Friday by Friedemann Friese

Friday Board Game

for 1 player (strictly solo)
play time 30 mins
setup time 5 mins
teaching time 15 mins (if you're teaching yourself)

Fun! fun! fun!

Sometimes we all need that one board game that we can play solo especially when no one's free for a board game night and your hands are itchy to touch some components and when you feel like a bit of strategy. Not having enough time for a full fledged board game? Take on Friday, and you'll have time spent "wisely".

Friday is a solo deck building game (as said in every review). The theme is about you (Friday) teaching Robinson Crusoe how to survive the island of hazards (If you've read the story of Robinson Crusoe, you'll immediately know what I mean. If not, I just peaked your interest to find that out). To do this you choose which hazards to fight. You also choose whether to win or not because by winning, you add good cards into your deck (good experience thematically) and if you lose, you get to take out the bad cards from your deck (learning from mistakes thematically). At the end of the game, you should have built a good enough deck to face the tough pirates who have come to raid the island.

Components 7/10

For a cheap, small game, Rio Grande Games have given you all you need and more. 3 square-shaped boards to place your different piles of cards on. Although this is simply a deck building game and you could do without the boards, they do give you an added board game feeling instead of just a card game. The boards also help you remember which deck is which.

The cards themselves are thin and elongated vertically. I found these easy to shuffle when shuffled sideways. The art on them is comically cartoonish but IMO adds to the flavor of the game. I do not really look at them much throughout the game but mostly at the numbers on them but I do appreciate good art. So far after plenty of games (probably more than 20 games), the cards are still in perfect condition. They are bendable and do not defect easily although they are thin. I do take good care not to roughen up the edges when I take them of the table hoping that will make them last longer.

The life tokens are in the shape of leaves and made of wooden blocks colored in green. A very nice touch to a survival game in an island. 

Yes, only three components in this small box. Cheap as I got it for $15 and have played it so much. 

Mechanics 8/10

Deck building, an art of mechanics. This game uses it so well making it seamless and easy to adapt to any player, new or old. 

You start with a deck of 18 cards, good and mostly bad cards (a.k.a. your Fight Deck). Each of these has a comical Robinson drawing and a number at the top left showing its strength and a number of life tokens drawn at the top right depicting how many life tokens it takes to discard that card. Some of the cards have special abilities which you can use by tapping the card sideways (just like in Magic the Gathering). You also begin with 20 life tokens.

You draw two hazard cards from the Hazard deck and choose which to fight. This is where most of your decisions take place as you need to balance which cards you need in your deck and whether you are able to fight that hazard. Each hazard card has the top and bottom side. At the top side is the hazard side which shows the strength you need to defeat the hazard and how many free cards you get to draw. The bottom side of the card shows a Robinson drawing just like in your starting cards with numbers and life token drawings on it so if you add this card to your Fight Deck, this side will show you how much better your deck will become.

After choosing which hazard card to fight, you discard the other hazard card and Robinson Crusoe goes into battle mode. You can draw as many free cards up till the number stated on the hazard card. After this, it will cost one life token for every additional Fight card you draw. If your card has any special abilities, you may tap and use them at any time. Once tapped, you may not use it again. Some abilities allow you to draw additional cards for free, some give you life tokens and still others help you destroy bad cards. If your strength matches or is greater than the number needed to defeat the hazard, you have won this fight and the hazard card, along with all the Fight cards you have drawn is placed in your discard pile (Don't worry, you will get to use these again later). If you decide not to draw any more Fight cards and lose to the hazard, you discard the number of life tokens equal to the number of strength you still need to defeat the hazard. For every life token you discarded this way, you can destroy the face-up Fight cards according to the amount of life tokens they have at the top right corner. This will then help you to take out the "poison" from your deck.

Once your Fight deck of 18 cards is fully drawn, and when you need to draw an additional card, you will add the top card from the Aging deck to your discard pile, shuffle them all and this will now make your new Fight deck. So all the Hazard cards that you have won go into your newly shuffled deck which you get to use when you draw them out again. An Aging card is a bad bad card. Thematically this shows Robinson getting older and making more mistakes. It takes two life tokens to get rid of Aging cards.

