Essen 2014 – Games Played

Here are a few ‘mini Reviews’ of the games I played at Essen 2014

Tanto Cuore: Oktoberfest Edition

From the bedroom to the bar…

Same game with a few changes.

We played Tanto Cuore last year at Essen and found it to be a standard deck builder with a dodgy theme. It was sending your chambermaids to the bedroom…

This year the overly large breasted artwork remains but the theme has changed to get the beer in.

It’s still just a standard deck builder and was in early prototype form.

It’s good fun, but not the best deck builder.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf: Daybreak

One of the best games of last year…

…made better!

I really enjoyed One Night Ultimate Werewolf last Essen and this one was just as good.

This comes with all new roles and each one bringing something different.

Roles include a Werewolf that doesn’t open their eyes, a character that flips a non-werewolf/tanner card face up and a curator that gives out a random counter that gives them a role that overrides their role card.

I had the Village Idiot that moved everyone’s card to the left or right, except mine. I outed the Werewolves by saying I moved everyone right when I moved everyone left, Villagers won. Yay!

The iPad app looked great too and all the characters fit on it well. It might be a little cramped on a phone but you can’t really complain.

A very good game, waiting for this one to come out retail.

Hick Hack in Gackelwack

Chickens, Foxes and Poo…

…and frustration!

This is the same series of games as Pickomino with gameplay like Om Nom Nom.

There are 6 farms that have a random cube dropped on each one. Each player then plays a card from their hand and simultaneously reveals.

If you play a chicken, you eat all the cubes on that tile and discard your chicken. Cubes are in 3 colours worth 1, 2 and 3 points. If more than 1 player plays a chicken to the same farm they either negotiate a split or rolls a D6 and add that to the value of the chicken, winner takes all.

If you play a poo card (worth -2 points), you take a green cube from the farm that matches the colour no matter who else played a chicken there.

Should you play a fox you eat all the chickens that match the colour farm of the fox you have played. Chickens are worth their value in points at the end of the game.

After a few rounds, the game ends. You get points for your cubes and chickens you ate.

Summary

It’s really fun. I compared it with Om Nom Nom because you might have a farm with 6-7 points worth of cubes on it so do you play a Chicken to eat them? But other players will so maybe you go for that 3-4 point farm which will have less competition. But maybe you have a 6 value Chicken and will have a position of power to negotiate from if you need to… What if someone plays a fox and eats you all.. or why not play the fox yourself?

I love this kind of game. We played it a couple of times in the evening, once playing 2 cards a turn and once playing one (which is correct for 4 players).

Playing 2 cards was fun and added something but it also gave you a safety net, the fear wasn’t there. You could play a safe card and risky one and usually end up getting something out of it.

Looking forward to playing it again.

Dungeon Guilds

Cute on the outside…

…evil on the inside!

In this game, you need to earn the most gold by exploring and defeating dungeons.

Each player starts with a set of Heroes, each with a strength of 1-5 and $2.

Shuffle the Dungeon Master cards, put 1 per player in a deck and put the rest in the box.

Each round you shuffle the room cards and deal out 1 card per player face down. These are ranked level 1 to 3 and are placed in ascending order with a dungeon master room at the bottom.

Players then secretly choose 2 adventurers to not take part in this round and then you get gold equal to their healing level. So leaving out the stronger Heroes for the round gains you the most Gold now but you don’t get to use them.

Phases

After this setup phase, there are 3 more phases in a round.

Placement – The first player takes one of 3 actions and passes play to the left.
The last player takes 2 actions, play continues right and the first player taking 2 actions etc
Play continues until all players have exactly 2 Adventurers in the dungeon. You can…

Place an Adventurer – Either on the left or right space on any dungeon, if there are two Heroes and their strength is equal to or greater than the maximum strength of the Dungeon it becomes locked.

Bump an Adventurer – If a Dungeon is full and still unlocked you can bump an adventurer from a space and replace it with an adventurer with a greater strength. You pay a fee to the Bank/Bumped player depending on the level of the Dungeon.

Replace an Adventurer – Replace one of your own adventurers with one of greater strength in an unlocked Dungeon playing 1 to the bank

Pass – If you have 2 adventurers in the dungeon you can pass, but you may be able to take actions later in your turn. If your two adventurers are both in locked Dungeons there is nothing else for you to do.

