Pandemic Game Review

Ah, Pandemic - the golden standard of cooperative games. My college game club picked up Pandemic in my senior year, and we played the game enough times for me to become sick of it until I found someone with the copy of an expansion. (Side note: as a rule of thumb, I dislike game expansions, but the Pandemic expansion does a fair amount to change the game - primarily to make it more challenging - without changing the core of the original)

 

In Pandemic, you work for the CDC when suddenly BLAMO!!! Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR SIMULTANEOUS AND GEOGRAPHICALLY LIMITED EPIDEMIC PANDEMICS ATTACK THE EARTH! As one of the various CDC roles, your goal is to run around the world and find the cure to infection before any or all of the diseases get completely out of hand. 

 

As a fully cooperative game, there are no secrets between players and full collaboration is encouraged and generally required to win the game. Every turn, you have 4 actions that you can use to move, build, cure, trade, or research. After your actions, you draw (almost always) helpful cards that correspond to the geographic cities on the map followed by revealing several infection cards that will force you to place miserable disease cubes on the board. If you get too many disease cubes, there is an outbreak. The goal of the game is to collect the right cards to research the cures but in the meanwhile you need to manage the diseases so that there aren't too many deaths (outbreaks) and prevent any disease from becoming so prolific it becomes unstoppable (all cubes of one of the four colors is gone). Additionally, you can die by running out the geographic location deck. Oh, and one other thing - the deck where you get good cards from? Every once in awhile, you'll flip an epidemic that will ravage a new city. If you find all 4 cures (having 5 of a specific color of card and going to a research station) before the game end, you all win. Simple as that.

Or is it?

Yes it is because the game is really easy to play, it just isn't necessarily easy to win. 

FUN: 3 - Pandemic is a perfect example of a '3' game for me - I'm almost always amenable to playing but I will rarely suggest playing it (unless I'm trying to hook new gamers). I don't own Pandemic and I never hope to, in large part because enough people own it so that I can pick it up or put it down any time I like. Here's the thing about Pandemic: it's really just a big random number generator puzzle. Now, I love playing "puzzle games" because sitting around figuring out the most efficient path to victory is entertaining for me, but ultimately, it is more of a puzzle than a game. That being said, Pandemic is NOT forgiving. If you spend almost any time durdling (slang; wasting time) you will lose and wonder why even though picking up that one cube in Santiago may not have been the best play. The nice thing is that it's over in 35 minutes and you can give it a second or third shot. What Pandemic does really well is engage you - turns are generally fast and you always want to be paying attention to what your doctors-in-arms are doing. Additionally, it's easy to bring new people into Pandemic, hold their hand through the first game, and then play a second right after.

STRATEGY: 2 - Pandemic has what I refer to as a "Strategy Shelf" - the point you reach where you literally can't get any better at the game. It doesn't take long to get there in Pandemic. In my mind, there are three levels of learning in Pandemic:

1. Holy shit there are cubes everywhere! ANOTHER EPIDEMIC ARE YOU KIDDING ME WE HAVENT EVEN HAD THE CHANCE TO CLEAN EVERYTHING UP? How in the hell do I get 5 cards?
2. Ohhhhh, I'm supposed to RESEARCH cures not clean up all the cubes. I can even trade cards with other players! Epidemic, huh? JOHANNESBURG??!? F&^#$%
3. Oh man, understanding when to use my cards to fly places (and charter flights especially) makes me amazing at this game. Also, tactical research station placement! Who woulda thought?

Once you start figuring out the "systems" in Pandemic, you're usually just applying your new understanding to slightly different situations. Sometimes it is harder than others, but for the most part you know that the Operations Expert is supposed to drop bases everywhere and that you load up the players with redundant cards with more of the same card to win ASAP. 

One other thing I will note about Pandemic in terms of the luck of flipping cards: it is my opinion (particularly in a 4-player game) where you can play near perfectly and still lose to bad card draws. If everyone draws an equal distribution of colors, you are in for a world of pain (because everyone is sick and the symptoms are violent). On the other hand, in a 2-player game, the game is basically impossible to lose once you get the hang of things - I can go into a complicated statistical treatise (that has been composed in my head) of this but it basically comes down to an increased likelihood of color density in your card draws.

