It's hard to remember how long we've been in lockdown, now. What month is it? What year? It's starting to feel like the only constant is Monday Night Games. We had a chance to try out a couple of new board game implementations on Board Game Arena this week, after I decided to put a few bucks towards their extraordinarily reasonable annual subscription, which allows you to play even more games from their already generous selection with any-number of non-premium members.
First up, 7 Wonders, which was a regular event back in the days when we were allowed to see each other since it is a relatively in-depth game that can support up to seven players. It can look and feel daunting to newbies, though, as it has a lot of bits and pieces and often takes nearly as much time to set and to pack up as to play. The BGA implementation not only comes with no set-up time, but also has handy tool-tip explanations of all of the sometimes obscure iconography, presents all the options clearly, gives the players all sorts of useful information about what they can and cannot afford, and also greatly simplifies working out who around the table is doing what (a process that can be a bit of a challenge when sitting around a table). I thought this was excellent all-around on my wide-screen monitor, but some players did struggle with seeing information about what was going on on other player's boards, especially at the higher player counts, so it might not be perfect for everyone. We blitzed through two games in no time at all (there are only 18 simultaneous turns, after all, so it's not a long game when you don't have to do any cardboard-handling) and everyone had a god time, so this excellent implementation is likely to be added to our regular rotation.
A slightly less barn-storming implementation is the one provided for Diamant, found on BGA under the older title of Incan Gold. I was originally introduced to the game using the old name and artwork and feel a certain nostalgic fondness for them, but players who had only seen the newer artwork were rather put off by the old aesthetic. I also found myself missing the in/out meeples instead of the clumsy cards and the player colour-coded chests, but neither of these clear improvements were present in Incan Gold board game, so I guess it makes sense that I faithful reproduction wouldn't use them. All that could be overlooked for the sake of the game, which works perfectly well, but unfortunately, some pretty poor design choices have been made in the creation of the implementation itself which make it frustrating to play. The gems, which had a satisfying jade, topaz and obsidian quality to them in the tabletop game, have been changed to a garish neon green. Many actions happen one-by-one instead of simultaneously, killing off a lot of the suspense and sudden take-that moments that are the thing that usually give this game it's real stand-out tense atmosphere. The expeditions display is bugged, confusing players about how many turns they have remaining to score points in. And displaying the player scores in an arial font on the player cards (but not in the middle, so that people usually miss it) is just ugly. Overall, I think this is probably a pretty dated implementation that could be greatly improved by a little bit of a facelift, which I hope that it gets at some point, because Diamant is a good little game that more people ought to know about. I suspect we'll keep playing it now and then because it fills a good niche, but the downsides listed above prevent it from being the hit that 7 Wonders definitely was.
It seems like BGA is here to stay, then, and as more and more of the gang get accounts, the barriers to entry become lower and lower. So far we've been keeping to well-trod paths, but I hope to branch out a little in the coming weeks to teaching people a couple of games that I know well, like Puerto Rico and Sushi Go!, and even maybe even launching into games that I know by reputation but have never gotten a chance to try out, like Race for the Galaxy. I reckon that teaching something from scratch will be a much more challenging and imprecise process that doing so in person, but it seems like this is going to be the shape of our life here for a little while yet, so I suspect I'll have plenty of time to perfect my method.
Happy gaming!
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