Iki
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2 Plays (3 Players)
Iki appears to be one of those strange late bloomers that came out in 2021 but didn’t really cause waves until this past year. I had never heard of it until very recently, and then suddenly everyone had Iki fever. I’m the kind of gamer who is normally inoculated against these modern trendy Eurogames, but curiosity got the best of me and I trusted the buzz enough to pick up a copy.
I do generally enjoy these types of games when I get to try them. If they are well designed and engaging then it’s hard not to get invested in the challenge. In truth, my main reluctance stems from the time and energy required to learn and teach such designs. My mind grows weary of all the rules and rulebooks that I have piled upon it in recent years. “Are we really doing this again?!” My brain laments any time I bathe it in a recycled stew of medium-weight mechanisms. It’s much less resistant to a new game when I know the title is truly refreshing, unique, innovative, or elegant. The modern Eurogame, being one of the most heavily trodden and increasingly complexified genres in the hobby, is one that rarely looks fresh on the outside.
But power through Iki’s rulebook, I did. Everything seemed in order, as expected. You have your action rondel in the middle, allowing for track advancement and resource exchange. You have your tableau card market off to the side, granting income and further action options. And you have your mix of lucrative tokens and cards where players can collect sets or gain private scoring opportunities. Everything is in order, indeed.
But somehow Iki manages to provide an experience that is more than the sum of its familiar parts. It’s the kind of comfort food Eurogaming that every new title dreams to achieve. Iki’s secret sauce is hard to put my finger on. Perhaps the key ingredient is found in the charming theme of progressing through the seasons, establishing shops and artisans, interacting with these welcoming vendors, watching them retire with grace or suffer a perilous fiery fate. Or maybe the real MVP is the layers of tension, incentives, and considerations as players vie for precise rondel movement and critical action turn order. Or could it be that a tight economy, impactful interactions, and meaningful variety are the simple but solid answers to this surprisingly satisfying conundrum? I suppose Iki’s magic comes from all of the above.
Prognosis: Good
Palmyra (Buy Low Sell HIgh)
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1 Play (4 Players)
Group SNE, reliable as ever with their production and box size, just put out a new Japanese edition of Palmyra (aka Buy Low Sell High) — a nearly 30 year old design from Reiner Knizia. Of course, there isn’t an English word to be found in the rulebook, but when has that stopped me?
Palmyra is a simple and pure stock investment and manipulation game that feels familiar in a lot of ways. That doesn’t stop it from feeling satisfying when a big investment pays off. On their turn, players are allowed to buy or sell up one of each of the three goods types. Or they can double down by buying or selling two goods of one type. Then they’ll play a card to the board to influence the end of year value of an industry.
Like Knizia’s Classic Art or Modern Art, the values of the various industries will gradually take shape as players thrust their paws into the market. One good promises to skyrocket in value, another holds steady, another looks to drop. Meanwhile, the purchases and sales (demand and supply) influence the immediate value of the next transaction. It’s a clean and clever stock manipulation game marred only by the excessive math required with every transaction. Each player’s scoring disc (i.e., their money) launches up and down the track like an economic yo-yo.
The deck of cards is just varied enough to be interesting yet still trackable. Some cards cause the end of year values of goods to surge or shrink. Other cards, contracts, will payout bonuses to the players who currently own the corresponding goods. One card of each suit will instantly tax all the players who are hoarding those colored goods; this card lays bare the twisted satisfaction that presumably comes from being an IRS employee. And finally, one card of each color serves as a “mirage,” erasing the future effects of a previous card that was played.
It’s classic Knizia, shared incentives and all. I found myself quite amused by it. Yet I couldn’t help but wish that somehow all that arithmetic could be stripped away. Give me something a bit more pure, less demanding on the score track, more timeless and approachable, and I’ll be happy as a clam. I came away day-dreaming of such a game that could hit that sweet spot… That’s when I remembered that it already exists. Botswana (aka Wildlife Safari) is that exact game, and Reiner had designed it two years prior to Palmyra.
Prognosis: Fair
Harmonies
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1 Play (4 Players)
Harmonies is yet another low interaction take and make game that rides on the coattails of nearly indistinguishable predecessors including Cascadia, Reef, Calico, and Azul: Queen’s Garden. That outta be enough to scare off some of you and pique the interest of others. It’s a very popular genre as of late, so I suspect a lot of folks will love it anyway.
In Harmonies, you’ll grab a trio of tokens from the display of options and decide how to arrange and stack them on your personal player grid. Brown tokens are wood — making the trunk of a tree or foundation of a building. Fields like to come in pairs or larger, otherwise what’s the point? Mountains likewise get lonely if they are left on their own. Rivers want to stretch far. Buildings are only valuable if they are surrounded by variety. Perhaps “Harmoneedy” would have been a more fitting title.
Speaking of needy, the various colors of discs and their unique scoring conditions aren’t the only demands placed on players. Layered on top of this foundation is the deck of animal cards. These cards display highly specific arrangements of tokens and stacks, and players can earn more points by replicating these arrangements one or more times. Like the drafting board of tokens, players can draft 1 card from the display to start working on it as a personal objective. You can only hold 4 incomplete cards at once, so the pressure is on to claim the right cards and clear them quickly to make room for more scoring potential.