Resolution

Then there is the Resolution Phase, starting with the lowest level dungeon, flip the card and resolve it. If the combined strength of the adventurers is equal to or greater than the defence of the room, it is defeated. The treasure value of the room is divided between the players owning the adventurers in the Dungeon with the stronger adventurer taking any remainder.

Resolve the next room and continue until all rooms have been completed or there is a failure… If a failure, the current room, and ALL REMAINING ROOMS fail.

Players pay the bank equal to the total of healing costs on their adventurers in all failed rooms.

After each player has taken a turn going first, the player with the most money wins with tiebreakers being broken by the player with the stronger unplaced adventurer on the final round.

I’ve been after it for a year ever since Tom Vasel did a review on this. It’s quite backstabby without being overly backstabby. You can try and make early dungeons fail if you see your opponents locking down later ones, why should they get all the treasure?

A good fun game, looking forward to playing it more.

Villannex

Very tiny, quite cute.

No idea what I’m doing but it only takes a minute.

Each player is dealt 6 cards, then everyone shows 4 of them to each other player so everyone knows what cards are in the round.

You then pick 2 of your 6 cards and match them up to your production window and each player reveals simultaneously

You then work out what you have produced and how much each item you have produced is worth.

Add them up, most points wins.

Very simple, very hard to judge. The game we played 20 points won in and they gained 15 points from one card they didn’t even play. You could produce a bunch of Wood only to have an opponent make wood worth negative points.

Will have to play this again to see if there are tactical choices that can be made.

Dark Tales

Every day they’re out there making…

Dark Tales! Woo-oo!

Come for the artwork, stay for the game.

You basically draw a card, play a card then do what it says on it. Cards are played either in front of you, in the middle or to the discard pile. Most have an effect depending on what is in play such as ‘gain 2 points for each evil character in play.

Cards go back and forth in and out of play and players will gain points and items as the game goes on.

Items can be used in different ways from game to game which takes us to the best bit.

There are two scoring cards in each game and both are taken from a random pile so each game plays quite differently.

We played this twice, once with just the base set then back at the hotel with the expansion and enjoyed both. Looking forward to playing it again.

Cypher

Not a game I wasn’t bothered about…

…but for £2 I’ll take it 🙂

Yep, picked it up in a bundle with Empire Engine, thank you AEG 🙂

So this is Love Letter-ish, draw 1 play 1. But this time the start player gets 3 cards, the last player gets 1 card and everyone else gets 2.

On your turn, you draw 1, play 1, resolve it, pass a card left, pass a card right.

The cards you play are characters of Upper, Middle and Lower class and they have abilities that mess around with each other and your opponents while in play.

When the deck runs out the game ends and you core points for your characters.

We only played it once and it was pretty good… Not Love Letter/Lost Legacy good but good all the same. Looking forward to trying it more.

World of Tanks: Rush

Deck building with Tanks.

Medals are honour.

It’s a pretty good twist on a standard deck builder actually.

You buy Tanks, yeah but you also have to defend your bases while attacking others. You can destroy their tanks too.

There are lots of abilities on cards and ways to score. Scoring cards differ from game to game which is pretty cool although it does start off pretty slow. The ways you gain points, or Medals as they are, are wide and varied.

It’s not on the same level as Trains or Marvel Legendary for me but it’s pretty good all the same. I wouldn’t own it but I’d like to play it again.

Cappuccino

Abstract cup stacking game…

Let’s see who has the biggest one.

So you lay out the cups so the hexes are all touching each other.

Then you can move a cup to an adjacent space, covering the cup. You can move a whole stack to cover another stack as long as it’s equal to or greater in height.

You do this until no one can move.

Then you take each stack that is topped with your colour, stack them up and see who has the biggest one.

Simple.

A pretty nice game but one I wouldn’t play too often I think. Still, I would again.

Dino Race

Race towards the finish…

..and away from the Lava.

A track is created with tiles starting with a Volcano and trailing around the table. Everyone gets 2 Dinosaurs on tile 1 and 2.

The start player gets the Egg, and blessing and a curse. You play cards from your hand matching a terrain tile to move your dinosaurs forward.

Then you roll a die. If it’s a terrain type everyone draws a card for each Dinosaur on that Terrain. if it’s a volcano, the player rolling the die takes a fire token. You then flip over the Volcano, or the next tile in its path and the Lava starts chasing you around the board.

If you get a Lava token and you’re holding the egg you discard your hand. There are cards that let you pass the egg, and knock down Dino’s on your tile.

