Tikal

'The shaft of light! It's beaming onto the idol's hand! 

THAT'S where the switch to open the secret door is!'

Type: Strategy / Board/ Resource management (ish)
Players: 1 to 4

Time to explain to others: About 10 min

Time to play: About 45 minutes

Difficulty: To play 4/10, Game difficulty 6/10

Portability:Low, many tokens and board pieces
Overall: 8/10

Who has never wondered what it would be like, to wonder the jungles of South America, compass on one hand, machete on the other? To wonder into plazas where no man has walked for a millennium? To find the sacred Mayan plinths, dusty brown with the blood of a thousand slaves?

I came across this game as I was looking at the Spiel des Jahres winners (it won in 1999). These are the Oscars of the gaming world, and the winners are always the best of the best (on this blog, Catan and Quirkle come to mind).

Tikal is a very thematic game, where you play opposing teams of archaeologists, striving to bring out more wonders and plunder out of the Mayan Tikal site (in Guatemala). At the beginning of each turn, each player has 10 action points to use as he/she sees fit. The number of options is fairly extensive, but you can move archaeologists already on site, you can call more onto the site, you can excavate more levels of sunken temples, dig out treasures and many many others.

A couple of innovative mechanics make this a much more strategic game that it might at first look like:

a) the board is built from tiles as you go along (so far, so good), but a number of markers on said tiles will dictate how many action points it takes for characters to move around. It might take 3 points to cross the board, but 8 to get to the one next door, where you actually want to be. (This is explained in game by arguing that there might be say, a hill or a small cliff between certain areas of the board)

b) 2 tiles have a volcano on them, and are therefore named, originally enough, the Volcano Tiles. They have no intrinsic value, they merely signify the start of a scoring round. You only add victory points at these two times. So you might be well behind, but if you throw caution to the wind, and focus on points points points at these times, you might move up quickly.

c) you gain control of a temple by having more people there than your opponent. Due to the capriciousness of movement (see a) ) this is better said than done.

The board is massive and towards the end game it has the tendency to slow down to a crawl. There are some pretty amazing online rules for mini-Tikal, playing on a smaller fraction of the board, and these work beautifully.

This post obviously simplifies the rules and the game. It plays very strategically, almost chess-like at times (not scoring now, but making a new camp, putting me in a much better position over next couple of turns, for example).

Rui's conclusion: Very atmospheric, and strategic. Not very fast, but one to play slowly and think about. Newbies will like it, with guidance. A good after meal game, if you like to fly in and steal the other teams' treasure!

Lords of Waterdeep

Every alley has a knife, every palace a cup of poison.

Type: Strategy / Resource management / Board
Players: 1 to about 6

Time to explain to others: About 5 to 10 min

Time to play: About 30 minutes, possibly bit more

Difficulty: To play 3/10, Game difficulty 4/10

Portability: Very Low. Dozens of tokens.
Overall: 9/10

In one of the multitude worlds of the Dungeons and Dragons universes, there is a place. A city of gleaming temples and shady ale-houses. Of slimy alleyways and fetid harbours. Stretching from the sunny Field of Heroes to the murky labyrinthine corridors of the Undermountain.

The city is called Waterdeep.

Lords of Waterdeep is a resource management game. It might look a bit odd at first, but when boiled down to its core, it is actually fairly simple. You are one of the titular Lords of Waterdeep, vying for control of the city. To grow in power and influence (in our case, victory points) you need to complete missions, ranging from assassinations to helping other inhabitants, to fighting invaders, to exterminating pests, to breeding Owlbears (bears with the heads of owls, cuter than it sounds).

Being a son (or daughter) of the nobility, you will of course NOT get your hands dirty. Of course not, perish the thought! You will send your agents, to hire fighters and wizards, to then do the job for you.

This is how the game works. Each turn, you have a number of agents (about 5, as it can increase or decrease). In turns, you will send your agents to different areas of town (Ale-houses, The University, The Temple, etc), and in each place you will hire a number of people (represented by small coloured cubes).

Each mission will require a number of these cubes. When you have the corresponding numbers and colours, you can claim that mission (and its victory points).

The only problem is that, although there are a number of cards that actively impact your opponents (negatively), the main issue of the game is one of the locations on the board. Only one agent can be in any location at any one time. So it is really easy to block the opponents and make it as hard as possible to get those coloured cubes (either by accident or on purpose).

And this is pretty much it. Some other elements add the all important element of randomness, like the lord you play will have a bonus for some missions and not others, and The Builders Guild, that will introduce new and different buildings and locations in every game.

Rui's conclusion: Although heavier than other games, LoW is still simple enough to explain in a few minutes. The resource management is a new dynamic, but one that is straightforward. You don't need to waste too much time on the intricacies if you don't want, just collect the cubes you need! It will please both newbies and veterans. Highly recommended.