Back to the boardgame café. With images;
cc-by-sa on
everything.
We began with
A Study in Emerald,
a Martin Wallace game. And… it's OK, I guess. It's basically a
deckbuilder with very limited ways of removing cards from your deck;
although it's theoretically based on the Neil Gaiman short story, the
connection with the theme is very loose, and the same mechanics could
very easily be used with an entirely different setting.
Beyond the basic "capture cards to get points", there's a game of
working out which side the other players are on (because the player in
last place causes everyone on their side to lose a chunk of points at
the end, in one of several possible endgame reversals); it's
implementing the idea of spymasters not really knowing whom to trust,
and that part works reasonably well.
But while the decks represent cities across Europe, most of the cards
are shuffled into them with no pattern. Doctor Watson is in Cairo?
Irene Adler in Madrid? The Fenians in St Petersburg? Zombies? Meh,
sure, why not. Mostly they just give you action icons anyway.
I'll play it again now that we have a better idea of what's going on,
but I'm not likely to buy it, and I suspect there's not a great deal
of long-term enjoyment here.
A recent episode of Our Turn! mentioned
The Networks,
and we played that next. Players run TV stations, trying to juggle
shows, stars and advertisements to maximise viewing figures. But shows
and stars have a lifetime, and eventually lose their audience, so you
have to decide when to replace them with new ones.
I liked this one a great deal, even though I came in last.
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