When you finish you get point tokens but if you cross the line with the egg you get another, different one, most points wins.

Nice bit of fun, what it lacks in tactical play it makes up in cuteness 🙂

Lap Dance

A quite controversial game…

Well, now I’ve played it, twice.

You’re trying to earn the most money by giving guests what they want. These are drinks, cigars, men, women etc

You’re going to flip over a demand card and it tells you which types of cards you can play from your hand, also what rewards you can get.

In a Steam Park kind of way, the first player to select their 4 cards takes the 1st player token. Each round has a random card that restricts, or adds to, what you can do.

So then, in order you take all the dice cards have given you plus 2 and roll them. You have to keep at least one but you can re-roll as many as you like until you run out.

Then you work out which rewards you get, take them and pass the dice.

There are some people who let you put a token on them to get a bonus action which is the reason to go first, these spaces are limited.

Also, some clients give you a weird task such as making a dramatic pose after rolling the dice or only speaking as if you have an earpiece.

Summary

It could be good fun, but choosing the dice and working out which rewards you earn takes FOREVER! If you go first in one round and 4th the next you can spend 20+ minutes just selecting 4 cards in your hand. other peoples turns aren’t that interesting either.

Might work for other groups though.

Patronize

Trick Taking in the World of Tempest from the designer of Trains.

Not a bad combination.

This is a very interesting take on trick-taking. I’ve already enjoyed games like ebbes and Chronicle and this is another one that adds something to the genre.

You flip over a Fame card which shows you how many points it’s worth and also what the trump suit is. In the pic above you can see it’s a 7 with no Trump.

Then in turn order, everyone may add one of the 4 character cards in their hand to the trick to try and win it. I say may add as you HAVE to skip two of the six rounds per game. Also, once per game, you can put a black cube on top of your character to protect them, more on that later.

Resolve

The player with the highest rank wins the trick and keeps the fame card. The trump suit, of course, is more important than those offsuit, fairly standard stuff.

The winner also becomes the new first player and takes a cube of the colour on their card. Again in the pic above, you see the Cartographer gives you a blue cube.

The losers, being everyone who entered the trick but didn’t win, takes a cube of the colour on their card plus a cube of the colour on the card to their left. Yep, you get 2 for losing…

Everyone who added a black protection cube to their character removes the cube from the game and adds the characters to their ‘Proteges’.

Everyone who passed can either steal an unprotected character left in play or take a cube of any colour from the supply. Characters that weren’t stolen are added to their respective players Protege area.

So after 6 rounds the game ends and you have cubes and Proteges, but why?

Well, for each cube of a colour you get 2 points or 5 if you have 2. Then 5 points for each cube you have in excess of 2.

Then the Proteges you have may give you a bonus for certain cube types. The Cartographer in the example image counts as a blue cube for example. Others give a bonus if you have the most of a colour etc

Remember I said you have to skip 2 rounds? Well if you skip 3 or more you’ll have cards left in your hand, you lose 10 points for each card… ouch.

Summary

This is a fun game that might knock Chronicle out of my collection. While I love Chronicle, and Seiji Kanai, this is just a nicer, more tactical game with a more down to earth theme.

Blood of the Werewolf

Werewolf + Hanabi – Weird Scoring System = Good Game

Another win from Taiwan.

Players are dealt characters, either human or Werewolf with two characters being laid face down in the middle of the table. One with a red confidential marker on it, one with a blue one.

Each player is always dealt a Mutation card that gives a one-shot ability.

Players hold their character card outwards, Hanabi style.

During your turn, you can…

Accuse a player by placing a confidential marker and card (from in front of a player or middle), in front of any other player (including yourself which is a risky move as you’ll see later)

Trial – If a player has both confidential markers in front of them they are sentenced to death (see, told you :)) The player places their character card face down without looking at it and gives both confidential cards to two DIFFERENT players.

They can’t look at their card, or any other face down card as you can still stay in the discussion.

If there is a confidential card in front of you on your turn, you may look at it (advantage to giving yourself one), this is called Disclosure. If you give yourself a second marker you will go to trial before getting to look at the card, so that sucks.

The Mutations each player have can be played at any time.

Play continues to the left until the game end is triggered.

Game End

Depending on player numbers, the game ends if 1 or 2 players remain. If 2-3 players remain, again depending on player numbers the ‘claimable threshold’ has been met.