So as you play the game, your Fight deck gets stronger. You'll need to strengthen your deck because after going through the Hazard deck, you reshuffle the discard pile to form the new Hazard deck and now they become harder. The number you now have to match is higher than the previous level. You go through the Hazard deck 3 times and after that you will face the tough Pirates. 

Gameplay 8/10

The strategy is there. There is luck involved in which Hazard cards and Fight cards you draw but the strategy is in the statistics, knowing which cards are left in your Fight deck, and building the most appropriate Fight deck to get more cards that you need. What you do in your first round, second round and third round, just before the pirates, will determine how far you will get in the game. 

The different special abilities allow you to shape how and when your deck will be a certain way. Say for the first round you needed more life points, then when a Hazard card comes with life tokens, you will choose those. Or say you needed more strength, you still need to pace yourself because those cards that have higher fight strength will cost more strength to defeat first. So you might wish to get a lower Fight strength first and go for the higher strength cards later.

I always pick this game up when I do not have an hour to play. It is so enjoyable. The steps are easy to learn and once played through, the game will flow like a river - take two cards, choose one, fight, win or lose, repeat. This is one game where the simplicity does not take away the strategy. The point system and also the possibility to adjust the game difficulty level makes the game accessible for both the heavy gamer and casual gamer. 

Replayability 7/10

The point system and 4 difficulty levels allow the game a sufficient amount of replayability. After the game is over, whether or not you have defeated the pirates, you get to total up your points and see how well you did to survive the island. The more you play, the better you will become to beat your previous score. This is not a competition with anyone but yourself so it takes the "take that" pressure away. 

I'm currently at level 4 (the highest level) and managed to beat the pirates just today actually! The available strategy in this game does bring you back again and again to play and beat your old score. However, I'm not sure if there is any meaning to play anymore after you've found that optimized strategy to beat the game. As with most solitaire games, after finding out how to beat the game, it becomes more of a routine. I would say that the different difficulty levels provided do need different strategies to win each time. 

Then again, with most solitaire games, some of us do not care if we use the same strategy to play again and again. To give you an example, if you have played the game "2048" on Android or iPhone app, you will know what I mean when I say the game is addictive. It is a solitaire game where there is only one optimized strategy to win. But we still play it again and again hoping that by chance we can achieve a better score. Heck, I have managed to get 4096 once and have been trying to get there again ever since (Not much luck so far). Friday gives you that kind of addiction, to come back again and again to beat your old score. There is always a chance that you will get lucky today.

Overview 8/10

Love this game. A very cheap alternative when you have no one to play with you. Get two boxes and you can challenge a friend and play together. There are variants that folks on BGG have come up with for multiplayer games (You'd have to get more than one box for this). The game is portable, so you can bring on trips to take away that boredom and itch for board games. A word of caution - Do not take this out to play solo when you have friends around as it will deem you a social outcast.

A fun, addictive, solo, deck-building game. It will not hurt your wallet to get one immediately.

Pros:

Can play solo

Addictive

Cheap cost

Simple

Filled with strategy

Cons:

Can play solo

Addictive

Cheap components

Let me know what you think of the game once you've played it! Leave me a comment...

Thunderstone Advance Towers of Ruin - First play review

Thunderstone Advance Tower of Ruins

For 1-5 players

Play time 2-3 hours

Setup time 15 mins

Teaching time 30 mins

So I was craving for some solid dungeon delving, deck building game and a friend got himself this (Thunderstone Advance). So we quickly arranged a session one Saturday when we had the time.

This game gives you oh-such-an-experience. You basically build your deck by buying/upgrading heroes, equipment, items, villagers and stuff. Then get ready to delve into the dungeon. The deeper you go, the darker it gets, the more the penalty for darkness. There's only one reason why as an adventurer you go deep into dangerous territory - to kill off some monsters of course. The more monsters you kill, the more victory points you add into your deck. Once the boss monster comes out and is defeated, all victory points are added up and the player with the most victory points win the game.

