Games@Westgate presents: LightCon

This year in April, at Westgate Baptist Church in Auckland, we’ll be doing another large all-day event, much like the one we had last year for International Tabletop Day. Mark the 27th of April in your diaries!

Pre-register now on our Contact page and go in the draw to win a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past courtesy of Mighty Ape! Check out a review of the game here.

You’ll find a Facebook page for the event here. Be sure to check in and say you’re coming along, and share the event with your friends!

Doors will open at 10am and we’ll run throughout the day and into the evening, with a finish time of 8pm. It’s an all-ages, family-friendly event.

Entry is $5 per person. Take advantage of our group discount: in groups of 4 or more, one person gets free entry.

Here are some things you can expect:

• A large library of board and card games to play, including modern and traditional favourites.
• Game tutorials where you can learn and play an exciting modern game.
• $600+ worth of prizes! Dice & Fork and Pixel Park have both jumped on board as generous sponsors of the event, and Mighty Ape are continuing their support of our events.
• A Connect 4 tournament for kids 10 and under.
• Home baking and barista coffee from our cafe.
• Good old fashioned family-friendly fun.

All of the proceeds from the event will be going to support Lighthouse Playgroup, a community playgroup run on the Westgate Baptist Church premises. They’re in need of funds to spruce up their playground, and Games@Westgate is partnering with them to help raise some money. In their honour, I’ve decided to call this year’s event LightCon.

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, Games@Westgate will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Champions of Midgard Review

One of my favourite superheroes is Thor. His mighty hammer Mjolnir, his bolts of lightning, his impressive strength and ability to fly all make him pretty magnificent. While the Viking god of thunder doesn’t make an appearance in Champions of Midgard, you’ll certainly feel like an Asgardian hero as you take down trolls, undead and mythical beasts while defending your village, earning fortune and glory in the process.

In Champions of Midgard, you’re a Viking leader vying to win the villagers’ allegiance by earning the most glory points. Along the way you’ll need to manage various resources, recruit warriors to fight for your cause, go on journeys across the sea, and fight the various enemies that threaten the village. The player with the most glory at the end of the game will earn the title of Jarl and become the true champion of Midgard.

The game is played over 8 rounds and each round is broken into two main phases.

In the first phase, players take turns placing “workers” in different spots on the board, thereby sending them to gather resources, recruit warriors or to pick a fight. The three main resources are: food, which you’ll need to feed your warriors; gold, which can be used to buy other resources or to hire longboats; and wood, which can be used for carving magical runes or building longboats of your own. The warriors themselves come in the form of custom dice. There are swordsmen whose faces show shields and swords, spearmen whose faces have shields and spears, and axemen who have only axes and no shields.

Apart from one or two exceptions, once a player has taken a spot on the board and claimed the benefits it gives, no other player can go there until the next round, so deciding where to go and when is central to the gameplay. Do you use your worker to take a spot that’s important for advancing your own strategy before someone else grabs it, or do you take a spot that you know an opponent wants in order to foil their plans? Do you send a worker to fight the troll, even though you don’t yet have many warriors for the fight, or do you recruit some warriors now but potentially miss the chance to fight the troll altogether? This “worker placement” mechanic will be familiar to seasoned gamers. For those new to the hobby, you’ll be in for a unique experience that can’t be found in traditional games, and it gives rise to many tense and interesting decisions.

The second phase of the game is where the fighting happens. Players who have sent one or more workers off to pick fights with monsters during the first phase will now send their warriors to engage in combat with those monsters. They roll their dice and hope for ‘hits’ in the form of swords, spears or axes. If they score enough hits they’ll defeat the enemy and take home the glory. However, the enemies fight back by slaying a certain number of warriors (dice) each time they are rolled, meaning you lose those dice and have to return them to the supply. If shields are rolled, the enemy’s attack is negated and less warriors will die. Players must continue rolling their dice until either they’ve scored enough hits to kill the enemy or all their dice have been slain – “victory or death” is your battle cry! The different warrior dice have different chances to score hits or give shields, so deciding which mix of warriors to recruit in phase one will play an important roll in how well you can battle the enemies in phase two.

If you’ve elected to do battle with a mythical beast across the ocean, your warriors will first need to make a sea voyage before combat. For this you’ll need to use a longboat (either one you’ve hired or one you’ve built for yourself) and fill it with your warriors and enough food to last the journey. The journey itself can have its own perils which may cause you to lose your precious stores of food, or kill your warriors along the way. However, slaying the monsters over the sea will earn you by far the most glory, and sometimes a significant amount of gold, so the spoils of war are often worth the risks.

