Andrew Family Games, Game Reviews, Two Player Games

Potion Explosion, 2nd Edition

We’re big Harry Potter fans in this house, so when a game comes along that lets you brew magical potions we had to give it a go.

In Potion explosion, players are trying to gather ingredients to complete magical potions. Each potion had a different level of difficulty based on which ingredients it needs, and the harder it is to complete the more points it’s worth. Whichever player has the most points at the end wins.

Getting ingredients doesn’t involve opening dusty bottles full of weird smells. Instead you you have a dispenser full of glass marbles that randomly fall into five rows. Each marble represents an ingredient and on your turn you get to remove one. If that makes two or more others of the same colour touch, you get to take those as well, and so on. They make a satisfying ‘clink’ when they smack together and it’s a lot of fun when you manage to set off a chain of collisions and collect a pile of ingredients in one go.

Let’s say that you need blue and black marbles to complete your potion. If you took the black one from the middle row the three blue would touch and you’d get those too, and you can see there’s a black just at the top of the dispenser as well that would roll down and touch the three black marbles at the bottom as well, giving you five black and three marbles from that go. Kaboom! Ingredients galore!

You may not need that many, but you might be able to store them for later or if the other players are working on potions that need them you have just denied them the easy move.

You can work on two potions at a time in your little laboratory, and you can store some extra ingredients for later in case you need them. There’s a total of eight different types of potion, and even within the same type they need different ingredients so you need to keep an eye on what is coming up on the stack and plan your collecting around that as well as on what’s in front of you now..

Once you’ve completed a potion you can ‘drink’ it. The game is a whole lot more fun if this involves you picking it up, taking a swig and making the appropriate sound effects, but basically it just means you activate it’s special effect.

Each of the eight types have a different effect. One lets you take a marble of each colour from the bottom of the dispenser, one lets you use any colour of ingredient in your flask in a potion, another lets you steal all items from another players flask. You can chain these together as well to help you complete more potions. Once that’s done you turn them around to show that they have been used, but the points from them still count at the end of the game.

We’d had our eye on this game for a while, but there were reports of the cardboard dispenser in the first edition breaking so we held off until we heard that they were releasing a new version. The only change in the second edition is that the dispenser has been replaced by a plastic one.

The game pieces are made of thick cardboard and there are no printing errors that I’ve noticed. The artwork is fun and consistent and fits the theme perfectly and the addition of proper old school glass marbles really adds something to the game that plastic marbles wouldn’t have. There’s even a bag of spare marbles included in case you lose some. The box is solid and the rule book is clear and helpful.

We did find an issue and I’m not sure if it’s a problem with the overall manufacturing or just our copy, but the new dispenser has a drawer at the back that is meant to let you store the marbles when not in use. There seems to be some additional plastic on ours that means that you can’t open it. I’ll try and fix it at some point but it’s a bit disappointing that it was shipped out like this.

Another issue is that the box insert isn’t great. The potions are an odd shape and even though the rule book shows you how to store them we find that they tend to fall out and end up loose in the box even when stored horizontally. We ended up putting them into ziplock bags which does solve the issue but I’d have liked to have seen some more effort go into the design here.

Setup is a pain too. You’re only meant to play with six of the eight potions at a time so some sort of clever dividers to keep them separate would have greatly helped. Even if you’re careful to separate them out when packing up, they all get mixed up by the time you want to play again because of the insert problem.  Because the dispenser takes up a lot of space they seem to have crowded everything else together without too much thought.

Once you get past the few issues mentioned above, you’ll find that there’s a really fun game here. While it does look like a kids game, and I’m sure that older kids could play with no problem, it has enough depth that we really enjoy it ourselves. In some respects you will get out what you put in – get into the spirit of things and add your own sound effects to the action and it’s far more entertaining than without them.

We’ve played multiple times with two players and it works really well. Most of the time you’re working on your own potions and not interacting with the other player that much so there’s no hint that anything is missing from the lack of more players. More players should be fun though, as it gives you more flasks to steal from and a higher turnover in the dispenser. The game is not so heavy that it discourages conversation and it only takes about half an hour to play with two.

I’d rate it 3.5/5, with points lost due to the design and manufacturing issues.

