Mindbridge Foundation

Love Letter
Alderac Entertainment Group, 2012

Love Letter is a simple, quick, fun game. You are an eligible suitor, trying to get your love letter to the princess. In order to do this, you must end the game round with the courtier card with the closest number to the Princess, your card represents the courtier to whom you have given your letter. There are 8 courtier positions: Guard (1), Priest (2), Baron (3), Handmaid (4), Prince (5), King (6), Countess (7) and the Princess herself (8).  You begin with one card. On your turn you draw a card and play a card. Each courtier has a special power that you can use to guess other people’s cards and put them out of the round, discard their card, making them draw a new one, or looking at their cards. Through these means, you try to keep in your hand a high numbered card, survive to the end of the round, or knock other suitors out of the running.

The game is simple because all you have to do is draw and play, but deceptively difficult because of the cutthroat nature of the scramble to be nearest to the Princess. With only 16 cards, and a few wooden blocks, you wouldn’t think that there would be this much to this game. There Is a lot of luck involved, but an alert, focused player can really do well. A good poker face and a bit of deception can go far as well. All in all, a nice little fun game. Great for when you have a few minutes and 2-3 friends.

King’s Forge
Game Salute, 2014

So last time I wrote about my legendary terrible dice rolling, so you would think that this game would not be for me. The game comes with 91 dice! Toy value: awesome. It also comes with a nice plastic anvil first player token.

But, strangely, these dice seem to like me better, and I really like this game. The premise: Crafters wanted! The king was forced to behead his King’s Forge (blacksmith) due to the crafter’s annoying affinity for flatulence puns. (Not kidding). So now the position is open, and you are competing for the position. The first person to craft the required items (number varies on number of players), will win the coveted title.

This is a dice-pool-building game. You start out with a pool of 5 metal (black) dice. Each round is played in 3 phases: The Gathering phase, the crafting phase, and the clean up phase. During the gathering phase, you use your dice to purchase other dice, die roll bumps and other such game play events. Then you take the remainder of your dice, during the crafting phase, roll them, and use those dice to purchase the items you need to win the game. During the clean up phase, you return all the dice to your pool, add in the dice that you purchased during the gathering phase, the first player token moves to the next player, and you start over again. Pretty simple, but the game has a good amount of strategy.

Depending on the number of players, you will have a different about of Gathering cards available for purchase, and each card has 2 distinct options to choose from. There are more gathering cards and craft cards than you use in a single game, which gives the game lots of options for good re-playability. However not all cards are balanced, and as we found out in our first game, the wrong distribution of those cards can make for a frustrating game. (Bad? Maybe not. More challenging? Definitely) We had an abundance of craft cards that needed blue dice, but no gathering cards that produced blue dice. There is a balancing aspect though. There are 4 “docks” tiles. They allow you to “kill” dice (return them to the main supply) in order to gain a benefit. This is costly because it removes dice from your supply and you don’t get them back. We used the dock tile that supplies blue dice a lot. You “kill” any 4 dice to get one blue dice. Two people per round can use this phase, but the 2^nd player has to “kill” any 5 dice. We had to have blue dice, though, so this gave an interesting dynamic to the game play.

I like this game. It’s got nice art, decent gameplay, and did I mention that you get 91 dice? And a cool plastic Anvil? It plays nicely to the theme and I can’t wait to play it again. The game is currently listed as $40 and there is an option to buy an “unnecessary, but totally cool game board” for another $10. Check it out on BGG as well, there are some variants and a solo game option. The game is just out, and already people are asking for expansions! Recommended!

Magnum Opus
Game Salute, 2014

In Magnum Opus, you are an alchemist building a deck of material components, transmuting them to reveal resources and the three key components that you will need transmute into the philosopher’s stone.

The setup for this game is a little tricky, and the rules aren’t as clear as they could be. We watched a gameplay video online, had a few “ah-ha” moments, and then were very pleased to find that this is a pretty good game. There is a fair amount of luck involved in the gameplay, but by careful deck building, you can offset the luck factor somewhat.

You start the game with 3 “Prepare Herbs” and 6 “Attempt Transmutation” cards. This is the base deck. The “Prepare Herbs” cards will allow you to collect coins or draw cards from your deck. You may purchase or draw various alchemical reagents during your turn, which, when acquired go into your discard pile. The “board” is set up as a grid with blue reagents (lead, vitriol, aqua regia, and quicksilver) on one side, and green reagents (angel feather, dragon’s blood, serpent scale, and vilethorn), forming a 4×4 grid. Each space in the grid contains a secret research card, and a discovery card. As you draw cards from your deck, you are able to place them on your “table” and use your transmute cards to reveal a card on the grid. You obtain the research card into your hand. This is usually beneficial to you, helping you with future transmutations, or storing of items. The discovery card is a type of “event” card which have many different effects. Three of these cards are the Magnum Opus stones that you need to find, in order to obtain your list of ingredients to create the philosopher’s stone. Once a Magnum Opus card is revealed, any player may transmute those reagents to obtain that effect or stone. Upon discovering one of the three stones (Albedo, Rubedo, and Putrefactio) you will receive a card of that type. Your card will have a reagent listed. Each card is different, so each player will have a different set of reagents needed to win). Once the three Magnum Opus stone cards have been revealed, and you have transmuted the correct reagents to receive your Magnum Opus cards, you then need to get your three reagents onto your table, and successfully transmute them for the win.

This sounds fairly complicated, but in fact, once you get the concept down, is fairly easy to understand. The game can be played in an hour or less, but will probably take you longer the first time you play.

The toy value of the game isn’t high, it is all cards, but the artwork is very nice, and the game has a good thematic feel to it. Our gameplay has been quite frustrating for me however. You see, dice hate me. It’s true. The green dice included with our game has a particularly evil streak. I can consistently roll one less than I need to transmute. Even with special cards and experience points that give you plusses to die rolls, I still roll one less than I need. I believe that if I need roll a 1 to transmute, that the die would somehow find a way to pull up a negative die face.  So if you are like me, and dice hate you, prepare for a very frustrating game. Each successful transmutation hinges on the die roll and getting the right cards into your hand at the right time. There are ways to give yourself better odds in your hand, but if you don’t get your dice roll, you won’t get the special cards, you won’t be able to transmute to obtain your Magnum Opus cards, and you can’t win. A LOT hinges on those evil, evil dice.

But it is a good game. If you like deck building games, or are a fan of chemistry or alchemy, pick this one up. Good fun to be had, and it comes with enough cards to make gameplay a little different each time.