For me, the game has its most thrilling moments in the battle phase. Due to the random nature of the combat mechanism, there’s a healthy dose of pushing your luck built into the game. You can go into a single fight with overwhelming numbers, knowing you’ll safely defeat the beast, or you can spread your warriors thin and go for multiple targets, which is much riskier. The safe option will ensure you earn at least some glory points that turn, but the risky option could net you many more points – or your turn could come to a disastrous end as you watch all of your warriors die for no gain. This risk-reward mechanism can provide some nail-biting moments of triumph or failure that you’ll remember long after you’ve packed the game’s components away in the box. And I also love that you get to decide for yourself just how far you want to push the limits of probability.

At the same time as having fantastic mechanics, the components that facilitate them are beautiful and really help to immerse you in the mythical world of Midgard. Of course appreciation of artwork is subjective, but I feel that the light, fantastical style and bold colours really work well in this setting. The custom dice are chunky and well-made, and it feels great to roll them across the table. The card stock is of a high quality, as are the player boards and the game board itself, all of which (for my copy at least) have shown virtually no sign of wear or warping after several plays.

The sheer number of components in the box, while great value for money, can be quite a daunting sight for new players. However, in my experience of teaching the game to several different groups, once people get going they tend to find the game to be very intuitive and simple enough to get their head around.

The game is a lot of fun at all player counts, though my preference is the two-player game. Play moves very quickly back and forth with minimal downtime which I enjoy. With the Dark Mountains expansion the game can accommodate up to 5 players, which means more of your friends can join in the fun taking down the mythical beasts to defend the village. The publisher’s age recommendation of 10+ seems about right to me. Intelligent teens will pick up the game quite easily, but younger children will likely find keeping track of all the different actions, resources and warriors a little overwhelming.

In summary, you’ve probably picked up that Champions of Midgard is a favourite of mine. The gorgeous components, exciting theme and enthralling gameplay come together to create a rich and thoroughly engaging experience. I highly recommend you give the game a go to see for yourself how much fun it is. Step into the shoes of a Viking hero and lead your warriors into battle. Victory or death!

Formula D Review

I’ve always enjoyed watching motor racing. I grew up in Pukekohe, and the town’s main attraction is the raceway which was a feature of the V8 Supercar circuit from 2001 till 2007, and was for many years the location of the New Zealand International Grand Prix. My earliest memory of being at the track was when my dad took me along to watch the Pukekohe 500 in 1993. The racing was great to watch but sadly that’s not why I remember it so well. Instead, it was because I got a speck of dust in my eye which caused excruciating pain and it took what seemed to my 7 year old self to be hours to get out. Despite the painful experience, it didn’t deminish my enjoyment of the sport. The highest tiers of motor sport, Formula 1 and the Indy Racing Series, are my most favourite to watch. Sadly, due to time differences they’re on at stupid-o’clock in the morning, but I’m a father of two young children and I need my sleep. One day I hope to be at the Monaco Grand Prix in person, but for now I’m content to get out my copy of Formula D and simulate the race myself.

Sound effects not included

Formula D takes all the fun of top-tier motor racing and packages it in a cardboard box. You get to switch gears, race through corners, run your car to its limits and hope it doesn’t all end in a spectacular crash. The only thing the box doesn’t include is sound effects, but players are usually happy to add those themselves!

Each turn you’ll be choosing which gear to use – you can shift up or down one gear, or stay in the one you’re in – and then you’ll pick up the corresponding die and roll it to see how far you move this turn. Higher gears have dice with higher numbers, and lower gears have lower numbers. It’s a nice touch that the higher gear dice are larger and thus more fun to pick up and roll across the table.

Some dice have a lot more than just 6 sides!

You might think you should just shift all the way up to 6^th gear as soon as possible and stay there for the race. However, when you approach a bend you’ll need to seriously consider slowing down since each corner has a required number of turns which you must spend there or your car will take damage in the form of “wear points”. Run out of wear points and your car is destroyed in a spectacular crash – handing one of the other players the win. To avoid overshooting a corner you can jam on the breaks and shift down multiple gears in one turn. This will also come with a wear point penalty, but it’ll usually cause less damage than blowing through the corner too quickly.

