Scenario-based games, regardless of their genre, often follow a similar arc in their scenario design. Early on into their life cycle, they explore small tweaks to the familiar system. Players don’t need to see a lot of change for it to feel like a big difference. Over time though, scenario designs tend to become increasingly experimental or complex. The Qinghai-Tibet scenario (designed by Matt Dunstan and released in the Deluxe Master Set), demonstrates this by making the core worker placement loop significantly crunchier than usual. That twist has proven popular though and Qinghai-Tibet has become a fan favourite scenario because of this. Overview – oxygen There are a few changes in this scenario, but by far the biggest and...
An important part of any great journey is the crossing of the threshold of “home”; those early steps where one is not yet in truly alien territory, but is equally no longer in the comfort of the hearth: Jason and his Argonauts first hitting the open ocean, the hobbits taking their first step out of the shire, the Darling children flying over London with Peter Pan. One would not normally think about such moments in the context of board games, but crafting this emotional beat is exactly the challenge Tony was faced with when making the early scenarios for Snowdonia. This is in part because scenario-based Eurogames were a fairly alien concept prior to Snowdonia. The closest I could find...
“Your surveyor has passed away — R.I.P.The terms Surveyor and Coffin are to be considered synonymous for this scenario.” – The Necropolis Railway, 2014These are some of my favourite words I’ve read in a rulebook. This is an utterly unnecessary change in nomenclature from a technical standpoint. But the wry humour here sets the tone of this scenario perfectly. A railway literally built for the purpose of carrying the dead could be a somber affair, but in an unexpected twist, this scenario is perhaps the most aggressive and race-like Snowdonia gets. It’s a bit of a controversial one amongst the fans, but that makes it all the better to discuss! Overview and main changes The Necropolis railway shakes things...
Scenarios in board games have been around for quite some time and seem to only be rising in popularity. They take the core mechanics of a game and tweak or rearrange elements around them to create a new experience. Even if not by name, many expansions to early hobby giants Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne function more like scenarios than expansions. More recently, war and adventure games employ this often: Gloomhaven, Memoir 44 and Arkham Horror: The Card Game are all famous recent examples. Snowdonia too has a plethora of scenarios representing different railways around the world. That element is something we want to champion in Grand Tour, in which the scenarios are more ambitious than...
Last time, we talked about Snowdonia's nature as a deeply tactical game, and how it shares that trait with recent hit game Arcs. We dug further into how to better embrace their shared tactical core. We also firmly countered the under-informed allegations by first time players that these games are "too chaotic". Today we’ll examine more of the similar systems in these games, how interactivity drives them and how you can take advantage of that. As a quick clarifier, the below is written primarily with the base games for both titles in mind and not their respective scenario/campaign modes. Where do we start? Interactivity. Both of these games fly strongly in the face of other games in their genre because...