Andrew Card Games, Family Games, Tile Laying

Shuffle Cards – Connect 4

As a child I had the original Connect 4. I distinctly recall the blue plastic frame with the feet that were impossible to get in and the bright yellow and red playing pieces.

I remember playing countless games with family and friends and really enjoying it. Somewhere along the way though the frame broke and the rest of it went to the great game cupboard in the sky. I never bothered to replace it as an adult, knowing that it wouldn’t have the same appeal now.

Even though I’d outgrown the original, I was intrigued when I saw that they had released a card based version of the game, and at $8 on sale I grabbed it. It doesn’t resemble the original game that much once you start playing it but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game.

It comes in this little plastic case, shown below. There’s a whole range of these card games based on their famous big brothers and they all come in similar cases. I have a few and I’d expected the plastic clip to have broken by now but it’s held up pretty well. The sticker peels up at the edges though and at some point I’l either have to glue it down again or tear it off.

Inside the case is a set of mission cards and a set of tiles. The cards are quite flimsy and the tiles are the same thickness as the cards, not a nice solid cardboard like in Carcassonne or Cacao. There’s also a tiny rulebook. I would have liked a bit more quality but even at full price these are only around $20AU so you can’t expect too much.

To play, each player gets two mission cards and then takes turn laying out the tiles trying to make the pattern that matches their mission. if you complete a mission you take another and continue until someone has finished four of them.

The tiles either have a four coloured dots, a multi-coloured dot indicating that it’s a wild, a blank, or one of three action symbols – the plus allows you to play that tile over an existing one, the minus lets you remove a tile and the rotate symbol lets you spin an existing tile to help you complete your missions.

The mission cards are straightforward. You either get four of the same colour in a row like in the original game, going in any direction, or a square or L shape of four. If you completed a mission that the other player also has they get to claim it as well so you need to watch what they are trying to do and avoid finishing yours if it will give them the win.

Every game we’ve played has been really fast, under 10 minutes to complete four mission cards. There’s just enough strategy with taking the spots the other player needs or removing their tiles to make it competitive, and it’s actually a lot of fun.

You could teach it in a few minutes and the small packaging means it’s a good travel game. The rules say that if you want to make it more competitive you can play with the mission cards face up, so you can see what the other player is going for and block them, and that could be fun too.

The few things I don’t like are the low quality components, it would have been far nicer with thicker tiles, and I think there’s too may tiles with blanks and actions compared to the ones with just four coloured dots. Other than these minor complaints I’m happy with it for the price. I’ve only tried it with two players but we’ve probably played 10+ times given it’s over so quickly. It’s a decent filler game at a low price.

Andrew Family Games, Game Reviews, Word Games

Scattergories

After writing my review of Codenames : Harry Potter my mind turned to Scattergories because I experience a similar feeling of brain-strain when playing.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s an older game that was first published in 1988 and is now sold by Hasbro. Being older doesn’t take away from it being quite challenging though and it’s one we enjoy quite a lot.

Inside the box there’s a multi-sided dice with a letter on each face, an egg timer, a stack of cards listing a variety of categories and a pad of sheets to write your answers on. There’s also some cardboard holders to hide your answer sheet from other players but those are optional. The rules are inside the top of those cardboard holders.

To play, you each take an answer sheet and one of the category cards. There’s multiple copies of each so that everyone can have their own.

Someone rolls the dice and turns over the egg timer. You then get until the timer runs out to write up to three items per category onto your answer sheet. They must start with the letter shown on the dice.

Once the timer runs out you get a point for each valid answer. If you managed three items per category for all twelve categories you’d get 36 points. You can also have answers with multiple words starting with the same letter eg “Pickled Peppers” and that would be worth two points.

It sounds easy, but it’s amazing how blank I find my mind going when I have to think of Three Terms of Measurement starting with the letter L. Litre, Light Year and League are all valid, but when you’re staring at the page they don’t come easily to mind.

Some letters and category combinations are much easier than others. If you roll M you’re have a much easier run than if you roll O. I think the most I’ve ever scored was about 18, most of the time it’s more like the 11 or 12 range and I’m lucky to fill in all the spots. Other’s I’ve played with have mentioned the same problem. You know the answers but trying to remember them under pressure is tough.