The strategy in Formula D is in managing those precious wear points while pushing your car to its limits: play it too safely and you’ll be near the back of the pack, but push too hard and you’ll be eliminated from the race. This push-your-luck mechanism makes the game thrilling, particularly in the final stages of the race when most players’ cars are running low on wear points and the stakes become higher and higher. In the Beginner version of the rules, players have a single bank of 18 wear points to manage throughout the race. In the Advanced version, you’re required to manage multiple different wear points for tyres, breaks, chassis, gear box, suspension and the engine, depending on the type of stress that your vehicle comes under.

Player dash board with multiple wear point trackers for the Advanced Rules

The physical pieces themselves add a lot to the excitement of the game. The artwork is brilliant and the little dashboards with gear knobs and wear point trackers help you feel like you’re really driving a car. The cars themselves are very small but are surprisingly well detailed and nicely painted. The board is immense, it’s one of the largest in my collection, and it’s wonderful to spread it across the table. The track that comes with the game is the Circuit de Monaco, and there are multiple other tracks to buy in expansion packs. All the little details in the artwork on that board are an unnecessary but very welcome addition. The only functional part of the board is the track itself, but all those little details add so much to the theme and help to immerse you in the setting.

The artwork and detailing on the board is stunning!

There are a couple of downsides to the game. Since movement is entirely dice-driven, there is the potential for a string of bad rolls (or great rolls), which can be frustrating for those left at the back of the pack with little to no hope of catching up. The other potential problem with the game is downtime. When moving your car on your turn, there are usually multiple ways to manoeuver it, particularly when moving through a corner, and not all pathways are equal. Also, the different gears will move your car by different amounts. If players get bogged down counting out their moves before settling on a gear, and then go through multiple alternatives for manoeuvring their car before deciding on the final placement, the game can really start to drag on, especially at higher players counts. To combat this, it’s important that all players make a decision about which gear they’ll be in before it gets round to their turn, so they can just pick up the dice and roll it. You can also enforce a no counting spaces house rule to limit the amount of dilly dallying as players decide on where to move their car.

Despite these drawbacks, Formula D is, in my opinion, one of the best racing themed games out there. The dice rolling mechanic means it will feel familiar (and thus easy to learn) for children and people new to the hobby of modern games, while there is enough depth of decision making to keep seasoned veterans interested, especially if you play with the Advanced rules. While it would never compare to actually competing in the Monaco Grand Prix, or physically being at the track watching the cars go round, playing Formula D is about the closest you can get to that feeling in cardboard form.

Game Overview – Codenames

Codenames is my favourite party-style game. It plays in about 20 minutes and is easy to learn, so it’s great for families and for game nights with a group friends. I’ll give you my thoughts on what makes it so great by comparing and contrasting it with another family-time favourite: Charades.

Charades is one of the most played party games in the English speaking world. It’s commonly referenced in pop culture, there have been TV game shows based on the game, and several physical commercialised versions of the game have been produced for sale. There are multiple variations, some that include allowing players to make noises or even use words to describe the answer without referencing it directly – Fishbowl (also known as Succotash) is a good example.

Codenames is a very recently produced game, released in 2015 from the mind of the highly acclaimed Czech designer Vlaada Chvatil. It has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Spiel des Jares (German Game of the Year). On BoardGameGeek it is the highest rated party game of all time, and due to its massive popularity, it already has five spin-off versions based on the original, with a digital version on the way. It’s one of a rare breed of hobby games that have broken into the mainstream market – you don’t need to hunt it down in a specialised hobby store; you’ll easily find a copy on the shelves of your local bookshop.

The goal of Charades is well known – one of your team mates makes a fool of themselves madly gesturing or shouting clues at you, leading you to guess the phrase or title that they’ve been given. I have vivid memories of my dad excitedly pointing at me with his finger on his nose and far too much enthusiasm on his face! The team who manages to correctly guess the most phrases by the end of the game wins. Similarly, Codenames has two teams squaring off against each other, and each team has a Spy Master that gives clues to their team. However, instead of hidden phrases or titles, the clues are leading players to guess the words on the cards displayed on the table for all to see.

The words represent the ‘code names’ of spies (hence the name) and each team is trying to ‘make contact’ with their own spies by correctly deciphering the clues their Spy Master gives them. The Spy Masters have access to a secret screen showing them the position of the different spies on the board, which the other players don’t get to see. The team that first manages to identify all of their spies wins.