This means the active player can claim victory by saying both remaining players are on the same team. If they claim victory and the other players refuse, the active player dies and this will automatically be the game down to the game end.

Then there is the scoring system…

Reveal all surviving characters and face down characters under the confidential markers.

For each surviving character in your team (Human or Werewolf) you gain 1 point, you get half a point for a confidential member of your team.

It’s pretty good. I’ve only played one round with 4 players and this means we all had the same Mutation. With more players you add more interesting ones.

The way the game is played and the Hanabi style card holding makes this stand out as a social deduction game.

Illegal

Wheeling and Dealing.

Swap your porn for my cocaine?

You start with a Seller card and a bunch of cards showing the ‘thing’ they sell. If you have the Porn guy you start with a bunch of porn, and maybe an Alcohol card or two.

You also have a buyer who shows you what you’re trying to get hold of.

Then you have 4 minutes of walking around trading things with other people. Trade away your stock good for the one you want… but without giving much information out.

After the trading is done and before cards are revealed you go through each seller card and do a simultaneous vote. If a majority of the players pick the right person, they lose loads of points.

So not only do you need to trade for things you want secretly, you need to trade for things you don’t want to trade them away later, to keep yourself hidden.

It’s a fun game but sadly it needs a GM… or does it?

There is a way now that the GM can take part in the game making it slightly more appealing.

It’s a fun game and the non-GM variant means I’ll probably pick this one up.

Empire Engine

A quest to have the best Engine in all the Empire.

This game can turn on you.

You start with 2 cogs, left and right. In the first round, everyone simultaneously reveals them and resolves actions on the top edge of the cog.

You can Arm Soldiers, Produce Goods into your ready pile or and Invent Inventions directly into your score pile.

You can Attack another player or Defend from a potential attack.

Or you can Export all of your goods from your stock to your score pile or Salvage a cube from your stock to your score pile.

Your Stock is open information, your score pile is secret. But this game sounds dull so far, let’s get to the good bit.. gears.

Gears

From round 2 onwards you put a gear under your Engine and simultaneously reveal. The 2 and 1 turn the gear 2 or 1 space to the right, changing the topmost icon and selecting your action for that cog this round.

You can use a cube form your stockpile and place it on the cog before revealing to use their alternate amount of 3 and 0.

You play over a few rounds and points are scored for cubes in your score pile.

The game has an interesting choice When to defend, when to attack. I want to Export but my opponent knows that so they’ll attack but I can’t Export and Defend on the same turn etc etc

Lot’s of things to consider every move. The game doesn’t last too long either. A pretty good game I’m glad to own.

League of Hackers

A super fun hacking competition in the future?

Or Race for the Galaxy without the complexity?

So in this game, you’re a hacker hacking other people servers and dealing ‘damage’ to score points. You need to defend your servers to reduce the amount of damage dealt.

There are 4 actions you can take, Install, Defence, Attack or Mitigation. Each player chooses an action tile and places it face down on top of the card they’re going to play.

Cards used to pay the cost of the played card are placed under that one. What do the actions do?

Well, Install let’s you add a new Server to your set up. You start with one and installing more is a good thing.

The Defence action increases the defence of your servers depending on the colour of the card played. these are marked on a card. Defence cards stay in front of you too and have an action on them that activates each time you use one of the 4 actions.

It’s always fun to Attack, the attack cards have 4 options and the option you choose depends on the amount you have paid to activate it. Attacks, like the Defence cards, target a single colour.

Mitigation – Choose any amount of cards to pay to remove damage from your servers. You must choose this action when you can’t pay for other actions.

End Round

After players have taken 5 actions or when no players have cards left in hand, the round ends, you apply all round end effects first, then players gain points for their server cards.

Gain 1 VP for each hole that is not covered by Damage tokens.
Gain bonus VP listed on each server card that doesn’t have any Damage tokens on all holes on that server.

Then you clear all damage, deal new cards and play 2 more rounds. Servers get bigger and better as the rounds go on.

It’s a very fun game. The theme is cool and it’s not too complicated especially when compared to similar style games.

One I’m glad to own.

Wazabi

Get rid of your dice…

…and try not to flip the table!

A very simple game.

Everyone gets some dice.

From the Blurb…

With dice we can give a dice to an another player, draw cards, and/or play a card.

Cards can remove dice from the game, give dice to another player, draw other cards, or many other interactive things.