SOCIAL: 5 - I mean, I called it the gold standard of cooperative games. What do we play cooperative games for other than to...uh...cooperate with one another? I actually think it could be fun to try a version of Pandemic where the players NEVER speak to one another, and see what you can do with that and if you can operate on the same wavelengths (warning: only for experienced players who have immense patience with their fellow gamers) but I would only do it once because the cooperation aspect is the reason why I play this game. One word of warning though, the social value of this game PLUMMETS if you attempt to play for other players. I myself am guilty of this mistake once or twice, but when you just start bossing other players around instead of including them ("Dispatcher, move me to Miami to meet up with Alexander Flemming. Just do it!") they start to get really bored of the game. If you have a plan, explain it to people and see what they think of it. It's an egalitarian game, not a despotic one.

FLAVOR:1 - Ugh. I want to give this game more than a 1 because the idea of a disease game is just SO DAMN COOL. But the flavor in this game has absolutely nothing to do with the mechanics. The fact that there are four simultaneous epidemics that don't spill over into other regions is...painful enough. The fact that pulling 5 cards of a colored region is the key to curing a disease is a joke. The fact that I have to meet you in Algiers (specifically) where there isn't a single bit of disease in order to pass off my Algerian knowledge of the Black Death is just an extra dagger in the heart.

What? This photo doesn't invoke terror in your soul? It should.

When bashing games for their flavor, I often like to think about how else the game could be skinned (themed) so that the gameplay and feel of the game is the EXACT SAME. The best part of this anecdote is that I wasn't even playing in the game that it happened in. My college buddy, Eric, and I were really into Warhammer 40,000. Not the miniatures game, just the flavor of the world. One time, Eric corralled the rest of our friends into playing "For the Emperor" a game where the Space Marines had to face the simultaneous invasions of the forces of Chaos, the Orkz, the Eldar, and the Necrons. Geographic cards become battleground locations, and having 5 battleground locations meant you won a crushing campaign against the enemy space race. Let me tell you, the cries of "I shall suffer no heretics!" changed the gameplay in absolutely no way, but instead enhanced the experience.

MISCELLANEOUS: 3 - The pieces in Pandemic are alright, the rules are easy enough to follow and explain, but the thing that really sticks out to me in the Miscellaneous category is that I play Pandemic for the niche role that it fulfills. If I'm looking for a quick, easy-to-teach, cooperative game, Pandemic is the go to. There are some other fine options, but I think Pandemic really just does it in a sleek way. Pandemic is an incredibly accessible game, but it also appeals to heartier gamers looking for something simple. That being said, Pandemic really ONLY fills that specific role. To be fair, that is all it seeks to do.

Parting thoughts on strategy: I already touched on this earlier, but the goal of the game is to research cures. Make sure to utilize trading and flying (to facilitate trades). I can't emphasize how powerful charter flights are once you actually understand what you are doing, particularly in a 2-player game (because you need to cover more ground and you tend to have less bases). By the way, a good Operations Expert (using the modified OE from the expansion) should just spend the first turns making the entire board easily accessible.

Bless your soul for curing all the world's diseases.

Dungeon Lords Game Review

I have a confession: I judge games by their cover.

Have you ever played Dungeon Keeper?

 

Dungeon Keeper was a tongue-in-cheek video game my brother and I played when we were much younger. The goal was to build the most bad-ass dungeon in the kingdom, and prepare for heroes that would come and invade your lair. I have no doubt in my mind that Vlaada Chvatil has played and loved these games. However, much like when the book becomes a movie - I automatically assume that the game is bad when I first saw it come out a few years ago. However, I played a few of Vlaada's other games (Space Alert, Galaxy Trucker) and really enjoyed them, so come Christmas time a year ago - I bought Dungeon Lords for my brother.