The Spy Master screen, showing blue team spies, red team spies, innocent bystanders in beige, and the dreaded Assassin in black.

It is in the giving of the clues that a major difference is seen between the two party games. Instead of having to act out your clues, the Spy Master must give a one-word clue followed by a number. The players then use word associations to try to determine which code names the Spy Master wants them to identify, and the number tells them how many they should be looking for. The players can talk amongst themselves as much as they like, but aren’t committed to any answers until one of them physically touches the card. In the example below, some of the spies have been identified already in previous turns, and the red Spy Master has just given another clue to their team.

Diana gives the clue “Money 3“. Which three words related to money can you see? Which one would you commit to first?

After touching a word, the Spy Master will place an illustrated tile over it, identifying the moniker’s true affiliation. So long as the players are getting their guesses correct, they can keep going until they reach the number given by the Spy Master. If they get one wrong, though, their turn will be over – and there may be consequences! There are some ‘code names’ which aren’t spies at all, just innocent bystanders, marked by the beige tiles and it’s not so bad if you run into them. However, the players might wrongly guess a spy from the other team, which is Codenames‘ equivalent of scoring an own goal. Worse yet, if the players wrongly pick the Assassin (marked with a black X on the Spy Master screen), their team instantly loses!

You don’t want to accidentally run into this guy!

The positives that Codenames has over charades are, in my opinion, numerous. Firstly, if acting isn’t your thing you won’t be forced out of your comfort zone here. My wife feels very uncomfortable playing charades-style games, and I myself often feel pretty silly playing them, but we both absolutely love Codenames.

Secondly, when it isn’t your team’s turn, you’re still very much able to be involved in the game by thinking about the clue and trying to figure out which words don’t belong to your team, so you know what to avoid when it’s your turn. It’s also a lot of fun to play mind-games with the other team by trying to throw them off their game and pick words they might not have otherwise: “People must drink milk in MOSCOW, there’s even ‘cow’ in the name, surely the clue ‘milk’ is pointing to MOSCOW!”. In Charades, there’s no benefit to figuring out the other team’s clues, so while it might be entertaining to watch the other actor, you’re still effectively sitting out while they take their turn.

A third, subtle but important difference is seen in the absence of inside jokes for Codenames. In a charades-style game it’s quite possible to give clues to your team mates that aren’t in any meaningful way related to the line they have to guess, if you use some kind of in-joke to get the message across. For instance, my father has always got the iconic robot R2-D2 mixed up with the lesser-known Twiki from Buck Rogers. He once gave a clue while we were playing Cranium (which has charades elements) by saying “wait up Buck, bidi bidi bidi” and I instantly knew R2-D2 was the answer, despite the apparent lack of connection to the clue. My brother-in-law was left totally confused, wondering how on earth I reached that answer. Players can often feel left out or completely in the dark when these types of shenanigans come up in a game, and it’s often not much fun. The rules for Codenames require that all clues be directly related to the meaning of the word, so inside jokes are off the table and everyone gets to feel included and play a role in finding the answers.

This last difference that I’ll highlight appears to be quite minor, but to me it’s significant. Charades has no real purpose in and of itself, other than to beat the other team. There’s no premise to explain why you’re competing against each other. Codenames, on the other hand, sets you up as rival spy networks trying to outwit each other. The goal of making contact with all of your field agents before the other team does gives the game a little more meaning and purpose, at least for me. The neat artwork on the cards helps to set the scene and enhance the theme which is a nice touch. Besides, who doesn’t want to be a secret agent working for a spy organisation?

Join us for our next Game Night!

As a result of the huge amount of enthusiasm and excitement that came out of our last big event, we’ve decided that we’ll be running monthly game nights, usually on the last Saturday of the month. The specific day and time each month will be quite flexible, so if the time doesn’t work out for you one month, the next one probably will – we want to make these events as accessible and available to as many people in our community as possible.

The Facebook event page for our next meetup is here.

These events will be more of a low-key affair and run for just a few hours instead of a full day. Instead of having a large library of games (which is quite an undertaking to organise!) we invite you to bring along one or two of your own to play. But don’t worry if you don’t have any games to bring, we’ll still have a small selection available for you to try, or you could join in with one someone else brought along.

We also won’t have a cafe running, but we will have some chocolate bars and soft drink to buy if you’re in need of an energy boost.

Entry is by gold coin donation, and all proceeds will go towards supporting the 24-7 YouthWork programme at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.