Hyperborea: High Per Bore EEEE AHHHH

I couldn't come up with a clever title this time that made any sense.  So I went with a non clever one that made no sense.  If you can't beat 'em, run away, I always say.

I played a lot of Magic this weekend.  Like a lot.  But I did find time to squeeze in one of my board games that I haven't gotten to play yet.
This week's game is Hyperborea.  It's a mix of an exploration and simple field battle type game with a cube pushing euro-type backdrop.  Basically, it amounts to a euro game with ameritrash elements, much like Mage Knight (except Mage Knight is much more intricate and a whole lot better, though much much much longer to play). It's a bag building game, a somewhat new idea where you collect cubes or tokens throughout the game that are pulled out of a bag to allow you to take actions.  I hear Oreleans is a much better implementation of the bag building mechanic, and looking at it and reading the rules I would probably agree if I actually got to play it.

But Hyperborea was on sale, and I now own it, and the box has pretty colors.

Green Arrow and his boardgaming buddies.

 Hyperborea is a pretty heavy game.  Not like game-weight/strategy heavy.  Like the box is heavy.

 

I mean, Terra Mystica is a pretty heavy game (both game weight and box weight); it has so much stuff in that box.  But it doesn't even weigh as much.

My bathroom tile floor is green.  I love it.

So back to the game.  Each player starts off on a home tile of a largely unexplored map.

The home city! With Oompa Loompas!

Each player starts off with 3 dudes on the board, more can be added later.  They also start off with one cube of each color in their bag, plus one more cube of a color of their choosing.  Each cube color represents some time of civilization attribute.  Like green is exploration, blue is science, red is military, I don't remember the rest.  These thematic cube (but still just cubes) get pulled out of the bag on each turn (3 per turn), and you place them on your player board.  Once the spaces next to an action are filled with their corresponding colored cubes, you may activate that action.  

Action board

 Actions include things like adding dudes to the board, moving the dudes, attacking with the dudes, getting straight points (gems), advancing your civilization's attributes (to help you get more cubes), building fortresses (which provide a one turn only defense against enemy fighters), or buying technology cards (which behave just like actions on your action board, but score more points and do more stuff).

A military-based technology

Technology cards comes with gray cubes, which can only be used to activate a few choice technologies but are other-wise worthless.  So you get a sweet tech but you have gray cubes gunking up your cube bag and being worthless.  Guess gray cubes are like pollution or something.  #thematic

So you move around the board, fight enemies, and explore ruins and cities (which give you extra actions or sometimes points, but tie up your dudes until you take enough turns to empty your bag of cubes).
Ruins contain ghosts to kill before you get the goodies.  They look scary.

Ghosts.  Maybe Nazgul.

Ghosts/Nazgul fighting Green Arrow.

Ghost/Nazgul is very protective of his precious.

One of the more interesting things about the game is, of course, the bag building mechanic.  You want lots of cubes so you can do a lot of different stuff, but too many cubes and it's hard to draw the colors you need and it takes longer before your bag is empty and you can reset your dudes who are stuck exploring ruins and visiting cities.  Balance is key.

The game ends when a set number of win conditions are met (1 for short game, 2 for medium game, 3 for long game), those conditions being all of one person's miniatures are on the board, one person has 15 gems, or one person gets to own 5 techs.  Those achievements are also worth 2 points each. At the end of the game, you get points for gems, tech cards, enemies killed, ghosts killed, number of cubes in your bag, and spaces in the world your dudes occupy.

We played a medium length game, which felt way too short still but it was only the first game. I went with a heavy "grab the gems" strategy, keeping my cube count low to explore lots of ruins and cities and reset quickly and to make it easier to keep track of what cubes were left in the bag for planning purposes.

ALL THE GEMS!  And Rob Gronkowski?

I lost by a couple of points to an opponent who had a bag full of cubes that hindered him in terms of being productive during the game but was just enough at the end of the game to put him over me.

Overall, I like the game. It's got some fun mechanisms, looks pretty, plays quickly and just feels different.  2 players is probably a bad number, because there's not enough interaction to spice things up.  The rules are also sketchy in several places which is always a problem.
But the game is cool.  I would play again with more people.

