Mines, Cheese Cubes, and Temples

Welcome to this week’s gaming post! This week I’m discussing a heavy euro, a push-your-luck racing game, and a cooperative living card game (LCG). So without further ado, let’s jump into the recent highlights.

First up is Skymines, the 2022 reimplementation of Mombasa. I’ll preface that if you didn’t enjoy the gameplay of Mombasa, then you’ll likely not change your mind with Skymines. However, if you’re like me, you’ll enjoy the hand management and company track mechanisms in Mombasa and will be glad to see the game receive a new coat of paint and fresh theme.

If you’ve never played the original Mombasa, here’s a refresher on the game play. At the beginning of every round, players simultaneously and secretly choose which three to five cards to play from their hand. Those cards will dictate which actions are available to the player during that round. At the end of the round, those cards are stacked in columns above the player’s board, and the player will recall one of those columns of cards to be available for next round. This is by far my favorite part of the game because you have to decide the timing of when to play/recall cards to your hand. In addition, over the course of the game, players can acquire additional cards that are available to be played in subsequent rounds.

I also really enjoy the company tracks. At the end of the game, players will receive a certain number of each company’s shares depending on how far they’ve progressed on each of the four company tracks, as well as any shares acquired from cards they bought over the course of the game. Those company shares are worth a certain number of victory points depending on how many company buildings were placed on the board. I discussed a similar mechanism in Maracaibo in one of my recent posts, and I also really enjoy the mechanism here as it encourages player interaction. While the solo mode is well implemented, the one downside is that this part of the game really shines at higher player counts as there is more competition for expanding companies on the board.

If you played Mombasa, there are very few changes in Skymines. The biggest change is that Skymines offers an additional map to place company buildings, but admittedly, I haven’t tried that side of the board yet, preferring to stick with the original map. However, I am glad for the addition, as I imagine I will use that side occasionally for additional variability. As far as other additions go, Skymines offers optional objectives that will vary from game to game which offer small rewards when completed. While minor, I’ve found these very easy to include in almost every game and they give some direction for players to focus on.

Finally, while I enjoy the player research track mechanism because you get to program your own track, the other individual player track (helium) is much more generic. Other than scientist cards that allow you to move your marker farther based on how many icons that company controls on the board, the track mostly just involves playing a card and moving your token a couple spaces.

I don’t have another game in the collection that leverages a similar card programming/hand management system, and I really enjoy the implementation here. If you can’t tell from some of my posts, I really enjoy Alexander Pfister’s designs, and Skymines is certainly up there among my favorites. Overall, I really enjoy Skymines, and while I’ve found it to be more enjoyable at higher player counts because of the player interaction elements, I’ll still happily play this one with any number of players.

Next up is Cubitos, a push-your-luck, dice builder with the goal to be the first player to finish a race around a racetrack. In Cubitos, players simultaneously roll dice from their pool, until everyone either busts by rolling all blanks or chooses to stop. Afterwards, players will use any icons shown on their dice to trigger abilities, purchase dice, and move around the racetrack. 

Cubitos is often compared to The Quacks of Quedlinburg because of the similar bag/dice building and push-your-luck elements. In a similar vein, it’s incredibly satisfying when you get lucky and pull off a big turn and equally as heartbreaking when you bust. However, busting in this game doesn’t feel too punishing, as you still usually receive a small benefit, and there are dice abilities to help mitigate or even reward you when you bust.

First off, I love the amount of variety/variability in the game. There are eight different color ability dice, each with seven different variations of abilities for that color dice. The game provides some recommended combinations, but if you wanted to pick randomly, you’re looking at tons of different variations. Throw in the fact that there are four different racetracks included, means that each game is going to feel unique. In addition, since players are rolling their dice simultaneously, games play out quickly, and the game especially shines with four players. 

As with push-your-luck games, there is a large amount of luck in the game, and one downside to that is if you fall behind early, it can be difficult to catch up. There is a small catch-up mechanism that allows players who are further behind the ability to roll more dice, but often if you haven’t collected enough of the ability dice, then this benefit isn’t as impactful. Finally, this may be a personal thing, but the game comes with tuck-boxes to display and store the game’s components. I’m generally not a fan of tuck-boxes because of their fiddliness and quality, but I have seen forums discussing alternative storage solutions. 

Overall, the jury is out on whether I prefer Cubitos more than Quacks. I really enjoy Quacks, and I recently posted about my favorite Gateway games where I included Quacks on the list. In comparison, due to the additional number of abilities, Cubitos feels like a slight step up from Quacks, but the game is still pretty light. I’ve played Quacks so many times at this point, that I will likely lean a bit more towards Cubitos at the moment if I’m looking for a fun, light, push-your-luck game, but I’d also easily recommend either.

I recently posted about my first campaign of Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s The Path to Carcosa, and I recently completed my first campaign of the The Forgotten Age. If you want to read my thoughts on Arkham Horror LCG as a whole, I’d recommend checking out my previous post. Today, I’ll mostly focus on discussing my thoughts on The Forgotten Age and comparisons to Carcosa. 

First off, I enjoyed the story in Forgotten Age more than Carcosa. In Forgotten Age, it really feels like something akin to an Indiana Jones movie, as you explore jungles and ancient cities. It felt like each of the scenarios tied well into the overarching narrative, while still mixing gameplay and locations up.

A couple of the new mechanisms in Forgotten Age are exploration and vengeance. With exploration, rather than having all of the location cards displayed from the start, players will use an exploration deck that contains locations as well as encounter cards. This made it so that you didn’t know which location might turn up next, adding to the sense of discovery. With vengeance, it works similar to the victory display; however, the goal is to try to evade certain enemies rather than defeating them to keep your vengeance count low. Some of the monsters as well as resolutions vary depending on how much vengeance the players have acquired, and while we focused on avoiding vengeance if at all possible, we would have had a very different experience if it was reversed. In addition, as with Carcosa, there’s plenty of choices and branching paths to take that encourage repeat playthroughs.

Unlike Carcosa, which I felt had big final scenarios, the last few scenarios of Forgotten Age didn’t feel as memorable. I especially didn’t really enjoy the scenario which had you repeat the same tasks at deeper depth levels, as it started to get repetitive after the first couple of depth levels. Although, I will say that scenario has the most memorable location I have seen in any Arkham Horror LCG scenario (Crumbling Precipice).

I remember the scenarios more from Carcosa as they were exciting and mixed things up in interesting ways; however, I enjoyed the story more in Forgotten Age. Overall, I had a lot of fun in each of the campaigns, and I’m looking forward to continuing my journey in Arkham Horror again soon, and let me know what your favorite campaign is in the comments below.

With that, I’ll wrap up this week’s gaming highlights! I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the games I’ve mentioned, future content, or format in the comments section below. Happy gaming!