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Blogs and Reviews, Reviews, Rolling with Benny

Sonora: Flickety-Split into Combo-Ville!

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This is a great summer title, it’s hot outside, the theme is the Sonora Desert, there’s animals! It’s like a scirocco really, a nice breezy blast of hotness to land on my game table! 

Flicking this review off, let’s slide into the good. Almost everything about this game is good. It’s fun, it’s crazy, it’s chaotic! It’s built on the shoulders of board game giants, Crokinole and Ganz Schon Clever (That’s Pretty Clever), and it’s better than the sum of its parts. 

Sonora board with discs

In Sonora, players are flicking discs (5 each) onto a board in quadrants with bonus spaces that double the disc and move it to a different quadrant. Players are effectively “drafting” their 5 or so actions to play 4 mini-games. Each disc is numbered, which will mean something depending on the quadrant. 

The first quadrant, which is competitive and should be completed first each round, is the Lizard. In the lizard game, players sum their disc values for this quadrant and fill in spaces equal to that value in one of the areas to gain points and/or bonuses. If you complete it before your friends, then you’re getting a bigger reward. The other quadrants can be completed simultaneously as they are not competitive. The Fox has players using their specific value of disc to fill in a polyomino shape earning any bonuses covered up. The player can take a polyomino of lower value instead. The Owl has players use individual values to start down a path in the creek bed marking out spaces equal to the value of the disc, then circling the next space for points or a bonus. The Jackrabbit has players again summing their discs then using the total sum to mark spaces out creating triangles for bonuses or points in the triangles. 

All of the quadrant actions create nutso combos that can really get going in a bonkers way — especially in a long game of 7 rounds. Very fun! 

It also has a great solo mode with a brutal AI. The trick with solo is you are flicking 15 discs. 1 of the colors is discarded from the board, one of the colors is for the player, and the last color is for the AI to mess with the player. I found it easiest to dump a color in a quadrant and focus on the other 3, letting the AI chew up real estate with the Owl or with the Fox positioning the AI away from where I wanted to go. Also with the Jackrabbit because the player can go in the opposite direction, but be aware too many AI moves in Jackrabbit ups the cost to play on the outside where the big points are. For all that is good and helpful, keep the AI away from the Lizard. The AI creates spaces that have to be filled before the player can work on their areas. 

We’ve played this game a ton — like a whole lot. It’s fun, it’s wild, it’s a bit of a hot mess with flicking discs. Mostly 2 players because of COVID-19. That said, the board feels good with 2 players when flicking discs. I noticed playing solo that you’ll bump discs a lot more because you’re flicking 15 of the 20 discs in there. Just for fun, I ran a 4 player game with us each playing 2 colors of discs. The experience was like playing Colt Express or Galaxy Trucker. You’re holding out hope that at least 1 of the discs you landed in just the right spot will stay put. In that case, aim for the middle if you can! There is no planning with 4 players, it’s just tactical, hope for the best, like Colt Express and Galaxy Trucker, but know that your plans are shot!

Pile o' sheets

I said it on twitter after about 3 plays, this game is going to receive SdJ level attention, and I still firmly believe that. It has great table presence, it’s fun, and it’s chaotic! If that sounds like your canteen of tea, go grab it! If not, maybe play a friend’s copy to at least have the experience of this very entertaining game!

Full disclosure: 
I have no affiliations with Pandasaurus Games or Rob Newton. This game was a gift from my good buddy Derik, who also has no affiliations with the aforementioned Pandasaurus Games or Rob Newton.  

Blogs and Reviews, Reviews, Rolling with Benny

Rick and Morty: The Morty Zone 

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Hello friends, welcome to the *checks notes* Morty? Zone! Ah. Well, I’m not sure what that is. I do know that it’s roll and write designed by Matt Hyra recently of Cryptozoic Games and also the designer of the DC Deck Building Game among many others. In this game, you take on the roll of… Well to be fair, the story isn’t exactly fleshed out in the rule book. Something about Death Crystals and Jessica. If you win the game, then maybe you have the best death and Jessica decides to keep you as a contact in her mobile phone?

And awaaaaaaay we go! So I know zero about Rick and Morty, I know the older guy who gets transformed into various other versions is Rick and the kid is Morty. That’s it. I’ve never watched the show, though I understand that this game ties into the Season 4 premiere episode. So that’s where I’m at with this game. I guess, let’s peek under the lid and see what’s up – holy schmoly those are some huge dice! There are 8 of them and they are an inch! Which seems appropriate as the Morty Zone is a game of inches. You and your opponents are battling for tight scores, differences of 1 point are likely!

Back to the components. Besides the huge dice, it also has 4 really nice and thick dry erase boards, 4 markers with good erasers, cards, and card stock crystals that have bonus points for completing certain tasks. 

