RogerBW's Blog

Thirsty Meeples June 2019 25 June 2019

Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

We started with Mars Needs Mechanics, a market manipulation game dressed in steampunk clothing. The markets move very slowly, and it's quite random whether one can take advantage of them in any given turn, so while this is quite pretty I have no plans to play it again; Raccoon Tycoon did this rather better.

I spotted Realm of Sand on the New Releases shelf and so had my second game of it this week – and the first ever in which I haven't come last, as I won handily. Bet that won't happen again any time soon.

Finally, Roll For Adventure, a cooperative dice-placement game; we came very close to winning even on a first play, though there were several options for making it harder. Everything pretty much worked, but there was nothing really to make it stand out from lots of other dice-placement games. It's… OK, but I don't see this being anyone's favourite game unless it's one of the first games they play.

[Buy Mars Needs Mechanics at Amazon] [Buy Roll for Adventure at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]


  1. Posted by Michael Cule at 07:15pm on 25 June 2019

    The visual design of MARS NEEDS MECHANICS seems very familiar. Either it's recycled or I've played the game before and forgotten about it. Either seems possible.

    We said some quite uncomplimentary things about REALMS OF SAND's physical components. The player boards were curling in the box and the little wooden cube used to mark a track was just begging to be lost.

    The daft little skulls in ROLL FOR ADVENTURE were pretty but also likely to go 'walkabout'.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 07:26pm on 25 June 2019

    Mars… didn't look familiar to me, for what it's worth. But it was published in 2013 so it's entirely plausible that you might have come across it at some point.

    My own copy of Realms… doesn't have curling player boards… but I'm not convinced of the longevity of the cards, and I'll probably sleeve them. Agreed on the little wooden cube; even more than in Terraforming Mars it's asking to be swept off the table and lost, and it's not as though there are all that many effects that boost it anyway.

    I might buy a packet of replacement skulls for Roll…. No way I'd buy the game itself, but the skulls are very nifty.

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