 

Dungeon Lords has been amazingly adapted from the computer game. Obviously not all the mechanics are the same, but the themes, the tongue-in-cheek nature, and the desire to crush the souls of heroes translate very well from the old school video game. In Dungeon Lords you dig tunnels, develop special rooms, hire monsters, design traps, and pay taxes all in the glorious name of evil.

 

At its core, Dungeon Lords is a worker placement game. The game takes place over 8 seasons (turns), and at the end of the first and second year you will be attacked by a group of adventurers. Every turn you select 3 actions from the 8 possible choices (Food, Propaganda, Dig tunnels, Mine gold, Hire imps, Buy traps, Hire Monsters, Build rooms) and place them face down in front of you. In turn order, you reveal your actions as you placed them and put your figure on the board. The actions are all different depending on the order in which you take them, for instance, if you go to acquire food you pay gold to get 2 food, but if you are the second player to do so, you become more evil and get the food (as the farmers no longer wish to sell, so you rob them). Furthermore, there are only 3 slots for each action, so if you are the 4th to do something, then sorry bub, you lose your action. Every turn 2 of the cards you played the turn prior are unusable, so people have some way to project what actions you are going to take. For players that really want to overthink things, trying to get in the other players minds can be essential in this part of the game.

Throughout the year heroes queue up at your dungeon entrance, with the most evil player getting the most difficult opposition. If a player is evil enough, he will have to face the dreaded paladin. But combat isn't the only thing you have to worry about. Your monsters demand additional pay and the tax collector will assess the size of your dungeon and charge you for it. Failing to pay your monsters or your taxes (especially taxes) is devastating to your end game score. 

At the end of the game players score points based on the size and compositions of their dungeons, along with how many heroes were killed vs. how many rooms the heroes destroyed. Additionally, and most importantly, players score points for acquiring a variety of titles, including Most Evil, Lord of Imps, Lord of Halls and so on. 

FUN: 4 - I really enjoy Dungeon Lords and would gladly play it just about anytime. The only thing that keeps it from getting a '5' rating is that I feel the strategic choices in the game are a bit lacking (more on that below). That being said, the game is incredibly engaging - I am always paying attention to what I am doing and planning for the future. The most enjoyable (or agonizing!) part of the game is when the heroes finally come into your dungeon and you tear them to pieces or they intricately deconstruct your pathetic dungeon. You spend most of the game setting up for the heroes, and then you try to solve the puzzle of how to kill them in the most efficient way possible. One thing I personally love about this game is that even though the learning curve is a bit steep, once you get it, you get it thoroughly. One of my roommates, who I would describe as a lighter gamer, has named Dungeon Lords one of his favorite games.

STRATEGY: 2 (maybe 3) - I will admit off the bat that this rating of strategy may say more about my opinions about what strategy means in a game than about the game itself. Let's start with the positive: the game has a cool mechanic where you are trying to figure out what cards everyone is playing and in what order - the goal is to abuse that knowledge in order to get yourself where you want to be in the action orders. This occasionally leads to decisions paralysis for players, but for the most part people make their decisions in a timely fashion. That being said, it is nearly impossible to perfectly estimate how the other players are going to sequence their cards (especially in the beginning of the game, less so at the end) and it can lead to some truly 'feel bad' moments when you played your room card in the third slot but have everyone play their room cards in the third slot AFTER you (there are only two available rooms) or when you play gold in your first slot and the three players in front of you also chose to do the same thing: blocking you out entirely.