Macao: Cubes and Punishment

It's time to get down to business.  First order of business: there will be no pandas this week.  I know that's disappointing, but the pandas need their rest too.

No, this time I am talking about a board game, which I promised this blog was about.  And I keep my promises.

Today's game is Macao. (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/55670/macao)  The box calls it "An exciting strategy game for clever captains and wise governors."  That's a very narrow audience for a game, but luckily I fit the bill.

The Captain Morgan pose is a nice touch. Clever, Captain!

The basic idea of the game is that you are in the port city of Macao, and you are trying to earn prestige (which is a fancy way of saying "points") by, well, doing stuff there.
This 'stuff' mostly involves building up the city, shipping goods in your little wooden boat meeples and giving away gold.

BOAT MEEPLES!!!!

The city, where you buy stuff and build stuff.

Over the course of the game, you get cards that you can activate by playing cubes of the same colors as those given on the card.  Once you do this, the cards can do cool stuff.  Like give you points or move your boat meeple, or get you more cubes.
Every turn you roll very very pretty colored wooden dice, and the numbers and colors of the dice you choose (you get to choose 2, good things come in pairs) tell you how many cubes you get of each color AND also how many turns away until you get to use them.  This means you can take less cubes and use them sooner or more cubes if you are willing to wait to use them.  It's a neat game mechanic, really.

The pretty colored wooden dice and a couple of cards.  Fine craftsmanship, indeed.

You keep track of which turn you can use your cubes by a sweet spinny wheel.  It's got an arrow that points to "use these this turn."  Which works well, until you get too excited and spin it too many times or too fast and fling your cubes everywhere.  It's unfortunate, because as a clever captain or wise governor, getting overexcited is part of the job description.

The spinny wheel has things neat and organized for the moment.

About Cubes:  Wooden cubes are a staple of a lot of board games.  They are a 3D object bounded by 6 square faces, a regular hexahedron, if you will. Usually quite small. They are high in fiber.

Sometimes the cubes have meaning within the game's theme. Sometimes they are just cubes that do stuff.  I don't know which is the case in this game, because I didn't read the rules.

Trying to get the number and colors of cubes you need all in the same place for a single turn to actually do stuff requires thinking several moves ahead, and some luck.  Sometimes you feel absolutely paralyzed on a turn when you can't do anything you want.  Then you look up from your miserable pile of paper and wood and everyone else has a look on their face that says they are in the exact same boat [meeple].  

The most terrifying part of this game comes when you do something bad.  Like have too many unplayed cards or have zero cubes to play on a turn.  Then you get punished.  
Seriously, this thing is called a 'punishment marker.' 

Consider yourself punished.

This thing is worth negative 3 points.  Look at that glaring red "-3." But the worst part is that the rules specifically call this a "punishment". That word makes me feel like a puppy who just did something bad.

This puppy:

"I so sowwy. Pwease let me out."

That is not my puppy.  I would never put a puppy in the Box of Shame.  I would forgive him, because of adorable-ness.
For more Corgi adorable-ness: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-25-cutest-corgi-puppies-currently-online 

You looked at the Corgi puppies?  You're back now?  No, go ahead, look at some more Corgi puppies!  Take your time.  I understand.

Welcome back!

So here's our game that we played the other day.  A Tuesday I believe.  As good a day as any.

The beginning:

The empty canvas.

I like to ship rice.  I shipped all 3 rice (rices?) and got lots of points.  I like rice.  The chop sticks always give me trouble though.

My OCD is bothered by that middle one being upside down...

End of game:

So much stuff!  Looks cool, right?

Games tend to look super busy and super awesome at the end.  I believe this one is no exception.  Look at all the stuff!

See that orange token ahead of everyone on the point track?  That would be mine :)

This is what it looks like when I win.

By the way, I'm told I over-exaggerate how often I lose.  Maybe so, but if I convince myself that I never win, it makes winning that much more exciting.

That's the game.  It plays pretty quick, only about an hour.  And even though it is REALLY hard to do what you want,  that keeps things interesting.  I like this game.  In part because I won.  But mostly because the dice are pretty.

So there you have it.  I talked about a board game, as promised.  Like I said, I keep my promises.

But I lied about the pandas...