In the game, each player grabs a crystal and keeps it secret. They also receive 3 Public cards which they keep face up in front of them, also for scoring points, or in some cases for changing your fate. Plus those player boards and a marker. Some lucky soul, probably the person with the biggest hands, rolls all 8 dice at the same time. I have big hands and roll all 8 of those one handed was tricky. You may want to pursue the Scoop-n-Dump™ method. 

After rolling, put the like colors together:  red, green, blue, black. These will be related to the tracks on the player board. There is not a color blind friendly method here. After grouping the colors, announce the combined values of the pairs of dice in those colors, Red 3 and Red 6 would be 9 Red. Then the players have to mark values on the matching tracks. The players can however, break up the total value into any two numbers that add to that value and have not already been crossed out. So that 9 Red could be 1 and 8 or 2 and 7. The tracks are 1 to 10, the combined dice values run 2 to 12. All players mark their tracks at the same time, it is possible that in a group all of the players will mark the same numbers on tracks throughout the game. 

If you’re the dice roller you also reveal a Rick card, which can optionally affect the die roll. As you continue on in the game, you will want to score your Public cards. They feature characters from the show (I’m assuming as I haven’t looked any of them up) and mostly likely will give you points for having done something that turn. The Public cards are useable once. You can also score Smith Family characters for completing certain activities on your board, everyone has the same ones. 

The round ends when all players have Locked all of their tracks. Locking happens when a player cannot mark the numbers on their track as those numbers have already been marked. Players score their crystals if possible, any Public cards that score at the end of the round, and also the Smith Family characters. What I found was the round is a solid 10-20 minutes depending on the quickness of the players’ decisions. The game recommends playing 3 rounds with the highest total score winning. 

That’s fine. For me, I was happy with one round, tally score and give the player the highest score the win. Playing 3 rounds effectively feels like playing the game 3 times in a row. You maintain the points from the previous round(s) but clear everything else, get a new crystal, and get 3 new Public cards. Basically a reset of what you’ve done. You maintain the score though for your total score of the 3 rounds. 

I admit that I only have this game because it is a roll and write. That said, I found it very clever. There are a few more moving pieces than say Qwixx which has you crossing out numbers on a track. But this game is more than Qwixx, a lot more, so many ways to get them bonus points. 

Thematically, I really can’t give an opinion, though I will say gamers with families may pass on it as some of the characters have names that certain people will not like. So do your research first! 

Mechanically, I really enjoyed this one. I think one round is plenty if I’m playing, I don’t really have a burning desire to play through 3 rounds again. It was okay, but it felt repetitive. There are plenty of Public cards though and the dice are random so variety can be found. 

If you’re in the market for a roll and write that does a lot of things well and you don’t mind the characters, then this game is well worth picking up! 

Full disclosure: 

I have no affiliations with Cryptozoic or Matt Hyra. This game was a gift from my good buddy Derik, who also has no affiliations with the aforementioned Cryptozoic or Mr. Hyra.  

Blogs and Reviews, Reviews, Rolling with Benny

Man muss auch Gönnen Können: Treat Yo Self!

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The newest roll and write from Schmidt Spiel has arrived! It’s available in German and I bought a copy off amazon.de. So welcome in friends to a game I really was excited for and well, you’ll see if you want to treat yourself to this game or not. 

From its outset, this game read like the GanzSchonClever and Silver & Gold (https://www.inquisitivemeeple.com/rolling-with-benny-silver-and-gold-hunting-for-treasure-in-islands-of-polyominos/) got together and made a super cool new game. Well, that’s not entirely true. What you have here is a game that is far more reminiscent of Viva Java: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game (Viva Java Dice, from here on). 

You roll your dice up to 3 times – that seems fine – keep any you want from roll to roll. The catch, after you have re-rolled the dice at least once, the other players may claim 1 of the dice you rolled to add to their cards. Good for those players. Here’s why it’s good. In this game, you are effectively creating a 3 by 3 grid of cards, sort of Kingdomino-esque. The cards you are placing have a B on the back or laurel leaves. The B cards add an ability for the player to change their dice, cool. The laurel leaves are Victory Points at the end of the game. 

Here’s the rub, you have to activate these cards by rolling specific dice combinations, even then you cannot place your dice, unless you can complete the whole card. I’m just going to lob this grenade in, going first is a huge disadvantage unless you can finish your entire card with your first roll, statistically very difficult. The laurel leaf cards are going to be much harder to complete, typically they require up to 8 dice. Which you can never complete in a single roll with 5 dice. So you really have to pay attention to what you have and what you need. This is a game of math all the way and normally, I love mathy games. 