It’s a fine game with a pretty production that squarely targets the latest trend in board gaming. There are enough priorities to chew on that you’ll have to pick and choose which ones to really pursue. And it certainly helps to pick up the card types that other players are ignoring — that means less token competition on the drafting board. Aside from that, you’ll spend your time pretending that your fellow competitors aren’t even there… save for when they occasionally steal your desired items from the middle, or when they fall prey to analysis paralysis and slow the pace down as they decide what to take and how to place it. Our group of players quickly began to skip to the next turn the moment a player took their stuff — there was no point in waiting for somebody to arrange their newly acquired tokens and put out their animal cubes. In other words, there was no point in really caring what other players were up to.
All of this culminates in a grand finale of tallying up the 12 different ways that each player scored points on their private board. And by reasons known only to them, one player ends up with the highest number.
I’m not sure what makes Harmonies stand out in this increasingly crowded genre. Perhaps it is merely trying to be the flavor of the week… look pretty, snag an award nomination, rake in a bunch of easy sales, and then fade into oblivion. For those who love this type of game, I’m happy for you. I get it, it’s like catnip. My catnip is the inverse of this game — simple tile placement on a shared board with entangled interactions and incentives. I could play 100 different games in that genre and not grow tired of it.
We all have our own favorite flavors in this hobby. Harmonies isn’t the type I crave.
Prognosis: Poor
A Message from the Stars
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3 Plays (2 & 3 Players)
The long awaited day is here! We’ve made contact with alien life and it is finally time to build our relationship via the power of… algebra… and the English alphabet.
Joking aside, those who don’t find the joy in math codes, alphabetical deduction, and word clue conjuring would be wise to steer clear of this sci-fi themed logic game. As cool as it sounds to communicate with extraterrestrials, there are certain gamers who will find nothing fun within this kind of experience. Might I suggest Cosmic Encounter, instead?
But for those of us nerds who are into such puzzly challenges, A Message from the Stars can certainly hit the spot. In this cooperative or team-based game, the objectives are twofold: Deduce the six letters sitting behind the alien’s screen, and deduce the six keywords on each species’ message card. Both of these obstacles are met via the sharing of clues and codes. The alien hands the humans a written clue with a numeric value. The word hints at their message and the letters and number hint at their secret alphabet cards. The humans record any logic they can pull from these hints and then respond with a written clue of their own which comes back with a numeric value from the alien.
The puzzle is solid, but as mentioned your enjoyment mileage may vary. This kind of game is either going to be intellectually stimulating or emotionally empty. I’d wager that if you love Turing Machine (another popular deduction game) then you’ll be right at home here. I for one much prefer A Message from the Stars because it is immensely more interactive. Even at a quiet and contemplative 2-players, you feel invested in each other’s efforts and success. There is also a team-based mode for 4 or more players that I haven’t tried, but I suppose it would be a good time given the proper niche group of players with similar tastes.
A lot of your brain power (whether you are alien or human) is spent trying to cram certain letters into your word clue. You’ll wrack your brain for the perfect word that connects to the topic and includes letters that you either wish to eliminate or highlight within the deduction process. The word will then get converted into a numerical value which scrambles the meaning of each letter. It’ll take several solid words with a diverse and careful array of letters before the humans can really connect the dots with the cryptic values they’ve been given.
At the end of it all, when the players make their final guesses as to the alien’s letters and each side’s words, you’ll be left with a score out of 12 points. There’s no real pass or fail (unless you are playing against another team). You tally up your correct guesses and call it a day. It’s certainly satisfying to nail the correct letters and words. And if that’s too easy for your group, then you can cut down the number of clues, as the rulebook suggests.
A Message From the Stars fulfills its promise as a satisfying deduction puzzle for those who are into these kinds of challenges. It won’t change anyone’s mind about the genre, but it does hit the sweet spot.
Prognosis: Good
Pax Penning
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1 Play (4 Players)
Fellow dentist from overseas, Matilda Simonsson, has crafted another fascinating satchel game along the lines of Turncoats but now with even more meat on the bone.
Pax Penning follows in the prestigious line of Pax games by offering a dynamic shared incentives experience with a tight economy and shaky alliances. Yet, to its credit, it also lands itself as perhaps the least complicated Pax game ever conceived. The abstract, elegant production alludes to this simplified system. Yet there is still plenty to give newcomers a headache between the branching victory conditions and a sometimes frustratingly vague rulebook.
Like most games in this genre, I had to read the rulebook through multiple times and watch a lengthy playthrough video just to understand what players are supposed to be doing and why. That’s due in part to the lack of clarifications and examples in the rules, but also due to the opaque and slippery nature of the gameplay.
At its core, players must decide whether to support the king and his feeble economic attempts or to go it alone and try to come out on top. As a loyalist to the throne, you’ll work to increase the king’s reputation while flaunting your loyalty to the community. If he does succeed in his political goals, then the most loyal player will win. If he fails, then the player who is highest in the hierarchy comes out on top.