Because there’s multiple lists of categories and you could end up with any letter combination with them there’s a lot of replay value in this and there’s almost no setup or teaching time it’s a good one to play with non-gamer friends

It’s a fun and quick filler game that can actually be quite challenging and also frustrating, but in a good way.

Andrew Card Games, Family Games, Game Reviews, Two Player Games

Baba Yaga

Woooooooo! Avoid evil spells, gather witches and effectively use large seaside birds on your way to victory in this light card game from Gamewright.

Gamewright isn’t a publisher I normally give much time too. Their range is mostly targeted at a younger audience and doesn’t usually appeal to me but we picked this one up a couple of years ago when  browsing the shelves at the local game store just because the box and description caught our eye.

It’s a standard ‘draw 5 cards and do something with them’ style game where the aim is to selectively trade the cards in your hand with the cards on the table until what you hold equals four or less. It’s quite straightforward to learn and plays quickly but there’s enough strategy in it to make it interesting. We often use this as a filler game when we only have 15-30 minutes free and want to pass the time. It may also have some educational value as you have to do addition of your potion cards to be able to play the other cards but who wants to think about that?

It comes in a small format box, about two decks of cards wide and about 2 decks high. It’s a solid glossy cardboard and seems to be holding up well.

When you lift the top off, you can that there’s a rule pamphlet, a couple of promotional leaflets and the cards themselves set inside a plastic insert. The cards are standard playing card size and have a slight linen finish. They have stayed flat and aren’t showing much wear even after many plays.

The cards come with three different back colours. Most have a black back, and they are the ones you will use to form your starting hand and draw from. The other two are the Owl cards (blue) and Baba Yaga (red) cards. These are never drawn normally and can only be gained by activating the pelican spell card from the black cards. The owl can be traded for two baba yaga cards, while the baba yaga has a value of 0 so reduces the total in your hand.

I initially thought that having different colour backs was a bad idea because it meant that your opponents can see how close you are to winning but once you look at the spell cards you’ll see why it’s this way.

These are what the black cards look like. There’s a lot of potion cards with different numbers, a wild potion card that can be used as any number, plus four different spell cards. If you have a spell card you need to play it plus potion cards exactly equaling it’s point value to activate it.

Each of these does something different

  • Pelican card – when you play this, you can choose to either pick up a blue owl or red baba yaga card. I told you, large seaside birds play a big part in this game!
  • Garlic Card – you can play it at any time without needing to trade potions in for it to block a spell card.
  • Lost Wand – Make everyone but you return either an owl or baba yaga to the table and draw a random card from the draw pile
  • Cats – Take a baba yaga or owl from a player of your choice. Also good for losing friends or making your significant other mad.

Example play

The table gets set up like this, though this is a few turns in to show the two discard piles. During your turn, you can either play a spell card, or discard a card to one of the two discard piles and either take the top card from the other discard pile or the draw pile. The only time you can’t take a card from a discard pile is if it’s a spell card that has been activated rather than just discarded.

Because the other players can take the card you discard, you have to be careful with what and where you discard. Assuming that the other player discarded that pelican to make room for potion cards, you might try and pick it up to use it. On the other hand, you may want that 7 instead to activate an owl card next turn so you go for it instead.

Imagine you have these cards in your hand. You have a pelican and potions totaling seven so you can play it to one of the discard piles and take either and owl or a baga yaga

This is what your hand will then look like. You still need to draw three random cards from the draw pile so you have five again, but if you do the same thing a few times you’ll soon have a hand worth less than four and are the winner. You may instead decide to go for the owl card rather than the baba yaga knowing you can get 7 points worth of potions in your hand fairly quickly and then trade for two instead.

I really like the game. I know some other reviewers have said that there’s too much “discard one, pick up one, repeat” to it but I really haven’t found that to be a problem. You may have to change your strategy a bit based on what comes up in the discard piles and to slow the other players down but it’s always fast and I’ve found it really playable. We’ve only played it with two players and it works great there, I’m sure it would be fun with more as well though.

Sadly it seems to have been discontinued by the publisher but it’s still available online in a few places so it’s worth getting a copy while you can.