Placement of laurel leaf cards is also critical as they want to be next to specific color cards, some of them anyway. Also if you don’t activate a card, it probably won’t count toward your scoring at the end. There are exceptions. 

You receive 4 cards, 2 each, at the outset of the game, keep 3, discard 1. Probably keep those 2 laurel leaf cards as you will need points at the end of the game to win. 

Then you have two options after you finish rolling, you can try to activate your card(s) as mentioned above, or you can buy a card from the center. There are 4 of each card type in the center with 2 of each costing 4 of the same dice value and 2 of each costing 3 of the same dice value. Yep, you have to spend your quad or your trip to get another card. Could you have used those dice to complete and potentially score one of your other cards? Yes probably. In multiplayer this really isn’t so bad as the cards move and everything seems to have purpose, in solo play this is really not an idea I’m fond of. You could also instead of placing 2 dice have taken the top card blindly from either deck and added it to your grid or discarded it (yay free card, but you don’t get to place those 2 much needed dice).

Basically in solo play, you are playing a campaign with extremely rigid goals. The first level, you have to get 90 points in 15 rounds. A round is an active turn in which you roll your dice the usual way and if you reroll once or twice, you have access to fewer dice on the passive turn. Wait, if I’m extremely lucky, then I get more dice for being lucky? Yes. Here’s where solo really falls apart. Let’s assume you aren’t luck with dice (like me) and you get to that third roll and can place 2 dice. Yay! But on the passive turn you roll all 5 dice and can use 1 of those. If you were lucky and needed no rerolls, you can use 3, if you used 1 reroll you can have 2 of the dice. So you have to be lucky twice. If you are, you can effectively use 8 dice over the two turns. But you probably won’t get that lucky. At best you will use 3 dice, hopefully!, in those 2 turns. So if you aren’t lucky, you get 5 less dice. That is a huge margin considering most of these cards require up to 8 dice. 

To put it bluntly, I think the solo mode is terrible and this is why the game is leaving my collection. I literally seethed with anger. I haven’t wanted to flip the table as much as the last time I played Catan 14 years ago (it has been that long and no I won’t play it again). 

Here’s where this game shakes out for me, the multiplayer seems better as it is not a set number of rounds, you play until a player has played their 9th card, then play 1 more round. That’s pretty great. The thing is, I have a much loved and well worn NSV copy of Silver and Gold that is much more fun multiplayer and doesn’t drag like this game does. So why would I play something that isn’t as much fun? Well I wouldn’t. Again, it’s leaving my collection. 

So there we have friends, I wanted to love this game so very very much. I even jumped on amazon.de and made sure to grab it as soon as they had it available with my hard earned cash. And I am extremely disappointed in treating myself to this one. It’s going away, far far away to the land of Ohio. If however, this sounds like a game for you, treat yourself! Or treat yourself to something else! Either way, self-care is important. My self-care means this game no longer has a home with me because it doesn’t make me happy.

Reviews, Rolling with Benny

A Musician’s Best Friend

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Hello friends! Great news! I started a band, well my friends started a band, not y’all, I have other friends! A few, anyway, all you need is 1 person to make a band! Look at Lil Nas X or Moby, and all those other electronic and hip-hop artists! 

So my friends started a band. Since I’m not a great musician, I offered my services as their manager, I know right?, what a great friend I am! Here’s the thing though, they are getting streaming play in certain area of the country and not others, so I’m trying to figure out the best route to send them on for their tour. 

To do that, I figured, heck, let’s roll some dice! On Tour showed up on my phone then on my table at just the right time to help me with my grand scheme, er plan. This game is one of hope and prayer and “come on you #$&% dice!” 

Each turn you turn out 3 cards and roll 2 pentagonal trapezohedron, for those playing along at home those are d10’s. Now after I roll those dice, all the players must use both combinations of numbers if possible. Let me explain, if I roll a 5 and 0, then 50 AND 05 are placed on each players’ boards. The cards are a guide to areas: North, South, East, West, Central, then South East, North East, North Central, South Central, North West, South West. Each card also has a State, 41 cards in all, we lump those New England states into 1, also no Alaska or Hawaii. We’re too cheap for planes right now, load that van and book it to the next show!

If a player writes a number on the identified state, they circle it. All cards show a state and a region. The dice values have to be written in the region. There are times when you can’t place a value or don’t want to in which case you mark an X and no route can go through that state. Guess they didn’t stream my friend’s band enough. 

There is also a chance that the dice show the same value or all 3 cards show the same region! In this case, mark a Star in 1, and only 1, state. Again, following regions on cards. This can be any value. That’s good news. 

