Hello! Hope you’re having a great weekend as this e-mail lands! We have a special treat for you today - so far the only voice in this newsletter has been Paul, but today, after Paul reviews the card-dancing game Emberleaf, Nat has a Design Corner article about house rules in games. Onward!

From the outset I ignored Emberleaf. I didn’t like the Kickstarter campaign, and I can’t really put my finger on why. The term “Card Dancing” came across as a pretentious recasting of mechanisms I’d seen in other games, and I really cannot put my finger on it but something about the Kickstarter campaign felt off. Despite being a superbacker, I backed away.

Then, for Christmas, my wife bought me some back issues of the frankly beautiful Senet magazine, and I saw pictures of Emberleaf again. Somehow removed from the Kickstarter campaign, the images hit different, and the review left me feeling positive about the game. Senet however is a physical magazine, no temptation right there to click a link and put Emberleaf in my shopping basket.

Then, browsing my local game store, I saw a copy of Emberleaf in the flesh, with its bare white box with a minimal splash of art. It was cute looking, and maybe I would have overlooked it once more if it wasn’t my wife’s birthday coming up. I figured the game would be her cup of tea, and bought in.

I have now played Emberleaf twice, once as a 2-player game with my wife, and once at 3-player, and I think my friend summed it up best when he said “Well, that was nothing like I expected from the campaign.”

I might have hated the name of it, but the Card Dancing is actually a very interesting mechanic with the way it’s implemented in this game, because…

I don’t have a great word for the concept I’m trying to get across here. Some mechanisms in games are attractive in and of themselves. Sometimes you can see the same mechanism in a different game and it feels different, but you’re not sure why - and it’s because good game design is in the details and interactions between moving parts.

Sushi Go and 7 Wonders are both simultaneous drafting games, but the feel you get from playing them is very different, because of other mechanics that are layered in.

Take Century (or Crystal Golems as it’s called in our house). In that game you play cards one at a time from your hand to the table. You can obtain extra cards through the market. Eventually you are unable or unwilling to play a card from your hand, so you spend a turn resting, replenishing your hand and letting your engine run again.

Century uses that mechanic quite simply, and is a simple game as a result. With a few modifications you can see how you get to Emberleaf’s card-dancing, but what really makes it tick is the set of cards that are doing the dancing.

The term card dancing conjures up images of cards flying in all directions. That’s overselling the point. Cards are in 2 places at all times - in your hand ready to be played to your board, or on your board ready to slide off. Each turn you must take one of the core actions of playing a card or doing a “Slide” action. You start with 6 spaces on your player board, 2 rows of 3, in which you can play cards¹, and some cards have on-play abilities which trigger as soon as you play them.

When you take a slide action, every card will slide one space to the left, with cards in the left-most slot coming off the board and back to your hand. Some cards have abilities which trigger whenever you slide them, others only when you slide them off the board. Timing can be important, you alternate sliding the top then bottom rows and work from the left - in the picture above if I took a slide action Misty would slide first allowing me to gather a wood, then Bumbles slides off the board letting me build (potentially using that wood), but Loria’s ability to spend food to gather even more wood comes last.

It’s the interaction between these 2 core actions and the 5 types of ability on the cards that is where the game shines

All of these conflicting desires leave you a lot of ways to play your board out! I can’t wait to play again to see if I can unlock some new knowledge of the card dancing art to hone my skills. Not to mention each player’s starting deck of 6 hero cards is unique, and I’ve only played 2 of the available 5 starting decks!

A mechanism I’m less hyped about are the way trophies are awarded. You see, there are dangerous areas on the board that need to be attacked for points, and there are settlements that need building to home villagers to score points. Every 6th dangerous area defeated scores a trophy, and finishing a settlement by building in the last available space also earns a trophy.

These trophies also dictate the length of the game, once 6 are awarded the game ends. In my play that’s been 1 awarded early after the 6th dangerous area was cleared, 1 after the 12th, and 4 in fairly quick succession for 4 of the settlements completing².

The problem I have here is one of opportunity. Yes, everyone wants to fight the dangerous areas as they are worth points, but the problem comes when you’re looking at clearing the 5th area. It’s good to do so, and the rewards are useful, but it’s difficult to shake the feeling that you’re just opening up a better reward for the player who then hits the 6th. In an extreme case, you could clear 5 areas, and another player only clears 1, but because it happened to be the 6th, they are the ones rewarded.

I don’t like this idea of last-hitting, but to be fair I am overstating the effect somewhat. Yes, one of the trophies is worth 8 points, but the others are worth about 5 points and usually the materials to give you a build opportunity. In a game with winning scores around 150-170, those 5 points could make a difference, but they’re not so massive to be the entire game. The people I’ve played with so far haven’t cared much about clearing the 5th banner, but I can picture a table of players in my head, none of whom want to hit the 5th banner and open up the trophy for the next player. Then again, perhaps with clever card-dancing you could set up a situation in which you attack 2 banners in the same turn, hitting banners 5 and 6 at once and grabbing the trophy yourself.

I love that the favour deck is as large as it is, and that two other subtle things are here - when the first player reaches 6 points on the score track a favour refresh happens and everyone gets one, and in every turn where someone takes a favour card from the display, at end of turn another favour is discarded before refreshing the display. A small touch but it makes the favour market feel alive.

Come for the cute critters, stay for the card dancing and realise that this game is a lot juicier than you might have given it credit for! Definitely worth a play, just make sure you’ve got the hours for it, both games we’ve played so far have been in 3-hour territory - and both times we were surprised how much clock time had elapsed, because we were having so much fun we didn’t notice.

For solo players - yes this game does have a solo mode, I haven’t tried it yet but the card-dancing puzzle is that good that I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Next up - a Design Corner article from our game design guru Nat!

House rules aren’t in the rulebook of the game you bought, but can be invaluable to getting the best out of the game you’re playing. This might be a weird new concept to you, it might fill you with unease, but never fear, I’m here to be your guide.

The best game designers try their best to get it right before it gets into our hands, but all games are human made, and humans are fallible.

One wonderful thing about gaming is that it brings us together socially with friends. Each of us is different, and each of us wants slightly different things from a game. On board game night, this can provide a challenge, especially when Alice wants ruthless social deduction, Bruce wants crunchy worker placement, and Claire wants cosy aesthetics.

But even once you’ve all agreed to play Lords of Waterdeep, there can be issues. Some players like targeted spite mechanics, where you pick one opponent to suffer some ill effect. And these can absolutely have a place in many games. But in a game where every other action is either positive to you, or negative to everyone else, having one specific rarely seen action that just brutally sabotages one person, after hours of play? It’s not a surprise if that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, and feels like a bully picking on you. In my house, with more than two players, the mandatory quests get removed.

Waterdeep is a worker placement game where, especially in the last couple of turns, you are trying very hard to precisely use your resources to finesse plans that you’ve been working on for tens of minutes. Suddenly being singled out with a card that says “not so much” just knocks you out of the game.⁴

It’s your game, and sticking to the printed rules is a great way for everyone to feel like they have a fair chance. However, changing small things to make a game harder when you’ve played it lots, or easier when teaching your siblings is a fantastic way to give more life to something you’d otherwise leave on a shelf.

Finally, if you think game design is interesting, but the idea of coming up with a whole new game sounds intimidating - try making up some house rules. Find a game you like, or even better a game you thought was fine, and think about what you’d change to solve your issues with it. Tweak it to make it what you want to play.

It’s your game, and your house, and what you say goes!