 

None of this really explains why I scored strategy so low though. There are a few reasons. First of all, taxes are BRUTAL in the game and require all of the players to make sure they have as much gold as possible. In fact, the way taxes are structured, it actually discourages players from digging new tunnels until tax season has passed for the year. I personally think this is tragic, as being able to build honeycomb dungeons is one of the most entertaining aspects of the game! The same kind of effect happens with Monster Pay Day - you are disincentivized to hire monsters if Pay Day is coming, but the monsters are the best part!
The main reason that I rate this game as a low strategy game is because the game is all about the journey, and not about the end. It's fun to manage your board and to kill heroes, but the VP scoring mechanism at the game end is quite lacking to me. When you play, it feels like the goal should be to build an efficient dungeon. In reality, the goal is to maximize your victory points - which is not synonymous with building an efficient dungeon. For instance, there is a title for being the most evil, but there is an entire action (Propaganda) dedicated to making yourself appear less evil! There is no title for being nicest. There is a title for having the most tunnels and another for having most rooms, but neither of these rewards really feels deserved to me - rooms already score victory points just for being built! In many games I dug extra tunnels with no goal other than to get the Tunnel lord title instead of grabbing more traps to kill heroes (the true flavor goal of the game).

One of my main questions for strategy in a game is, "Did the actions I take make me feel like I deserved to win this game?" I think a good strategic game has a "Yes, therefore I won (or almost did)" or a "No, therefore I lost" kind of answer. In Dungeon Lords, I feel like there is a conflict between actions that kill heroes and actions that win the game. I will explain with an anecdote of a game I played:

We were playing a 3-player version of the game (where the fourth player blocks random action spaces throughout the game) and I was prevented from taking actions (blocked by other players) or taking an inefficient action a total of 5 times in the first year of the game. That's 5 of 12 actions that I had invalidated in the first half of the game. In addition, we were playing with the optional random event rule, which wound up hurting me the most of the three players. The entire game I felt like I was miles behind because of my pathetic dungeon, but I just played to the title scoring as best I could. In the end, I won. I was honestly and completely flabbergasted (and I tend to have a good sense of these things). I felt like I had played horribly and made bad/unlucky decisions but I won. To me, this is a flaw if the winner of the game feels completely undeserving, especially because there was no luck I would attribute to my victory!

SOCIAL: 4 - At first glance, this game seems like a solitaire game - you manage your own board, with your own minions, your own heroes, and can never attack another player. But if you are ignoring the other players, you are probably not playing to your maximum efficiency (the goal of all worker placement games). In fact, the crafty player needs to get inside the head of his opponents in order to determine what they will do to inform what actions you are going to take. This is accomplished by paying attention to the other players' strategies, which 6 of the 8 actions are available to them, and what your order in the turn is. Additionally, unless you are going the 'Evil as possible' strategy, it greatly behooves you to manage your Evil-meter from turn to turn to manipulate what heroes come to attack your dungeon. Although the game technically gives the strongest heroes to the most evil player and the weakest to the nicest player, you may actually want to avoid that thief hero (even if he is feeble) if you are going for trap strategy.

In addition, the flavor of Dungeon Lords creates an amusing atmosphere where you can brag about having your heroes fall into your best laid plans or giggle about the fact that you are simply confusing the pants off of the heroes instead of killing them. You can rub it in your friends face when he flips his trap card before you, allowing for the coveted free trap spot that is second in the action order, or you can cajole your buddy into selecting the Dragon so you can complete your trifecta army of Oozes.

FLAVOR: 5 - With the exception of the end of game scoring, this game plays like you are building an awesome dungeon. With the goal of killing the heroes in mind, every action is about acquiring resources or creating deadly scenarios. What really puts this game over the top is the small bits of flavor laced in every corner of the game (many of which can be found by reading the hilarious rules). For example, the "Magic Room" is a room where two imps and a romantic dinner meal enter, and a new imp comes out the other side. Vampires are incredibly powerful but can't attack clerics, who, by the way, hate the other members of their party and will only heal them after being attacked by monsters but not by traps (that's the rogue's job!). Your minions might go to town to buy food, but the townspeople refuse to sell it so you burn the town down and take the food anyway. When too many imps are working you need a foreimp to oversee them because they get confused. Even though I have griped about the end of the game, the titles are presented with an Emmy Award style statuette that maintains the entire tongue-in-cheek nature of being an evil overlord.