But victory is not as simple as pushing your token or the king’s token to the top of the hierarchy track. The most devious and delightful rule in this entire game comes in the form of glass stones that sit in the economic space of the board and hide behind each player’s screen. These stones represent various things including favors, gifts, marriages, and debts that each house gains or possesses.
The stone’s effect is most prominent at the conclusion of the game: the winning player reveals the hidden stones behind their screen, and whoever has the most stones there steals the victory… but then they reveal the stones behind their screen and might give up their stolen victory to another thief… and on and on it goes until a house that has its affairs in order has been reached or until an infinite loop of stolen victories is uncovered. In the latter case, a coalition is formed and it is possible for all players within that coalition to win the game in a joint victory.
Thanks to the possibility of coalitions, joint victories, and economic dependency, players have plenty of reasons to help each other out. Players will gradually get their runestones out onto the board, and any time a pawn passes over one the owner gets to insert a stone from behind their screen back into the economy. It’s always good to keep your economy flowing, either to purge opponent stones out of your supply or to seed your own stones behind rival screens. As the game unfolds, you’ll have to wager which player is best positioned for victory and then work hard to establish majority influence in their house. It’s possible to form an alliance, either spoken or unspoken, by feeding each other your stones. But certain actions such as the bishop allow a player to secretly transplant a handful of stones from their screen to another player’s screen. So betrayals are just as possible as coalitions.
Like squinting through a fog, it takes time to gain a sense or vision for good strategies and meaningful decisions. The first step toward success is getting all of those branching victory conditions and tiebreakers straight. But that’s a bit like untangling the heads of a Hydra… many players aren’t likely to thrive in their first play. If Pax Penning were 30 or 45 minutes, then that wouldn’t be a big deal. But despite its relative simplicity, this one runs closer to two hours.
For a Pax game, two hours is pretty standard. But for a Pax game that is abstract, streamlined, and lacking a large variety of cards, two hours can start to feel repetitive. Each turn you are only taking two of five possible actions, and they all serve the core purpose of gaining and redistributing stones as you jostle for hierarchy power. With actions this simple that are taken across three increasingly longer eras, it almost feels like the arc of the game takes place in slow motion. They aren’t necessarily short turns, either. First you beg your neighbors for stones (favors) to gain more dice to roll. Then you roll the dice and hope for pairs. Then you decide how to use those pair bonuses. Then you decide which two dice to use on which actions and execute those actions. Then you perform cleanup.
There are some satisfying decisions to be had with your turns, but it gradually feels more watered down as the game overstays its welcome. It’s certainly possible for the game to end much sooner (if enough people support or advance the king), and the ending is likely to be thrilling regardless as players reveal the majorities behind their screens, but I’d much prefer a consistently compact length for this type of game.
Prognosis: Fair
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Knarr
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3 Plays (2 & 3 Players)
Knarr isn’t normally my type of game. You know the kind: Splendor-like engine building and point gathering in a low interaction competition. There are so many games of this crop that have sprung up over the past 15 years that for me they all start to blur together. It’s so common that the running joke in the industry is calling the latest flavor a “Splendor Killer.” Knarr should be no exception to this long line of dead horse beatings… but it kind of is.
Knarr is a game of recruiting Vikings to your clan and sending them on voyages. In other words, it’s a game of adding cards to your tableau, triggering bonuses, and spending those cards for points and more bonuses. It’s that last part that puts Knarr a step above its great ancestor. Rather than simply watching your purchasing power and point stream go up at a plodding rate, you get to decide whether to keep firing the old engine or send it off to sea. And that decision isn’t as binary as I make it out to be… it is more of a spectrum.
You always start your turn by gaining points according to your reputation. The higher you push your reputation, the faster you’ll reach the finish line. First player to 40 points wins. But reputation is merely one of a handful of strategies for racing to the top. Any time you play a card to your tableau, you activate all the cards of that color for gaining bonuses. Those bonuses increase your score, up your reputation, or gain you resources. Instead of playing a card, you can spend some Vikings from your tableau to gain a more powerful land card. These can offer big points, handy resources, and increase your income whenever you spend bracelet tokens (a bonus option on every turn).
None of this sounds all that revolutionary or interesting. But the enjoyment of Knarr comes in pursuing a specific engine strategy (out of a few engaging options) and running it for a quick 20 or 30 minute sprint. While it can be a little too easy at times to forget to score your reputation points at the start of your turn, the rest of the game is as clean as a whistle. Knarr takes the sleepy engine building of Splendor and crams it into a smaller package with more dynamic decisions. In both form and function it packs a big punch as a snappy filler.
Prognosis: Good
Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well.
Excellent– Among the best in its genre. This game will never leave my collection.
Good– A very solid game and a keeper on the shelf.
Fair– It’s fine. It’s enjoyable. But I’m not likely to seek it out or keep it around.
Poor– Really doesn’t fit my tastes; not one I want to revisit… but hey, that’s just me.
Hopeless– Never again. Run & hide. Demon be gone.
Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.
Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.