Here’s why it’s good news, you may have figured out I’m sending my friend’s band on tour. Now, I need to get them to as many states in a row as I can manage. That means I have to follow the dashed highway routes on my map and also fill in ascending values. It feels a bit like darts at first, then as the states start to get out of hand with values that are wonky based on what I wrote in, it all goes together like a great big disaster. At least for me. But you will definitely have better luck! 

Also, if you track through a state with a circle, because you used the named state, you get a bonus point! All told, your route is worth 1 point for each state you pass through on your longest route and also a bonus point for the circled states. You could get incredibly lucky and make it through all 41 states. 

I found playing it multiplayer is basically like playing it solo, there is minimal interaction, but you can trash talk your opponents, not just the dice. This fine, because the game is a lot of fun. Interaction would make it a mess to deal with. 

My quibbles, I think scoring “points” is fine, but I want it to be more thematic! Make the points money, for me, the band’s manager! If I tally up 23 states, make that $2,300 that I pocketed from the Band’s tour. Did the band get paid? That’s not my problem! 

Also, the dice are dice and luck is luck. Just deal with it, it’s fine! 

In general, this game is fun, like Camel Up, but less interaction. Everyone will be screaming at the dice after a few turns and that right there is the perfect bonding exercise! It’s like a cooperative game only the dice are the ones that seem to win, then get put in the Hall of Shame. Also, the physical version is huge! It has massive boards and massive dice! The dice are less a choking hazard than a projectile hazard. Please don’t throw those big d10s at your friends!

Time to dial up another tour for my friend’s band! See you on the road! Safe travels and all that!

Reviews, Rolling with Benny

Dice, slice, place

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Hello friends, welcome back to another Rolling with Benny! We have changed format slightly as our hosting situation has changed. I want to first say a very big thank you to Ryan Sanders and the crew at Inquisitive Meeple for allowing me the opportunity to post reviews on their site. They have shifted toward the education angle, which I really enjoy. So please check them out. 

Today we are looking at Renegade Games’ Clipcut Parks. The first, that I know of, game that includes scissors and is a roll, cut, place game. Thematically, you are urban planners who have received requests from the city to build a number of parks, usually 5. In longer games it can be more. At the game’s beginning you reveal 2 of the 5 park cards that you will be working on. 

Mechanically, you are going to be rolling the die and making those specific cuts on your player sheet to separate out squares to place on your card. It’s got a lot of strategy about where to make your cuts and if you mistakenly take off a big chunk, it’s gone. You can’t further cut that chunk into smaller chunks. You have to crumble that up and set it aside as part of a tie breaker loss. 

The trick with cutting too is you cannot extend the cut on the same round. On a following round you can extend the cut though. The fascinating part with this is that you’re using the included scissors to be very thoughtful and thorough in your cuts. I could almost see that mechanism pop up in a zen garden type of game, where you are a monk laying rocks in specific places or placing certain items. 

When placing, you must follow certain rules, color for example, or symbols such as wildlife (paw), recycling (circle of arrows). You will also have to be mindful that when you have two squares connected by a bridge you much have your squares you are placing also be connected. 

You’ll earn bonuses for completing cards. There are 3 types of tokens, wildlife and recycling, which can ignore those requests, as well as bonus cuts which you make immediately or trowels that let you ignore colors when placing. This makes the game more along at a steady clip and saves the player from feeling stuck. I appreciate that they had the foresight to make the game color blind friendly also. Each color is also represented by a thematic type of item such as the red squares are umbrellas or tents. 

There is lots of variety with cards and the included expansion cards had harder parks to make. The rules suggest adding up to 3 to each player’s deck for a more challenging game. It plays solo with the player working through a partial deck discarding a card each turn to act as a countdown timer. 

The dexterous practice of cutting here may not be for everyone. The cuts tend on the small side so you will have to be very specific when cutting. Also, this game has no interaction. There is nothing I can do to mess with my opponents at all or even influence what they are doing. For some this is fine. And overall, the game is really fun. 

I felt sort of sad that i did not get to use more of my sheet. A part of me felt a pang of guilt that I was tossing it. Then I thought about most roll and writes and how the whole sheet gets tossed after ward. I just have to live with it and recycle it. 

I could see Clipcut Parks having a lot of options for play and even learning. You could do a manual dexterity lesson, because you can only cut exactly the number of spaces in a row the die shows as well as making sure you cut specifically between the squares. It also has a lot of planning, which is great for activating executive functions. 

For me, Clipcut Parks is a winner! Please do check it out if you have the opportunity. 

Full disclosure: 
I received Clipcut Parks as a gift from my buddy Derik who is not affiliated with Renegade Games. To that end, I don’t really have any affiliation with those folks at all, other than being a social media follower of Scott Gaeta. He seems like a nice guy and Renegade continues to put out interesting games.