Disclaimer: this review is only after my first game. I have not played the base set Thunderstone or any other of the sets or expansions for that matter. Once I have a few more plays under my belt, then I might add another review. You may take this review as a first impression to an average gamer.

Components 8/10

The number of cards were impressive. Something like 500-600 cards so if you wish to buy this, do include sleeve costs of an additional half the price of the game itself. And yes, you definitely want to buy sleeves because you are going to do a lot of shuffling in this game and games to come.

The insert holds the cards even in sleeves. They used bigger cards as a separators for the various cards (these you don't have to sleeve) which have the names of the different cards written on top for easier sorting. They do look good in the box but I'd prefer slightly bigger cards for sorting so that I don't need to pull them up to see the names written on top. Still they make sorting so much easier as compared to other deck building games like Dominion.

They also provided a board printed double sided. It looks good and will last for many games. This is where most of the cards are placed and where you will be looking at all of the time if not looking at your hand of cards. So yes, the board is a pretty significant component to this game, something I wished Dominion or Elder Sign had.

Game Mechanics 7/10

If you have played deck building games before or know how to play them then skip to the next paragraph. For those of you who are new to the genre, deck building basically takes the fun of building decks with trading card games and makes it into a card game mechanic itself. And trust me, it is fun. You will start with a base deck of 12 cards (in thunderstone at least) and build your deck as the game goes along. Every turn, you will draw a number of cards into your hand to use. Whether you use all of the cards or not, at the end of your turn you discard them all into the discard pile. When your draw deck runs out of cards, you shuffle your discard pile and this becomes your new draw deck. In this way, the cards get "recycled".  Each card will have a cost and a monetary value. You can use cards to buy other cards to give you more or better abilities. The cards that you buy go into the discard pile and will be available to use when you reshuffle your deck and draw them into your hand. Newer players will need to go through the draw deck at least once to understand that discarding cards in this game is not a bad thing. In fact, you don't just want to discard cards, you want to destroy the cards that will not benefit your hand in the long run. That's deck building 101 for you. Now let's get to the gist of this game's gameplay.

Once you know the basics of deck-building, the rest of the gameplay is not too much different than other deck building games. In Thunderstone, you gain victory points by going into the dungeon and defeating mosnters. Each monster has a certain number of victory points, and not just that, some of them have a trophy or ability you can use when added to your hand. As monsters get killed, more come out of the dungeon deck until the Boss of evil comes out. Defeat him and the game is over. Victory points are summed up and the player who has the most Victory Points win the game.

During a turn, the active player may choose either to go to the village to "suit up" or to the dungeons to fight monsters. You cannot do both. Suppose you are not equipped to fight monsters and you do not have enough money to buy stuff or you do not wish to buy anything, then you may choose to either Rest which means destroying (culling) one card in your current hand, or Prepare which means keeping a number of cards in your hand for your next turn, discarding the rest and drawing up to 6 cards into your hand.

There are monetary values on each card and you can use those to buy other cards (equipments, heroes, items, villagers). Unlike Dominion where a card by itself is considered monetary value, a card in Thunderstone has monetary value on all of the cards including heroes and items. This, in my opinion, is a better mechanic because you have more room for strategy - fight or buy stuff?

A good strategy is to cull your deck and destroy all level 0 hero cards (they only give +1 physical attack). Get rid of the cards that would pull you down and keep upgrading your heroes. You can upgrade your heroes by using up XP which you gain when you defeat monsters. A good deck is one where it guarantees every hand you draw will win you something good.

Oh I almost forgot. Throughout the game, you get a pet in the form of a "familiar". This one card is very helpful and you get this by killing your first monster. Then you draw two cards and pick the one that you feel will benefit your strategy. Every player will get only one throughout the whole game so choose wisely.

Replayability 9/10

The replayability is unending from a first timer's perspective. In each game, you will only use three types of monsters and 4 types of level 1-3 heroes. I heard from the friend that there are 20 different types of monsters and 20 different types of heroes. The cards we used for our first game didn't even cover half the number of cards provided. So yes, the replayability is high in my opinion. However, someday you will have used all your cards (especially if you play lots of solo games) and then you might get bored. Then get the expansions and God knows there are so many. Definitely high on the replayability scale.

