.

Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of the last two items, but they add a bit of variety to the whole game.

The new universities give you an animal icon of whichever type you choose as well as a science tag. Then it lets you reveal cards from the deck until you find an animal with that tag.

Does Ark Nova need an expansion?

No. It’s an awesome game by itself.

Will I always play with Marine Worlds if it’s available?

Yes! I will never play without it if it’s on offer and available.

But I will also play the base game without it if the owner doesn’t have the expansion.

This is the perfect expansion because it adds some really cool stuff but it’s not mandatory.

What do you think of these games? Have you played them?

What new to you games did you play in October?

Let me know in the comments.