MISCELLANEOUS: 3 - The rules are an absolute treat, and you should read them just for the fun of it. Furthermore, the little imp components are pretty cool looking and fun to play with. Other than that, the pieces are alright, but nothing special. The reason this game doesn't get a super high rating is because upon explaining the rules for the first time, absolutely nothing makes sense. There's a bunch of little intricacies with the combat (do clerics heal this turn?) that require a play through in order to get used to. Additionally, to play the game to win it takes a few times more to understand why your awesome dungeon isn't just getting enough points to make the difference (pro tip: build more rooms).

Parting thoughts on strategy: As I mentioned before, if you are playing to win then play towards the titles. Try to get as many as possible. And build rooms! Throughout the whole game build as many rooms as you possibly can. The Trophy room that comes out in the second year is absurdly imbalanced, do everything in your power to get it. Always pay your taxes. It might be OK to miss one gold of your payment, but anything more than that and you are almost definitely out of the game. Traps can be really strong, but getting one thief in the back of your party can entirely invalidate your strategy. Getting a lot of imps early can really make a huge difference for you, especially if you get a room that you can throw them in at the end of the turn.

May you slay all the goodie two shoes and hope the demon doesn't eat you in frustration!

Lost Cities Game Review

Lost Cities is a pretty minimalist game by the Titan of Game Design, Reiner Knizia. As it says on the box, Lost Cities is only designed as a two-player game. The theme of the game is, uh, I guess that you are explorers trying to find some lost cities. There's the yellow cards...uh, I mean the desert city. There's the underwater expedition and....oh, forget it.You won't really be giving much thought to the theme of this game as you play it.



Lost Cities is an incredibly simple and fast game, which is, in my opinion, its greatest attribute. The ability to play 3 games of Lost Cities in 20-30 minutes is a refreshing break from the grinding brainbusters that other games can be. Lost Cities is intended to be played in a set of 3, and back when I was playing with my friend a lot we would consistently finish the match in under 10 minutes flat, including 3 rounds of rigorous shuffling.



The Lost Cities cards are 5 different colors, with three special handshake cards and the numbers 2-10 of every color. You can play on any color you want, but you must do so in ascending order. Handshakes come before numbers. 2s come before 3s. You can play out of order, so a common column might be: Handshake, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10. At the end of a round (when the last of the 60 cards is drawn), you score for every column in which you played at least one card. This score is modified by a flat -20, so playing willy nilly across the colors will actually cause you to lose points. Handshakes are multipliers, a boon if you have over 20 strength of cards, and a curse if you have less than 20. As you can see, starting a column early might not be the wisest without some insurance, but if you choose to discard your opponent can pick up the cards you got rid of. The decision between playing and discarding is the main focal point of the game.

FUN: 3 - Lost Cities gets a fair amount of free points in the fun category because I've played it a ton of times and the game appeals to so many people. I equate playing Lost Cities to playing Sudoko or solving a crossword, but there's another player there. Given that I'm an avid board gamer, it should come as no surprise that I prefer the two-player gaming activity. I can play Lost Cities while trying to win, I can play Lost Cities while watching a movie, or I could play Lost Cities with a 5-year old or with the world champion of poker and be happy doing all those things.

STRATEGY: 2 - Lost Cities is much maligned as an entirely luck-based game, and that accusation certainly has some fair basis. Learning the strategy to Lost Cities takes about one or two games, less time than it takes to explain the first half of the rules to any Fantasy Flight game. The basic decisions you make are when to start your columns, and what cards you should discard (allowing your opponent to have access to them). Sometimes you have a perfect set in your hand and it all makes sense. Sometimes you are playing and just happen to draw the appropriately colored 8, 9, 10 of the same column both you and your opponent started and you just crush them. Like any card drawing game, each game is fickle but there are averages associated with draws.
That being said, there are some patterns that you learn through the game. Is it worth just playing my 8,9,10 of blue now to waste time, or should I hold out for some juicy multipliers? If I start this column am I going to finish playing all my cards before the game ends? Some pretty basic questions, but they require some luck and some experience with the tempo of the game. The biggest strategy in the game comes in playing a 3-game match. Are you behind by 60 points? Just start playing handshakes everywhere and hope to get lucky. Up by 60 points? Do your best to sandbag your opponent.