The winner is the first player to have no dice left.

That’s how simple it is, and it’s a lot of silly fun. MANY ‘Stand Up Die Roll’ moments and a lot of crossed fingers. Very fun game.

Fatal Rendez Vous

Dancing, Spinning and Blinking…

..also, Muuuurderrrrrr.

This is a Werewolf style game based in a dinner party… kinda?

It requires a Moderator, or Butler as it is in this case.. they wear a Bow Tie which is included in the game.

Players are assigned roles, 2 Assassins and the rest are guests.

Players dance around the room, moving around. Then everyone closes their eyes in a sort of ‘Night Phase’. The Assassins open their eyes and pick a play to kill. They do this by tapping them on the should 3 times. The victim (is supposed to) count down from 10 then die by screaming.

Wanna see what that looks like? I took this video at Essen where two of my friends were the Assassins. ( I was dead!)

The dead people are out of the game. But everyone votes to pick two people to be arrested. They are handcuffed together (again, the handcuffs come with the game) and sit out the next round.

Then comes the day party, players dance in circles with their eyes open and the Assassin signal their target by blinking at them.

Sounds silly but works. It gives the Guests some information.

You play until al the Guests are dead or both Assassins are arrested together and no one dies during the night.

It was fun, silly fun but could be proxied? It wasn’t expensive but most bits you could make yourself.

Like any good Werewolf style game, there are more roles too and a lot of them sound really good.

One to pick up on the cheap I think.

Monster Hero Academy

Become a teacher of the year by having the best Monster students.

Not that you have any control over it.

So you get a card that requires a stat, you draft students left and add a card from your hand to boost them. Then you draft obstacles right and give it to another player. Highest in the required stat wins.

Lots of randomness in this game. Very hard to strategically pick a card and add to it. Lots of ‘switch that thing you picked for a random one’ too.

Hard to take control of your turn.

Pinnochio: True or False

A game about lying…

…but you already knew that.

The blurb explains all.

Pinocchio: True or False is an enlightening and bonding storytelling game. A player draws a subject card, chooses one of the four subjects on the card, decides whether the story they are going to tell will be true or just a lie, then begins their story. The other players listen to the story to judge its veracity. After the story has been told, the one who grabs the Pinocchio doll first can ask the storyteller a question, which the storyteller must answer honestly — unless the story is a lie, of course, in which case they can say what they want.

Each player then secretly votes on whether or not the story was a lie. Those who guess incorrectly must take a wooden nose block and make Pinocchio’s nose grow by stacking their block onto his ever-lengthening nose. When a player places the nose block, the tree rings on the block must be fully covered and not visible. If any blocks fall, whoever caused this gets an “Angel Token”. When a player gets his third angel token, the game ends after this round, and the player with the fewest angel tokens win.

In order to make gameplay more challenging, if half or more players guess correctly as to whether the story is or isn’t true, the storyteller must also add a block to the nose. Therefore, the storyteller should do their best to make the story confusing.

Not a bad game but very situational. Would be good for an ice breaker or to play at a con with strangers.

Having said that, I do like ‘Would I lie to you‘ and this is a board game version of that, in a way.

Cool Pinocchio statue too.

Pick-a-Polar Bear

GO!

Stop! Ah no, wait stop, awww dammit…

Polar bear cards are laid out in a 6×5 grid.

Everyone is dealt 1 card face down, then someone shouts go!

You flip up your card and look at the board. you’re looking to grab a Polar Bear that has one difference between the one in your hand and the one on the board. When you pick one, you need to find another than has one difference with your new card.

When someone thinks they can’t take another card they say ‘Stop’. Their last card is checked, if they could have taken another card, they’re out! If not they get a free card to add to their score.

Then every player’s stack is checked, if they made a mistake, they’re out too!

Players who didn’t make a mistake count their cards, most cards wins.

A nice light fun game, I bought it for my nephew so I’ll be playing this again.

Weykick

Not the kind of Tabletop Game I usually write about.

But it’s fun all the same.

So you have 3 players on the pitch, 2 magnet controllers underneath. You move the players around and try to score goals.

Controlling 3 players with 2 handles is hard so we tended to camp on the goal line.

We played it for a bit, I won a little mini-tournament.

Lots of fun but obviously very expensive.

Bucket King 3D

A bucket pyramid and hand management.

What’s not to like?