Gameplay 7/10

I love the idea of dungeon crawling in the form of deck building. I love the idea that we could "level up" and buy weapons and armor. However, when we played this game, it came a bit short for me. I think it was because we could buy heroes. Heroes are meant to level up so how can you buy them? You can also buy multiple of the same heroes to ensure you have enough physical strength to battle the monsters. Per game you get to upgrade to 4 hero types and you get to buy 5 different weapons/armor, which was a bit little in my opinion. There are some specialized weapons that could only help dwarfs and some heroes that had special abilities. Other than that, we just look at their physical attack value. In other words, we are playing heroes with one stat - Physical attack (or better known as strength to the regular dungeon crawlers out there). No defense or speed, no accuracy or magic. Even the magic attacks just stack onto physical attacks.

Thunderstone gives a dumbed-down experience of dungeon crawling without the maps, stats, movement strategy, etc. It is a streamlined dungeon crawling in the form of deck building. Which does not mean the game is not fun. Hey, I rated a 7 for gameplay so it must have its pluses.

Yes, yes it does and is fun. The many cards on the board keep you occupied most of the time, even if it is not yet your turn. We played a 4 player game and the downtime was barely felt (although there were times when some other player was also busy looking at the board they did not even know it had reached their turn, which was frustrating for the rest of us and took a longer time for us to play). Every turn feels very significant, every decision is important. Do I destroy the bad cards this turn or buy a card to strengthen my deck? Do I have enough Physical attacks to kill a monster this turn. The strategy and tactical depth is deep enough to keep a heavy gamer engrossed.

I love the idea of having a pet Familiar. When you draw this card, it stays by your side until you use it to help you out. Some pets don't help you out so much like the one I drew during this game. But it definitely is a good idea. I can imagine myself lurking in the dungeons with my pet beside me. The thought of going into darkness doesn't seem as scary anymore.

For the dungeon deck, we arranged it according to the different levels of monsters (level 1 shuffled and placed at the top, level 2s in the middle and level 3s at the bottom with the Boss). This made much more sense as monsters get stronger and stronger rather than drawing level 3 monsters at the beginning of the game.

During our game, I started out with the worst of lucks. I drew all heroes and no weapons, then all weapons and torches but no heroes. Then my luck grew worse as the game progressed. I decided to cull my deck a lot and only get the necessary cards that I needed (thanks to my friend who owns this game for the strategy tip). Pretty soon, I could draw some pretty descent hands and played them really quickly to kill lots of monsters. I won the game with 31 Victory points and my friend who owned the game tagged behind at 28 (although he killed the Boss).

Overall 7/10

I'm not saying this is a good game because I won. That would make this review useless. It is the experience that matters to me. Did I have a good time playing Thunderstone? Yes, I did. Was the experience worth the time and effort? Yes, it was. Was there enough strategy and tactical depth to keep me thinking even after the game ended? Yes. Was the social interaction between friends rich? Unfortunately, no. We mostly focused on our own decks and our own game strategy that there was not enough time to listen to another person's strategy or even converse about stuff. Though I'm grateful to my friend for teaching me how to build a good deck and watching how the others are playing. I guess all deck building games would suffer from player interaction unless a decision affects everyone else as well.

Though I enjoyed this game, I would not be playing it every game night. My heart still belongs to those nights where we shouted from across the table laughing about the antics of our friends and how our luck took a turn during games. Seeing the true colors of friends and how we can socialize over a board game still means something to me.

Thunderstone Advance Towers of Ruins. A good game if you're looking for a streamlined dungeon crawl, deck building game. Better than Dominion in my opinion but probably not for the casual gamers out there (It will kill some brain cells).

Pros:
-Deck building with level upgrades
-Heroes and many of them
-Combined with dungeon delving
-Plenty of cards = high replayability
-Beautiful components
-Hack and slash monsters
-Good strategy
-Engrossed in the board and cards most of the time

Cons:
-Lacking social interaction
-Not many elements of dungeon crawling


If you have played this, what did you think of the game? Feel free to leave me a comment on your opinion of it.