SOCIAL: 3 - The "do I play or do I discard" conundrum almost always comes down to "how will discarding this card help my opponent?" The questions aren't hard to answer but observing their play is essential to informing how you should play. The decisions you make affect the decisions they make. Are you worried about starting a red column? Well your opponent just started one - maybe he already has all the good cards for it so you should wait a few turns to decide.
On top of that, Lost Cities is a light game. You can chat between rounds while shuffling about the game or other things. At the board game convention I attend every year I use this time to get to know my opponents. The game is smooth enough that that kind of discussion is encouraged, and in the end, its hard to be a sore loser about Lost Cities.

FLAVOR: 1 - Horrible. Nothing you do in this game has to do with investigating Lost Cities. The game is so bare-bones that I have made a version of Lost Cities out of a marker and Magic: the Gathering cards when I was in a pinch and absolutely nothing was missing from the game. The only reason this game gets a 1 for flavor instead of a 0 is that I enjoy the fact that the artwork on the cards indicates how close you are to the 'city.' For instance, a 2 white card is in the middle of a barren snowy area, while the 10 white card has a giant face in the side of a Himalayan mountain on it.

MISCELLANEOUS: 4 - The 4 is almost entirely for the unique niche that Lost Cities fills. A two player game that I can start and end at a moment's notice. To my knowledge, no other game serves that role as well as Lost Cities (which, of course, is likely just a limitation of my knowledge!). Lost Cities is the kind of game I teach people when I want them to feel comfortable in the world of games. Lost Cities is the kind of game a couple can play together and have no tension over. Also, the Replayability is off the charts - with something so fast its easy to do it again and again.

Parting thoughts on strategy: The key thing to remember is that every card has a 50% chance of being drawn by you, and a 25% chance of being drawn by you in the first half of the game. Worry less about how well you are doing and worry more about how well you are doing compared to your opponent - some games happen to be incredibly low scoring. It can sometimes be worth it to intentionally get negative points for the added benefit of a few extra card draws at the beginning. For instance, if my opponent has already played a blue handshake, 3, 4 - that suggests he probably has some more juice up his sleeve. I'd gladly play an 8, 9 of blue (taking -3 points) just for two extra turns of card draws. At the beginning managing your draws is most important, at the end making sure you have played everything you've drawn is!

May your explorations stacking of numbers be successful!

Last Will Game Review

Welcome to The Most VPs! Let's start with a bang. Last Will has the most amusing game theme I have possibly ever heard of, and it never fails to get a chuckle from people.

 

Everyone plays the Victorian-era nephew of a super, duper wealthy uncle. An uncle so shrewd and wealthy, in fact, that he spent his whole life acquiring his fortune, but none of his life spending it. Forlorn, the uncle assigns each of his nephews some millions of dollars (a mere pittance) and states that the nephew who spends his money the fastest will get the privilege of using the rest of his fortune.

Last Will is a short (roughly 60-75 minutes), relatively easy game. There are a fair number of things going on at first glance, but I played this game with my non-gaming roommate and she picked it up pretty quickly (more so in mechanics than in strategy). At the beginning of the turn you select what your day (week? month?) is going to be like: this determines your turn order, how many cards you draw, how many errand boys you have, and how many actions you will take. You use errand boys to 'fetch' you additional (and more powerful) cards, or to do other miscellaneous tasks like manipulate the housing market. You then use your actions and cards to spend your money by buying/maintaining property, making reservations and not keeping them, or going on extravagant trips (all denoted by the cards).

The game is short, even with the maximum starting cash, the game will only take 7 turns, and it can take as few as 5 turns in my experience. This gives not a lot of leeway in terms of strategic options - once you select a path, you will benefit the most from following it with fervor. That being said, literally everything you do in the game will cost you money - so you are constantly advancing to the end goal even if you don't have the most cohesive plan. The simple question is just how efficient you are at wasting money.

