It seems the gaming has stalled this month. The difference between last night and the previous Friday was gaming took place a week ago.
Last night no one apart from me was free! Life happens as they say. I can’t be too disappointed because it meant I got extra doggy snuggles.
There was also a chance to game session today but it starts too late for me.
But the previous Friday gaming did take place with initially five of us, that grew to six while we played our first game.
Our first game of the evening was my recently arrived copy of Lure and its Deep Waters expansion.
I decided to go all in even for this initial learning game because the expansion added an extra die for each player and some cards.
This is an interesting game where players using their dice are bidding to go first in attempting to catch the fish cards in the middle.
So secretly each player selects a number of their dice (hidden behind their screen) with lure tokens and everyone reveals the amount they selected at the same time. The player with the lowest number of dice goes first in attempting to catch the fish. This reminds me of that old game show Name That Tune where contestants bid to name a tune using the least number of notes. With the lowest bid getting the attempt to name the tune using the number of notes they bid.
A player catches fish by rolling the dice they used for their bid. If the total of the dice and lure tokens is greater than the value on the fish cards, and they meet any other criteria on the fish (such as having a die with the value of 2 in the results, or all odd value dice) the player can capture the fish. In fact any of the available fish they qualify for.This means it’s possible for a player to take multiple fish, even all of them, leaving none for the other players. In this situation the other players get a lure token.
There are special dice that are not six sided. But if you use them you lose them for a turn. Kind of like a cool down mechanic.
I do like this mechanic. It makes a nice change to the bidding mechanic. You have to weigh up when to use your special dice, how many dice you need to capture the current fish, if you are going to use lure tokens.
(Shipp, 2024) provides a definition of “Theme in hobby board games is a subject in a setting (that may be unspecified) with at least one connection point to the mechanisms which results in an undetermined progression of events at both the mechanical level and the thematic level.”
So the question is does Lure feel thematic?
Obviously the art of the game helps convey the theme. Here the cards have drawings of fish on them.
There is no setting in the sense we can assume it’s a current day fishing trip of some sort.
But I do feel that there is connection mechanically and thematically with the dice rolling and catching fish. Not meeting any of the fishes criteria does feel like you failed to catch anything. Using your special dice feels like you are using a fancy special lure to catch a fish.
It’s definitely not the strongest of themes. But it’s there. It doesn’t feel pasted on.
For the record I won the game.
Our second game of the evening was Tiny Towns.
When Tiny Towns first came out there was some buzz around the game. At one or two points in the months afterwards I nearly pulled the trigger and bought a copy. I can’t recall why I never did.
But I was glad that Charlene bought her copy and we got to play it.
It’s interesting thinking about the game. I liked it. It was fun. But I felt that this game abstracted the theme a bit too much. To such a level this almost felt like an abstract puzzle game. It’s hard to make cubes thematic. And we constantly referred to the cubes by colour over what they represented. Maybe if they had used wooden tokens that were coloured and shaped like the resource they represented.
Somehow Diego won this game.
My final game of the evening was several plays of the trick taking game Seas of Strife.
This really is a good example of a themeless game. The art on the cards really has no connection with the mechanics of a trick taking game.
However because there is no theme does not mean the game isn’t fun.
The twist from your usual run of the mill trick taking games is that you don’t want to win the trick.
But after a handful of fun games it was time to head home.
It was a fun evening of gaming. Sadly thanks to life not repeated this week.
Shipp, S. (2024) Thematic integration in board game design. Boca Raton ; London: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group (CRC Press guides to tabletop game design).