This is a fun game. It has the tenseness of a Lobo 77 type game where you send play around the table and HOPE it doesn’t get back to you.

In my tower, above you can see that losing a blue bucket is fine, I just knock the one off the top… But a green or yellow? That would have been a disaster!

A very fun game and a big thank you to my friends Craig and Matt for getting this for my birthday 🙂

Chosŏn

Chosŏn, the sequel to Koryŏ.

I have never heard of Koryŏ.

This game is played over 8 rounds. In round 1 you draw 10 card and can keep 3 at the end of the round. Each round sees you draw one less but increase the amount of cards you can keep by one.

You play cards of the same ‘suit’, or one each of two different suits and play them face down. or you can play 3 action cards or a character and an action.

You actually discard the rest of your cards so this is an easy process usually not having that ‘what should I keep?’ feeling hanging over your head.

Then, in player order, you reveal the played cards and activate their abilities if you played an action. You can only activate abilities if you have the majority of that suit so going first is an advantage. Abilities let you do stuff like make a player discard a card in front of them or take the first player token… stuff like that.

After 8 rounds the game ends and points are scored. it’s possible to have a token (I forget the name) that gives you 3 points at the end of the game unless your score is less than 10 then it’s doubled.

I enjoyed this one. Not sure how many plays it will take to be done with it but it’s a nice card game. I would have bought this if I hadn’t already filled my suitcase 🙂

Wok Star

If you’re going to give your game a name like this…

..it better be good!

So you turn over cards and they show what the customer wants. You spend the ingredients that you need by matching the recipe card. The card tells you which table (player) is next.

This drawing and moving ingredients is timed, you have 15-30 seconds per table depending on the difficulty.

Each player, a part form having a special ability, produces ingredients. You roll dice at the beginning of your turn and you use dice on your own cards, or pass to others to use in order to gain ingredients. This needs to be done before the timer is stopped.

After a round, you can upgrade your ingredients cards or buy new recipes.

The goal is to make $80 is rounds 3, we made $75… oh well!

Not a bad game but one play was enough for me.

Eat  Me If You Can!

Sleep or Trap?

You decide…

In this game, one person is the Wolf…

Each player has a house with a Little Pig or Red Riding hood etc…

The players with the house set the dial on the back to sleep or trap. Then the Wolf moves the standee around each front door, building tension. It actually really does too!

When they pick a door, scoring happens.

If the Wolf didn’t pick your house and you slept, you gain the points equal tot he value of your house.

The other scoring I don’t remember but basically, the Wolf is trying to visit a house that has a sleeping character to gain points.

The other players are trying to Sleep but buff that they set traps so that the Wolf doesn’t come to them, or vice versa.

As the houses have different values you can use that to your advantage. If you have the 3 point house you’re more likely to set a trap, but the Wolf knows that…  so you can set it to sleep… right?

Good game that someone in our group bought so I’m looking forward to playing it again.

Dragon Slayer

A Push Your Luck dice game about slaying Dragons.

Challenge me if you dare!

There are 3 Dragons to pick which are easy, medium and hard each worth an increasing amount of points.

You pick a Dragon and roll its 3 dice along with your 4 dice. You trying to roll and Head, Body and Tail on the Dragon along with an Axe on your dice.

If you do, you kill it and can either quit and bank your points or try another dragon.

You lose a die for each Dragon breath you roll but protect yourself from one for each Shield you roll.

When you bank your dice you pass play to the left.

Easy.

You each have a challenge chip too. This let’s you tempt someone into pushing their luck further by rewarding them for their efforts.

It was OK, not Dungeon Roll though.

Six MaKING

Build Chess Figures!

My head hurts…

This is an odd one. You place a piece on the board, anywhere. Taking turns to do so.

A piece on its own moves like a King in chess and takes pieces in this way…. You can only move a piece if you can take another piece.

In this game when you take a piece you put it on top of the stack. Taking a Pawn with another Pawn makes it a Rook and it moves as such. Take a Pawn with that Rook and it’s now a Knight. A stack of 4 is a Bishop, 5 is a Queen and 6 is a King and you win.

The colour on top of the stack determines who controls the piece. If that isn’t mind bending enough you can split a stack. Say you have a Bishop, a stack of 4… You can pick up say, 2 from that stack and move them diagonally leaving a Rook behind and creating a new stack one the stack you have just taken.

This is a very well designed game and a complete brain burner.

Jesta ThaRogue