FUN: 4 - Personally, I love this game. It is accessible to gamers of all types. The inherent goal is to spend money, and we can all appreciate taking a cruise with our mistress lady and faithful mutt hound. I would gladly play this game anytime. The only reason the game isn't getting a 5 is because I think the strategy of the game can get pretty redundant if you play it too often, but I've played a decent amount and still consider it to be quite fresh. I received this game as a gift but would have gladly purchased it.

STRATEGY: 3 - The only luck in this game is in the cards you draw. To be fair, not all cards are created equally in this game, so the differences can be noticeable with certain draws. Last Will is the kind of game where you CAN do anything you want, but you benefit most from creating a cohesive strategy and milking it for all its worth. Farms, for instance, are pretty weak unless you string together a collection of cards. Some strategies can be entirely based on one card: there is a real estate agent that allows you to buy and sell houses at an alarming rate (a complex strategy that is my personal favorite). I enjoy thinking about different ways to play the game, but while there are technically infinite combinations of card strategies, there are really only a few main plans that you will follow through the course of the game.

SOCIAL: 3 - The most enjoyable social aspect of this game is talking about the hilarious things you are doing to spend your money. When you select your plan for the day, you are limited in options by what your opponents chose to do before you, but you will simply choose what is best for you in the moment anyway, so interaction is limited. It almost never makes sense to take an action in this game to negatively impact another player. In terms of navigating around the other players, there are a few points where paying attention to your opponents will help your gameplay, but for the most part, you are doing your own thing. I rated the game as a 3 on social because there are almost no mechanics that encourage interaction between the players, but with that being said the game's frivolous theme lends itself to camaraderie and amusement between the players.

FLAVOR: 5 - A home run. This game oozes flavor. The comedic backdrop draws new players into the game, and when explaining the rules to new players I find myself constantly saying "all you want to do is spend as much money as possible." From School Chums who leech money away from you to extravagant Balls, everything in the game is an amusing outlet for lavish living. Spending actions to go on a boat trip makes sense to people. Having Old Friends who will go to dinner FOR YOU is hilarious in its own. Sending errand boys to the opera because you just...have nothing better to send them to do creates scenarios of "Oh good job there, Jeeves, now run along to the opera so that I may spend the weekend on the horse farm." The only thing that gives people pause in this game is the fact that they want to buy their houses as expensively as possible, the one example of "just spend your money" that makes people have to stop and think for a second.

MISCELLANEOUS: 4 - I enjoy the art on the cards in this game. The wooden pieces themselves are alright, but the artistic style is cartoonish and colorful - fitting with the lavish game flavor.

The rules were very easy to understand and explaining this game to people is a breeze. Unfortunately, the first few times you play you'll have to use the reference chart constantly on the back of the rules book to understand that the above card means that "when you buy or sell houses, you can raise or decrease the price by 2." Once you get a handle on the game's "language" it becomes quite eloquent. The replayability of this game is up in the air, for the most part I am eager to play again (and I have already played a handful of times), but on the other hand, I worry that I will exhaust all of the strategies of the game and it will come to a point where I'm just executing the actions without much thought (similar to how Dominion feels after playing it too often). That being said, I can always challenge myself to become more broke this time than the time before. Additionally, different strategies have different strengths depending on how much money you start the game with (70-130 million dollars), so there is some good variety there.

All-in-all, I think Last Will is a fantastic, lighter game with a phenomenal theme and solid game play.

Parting thoughts on strategy: As I mentioned before, making a plan and sticking to it is best. Old Friends are amazing, as you will almost always find ways to turn actions into spent money. School Chums that draw you extra cards give you a lot of flexibility later in the game. For games with lower cash amounts, I find that the "slow but steady" strategy, usually using the black bordered 'freebie' cards such as reservation works best, while manipulating the housing market is incredibly powerful if done correctly in longer games. I'm yet to make a successful farm strategy, but one thing  that is clear about farms is that you need to have some sort of end game plan as selling back your farms is tough on you. For this reason you never want to own two expensive farms, but one expensive and one middling farm might work.

Cheerio, mate!