Last night I played the board game Above and Below for the first time. At first glance the theme and mechanics looked perfect for me, as it is a worker placement game where you are playing a group of villagers who are trying to build a town while also exploring a dungeon beneath the town. There are simple and predictable options like constructing buildings and recruiting new villagers and more random and complex options like going into the dungeon to see what you can find.
The art of the game is pretty and the icons are well made. It is easy to figure out what cards do once you know the basics, so the production value is good. Going into the dungeon involves randomly picking an encounter from over 100 choices, and then reading out the encounter just like a dungeon master might do in a DnD type game. The flavour and variety of the encounters is good, so if you like that sort of thing you will enjoy the game.
Above and Below has some real problems though. The first thing that struck me was how few women there were in the game. Possibly there are lots of women in all the encounters I didn't run into, but it sure seemed like somebody forgot that the world has women in it when writing the game. Poor form, that, to say the least, and sad because it is so bloody common in fantasy games of the past.
The second thing is that the dungeon delving part of the game is really random and that can be frustrating. Sometimes people went into the dungeon and came out with great hauls, and sometimes they got absolutely screwed. In a game that otherwise is about careful planning and worker placement it feels really strange to have this one section be so random. I could easily understand if failing to win in the dungeon encounter was disastrous because then there is an element of risk management. Send a powerful group into the dungeon, get good stuff, or split them into two weaker groups and hope you roll well - that is a choice. But one time I went into the dungeon, passed the challenge, and got punished with a net loss anyway!
I suspect that for many people this would be a plus. You read the silly encounters, make choices, roll your dice, and stuff happens. Definitely for kids this is a fine game, and people who like Betrayal on the House on the Hill or games like that will probably enjoy it. I just don't like that part of the game much, and honestly I don't know that it mixes well with the worker placement strategy portion of the game. It feels like a mix of genres that doesn't quite work for me.
The final issue I had with the game is that the balance is way off. I built a powerful engine that recruited all kinds of mighty heroes that went into the dungeon to fight. I was easily able to overcome even the most powerful foes, and yet that didn't matter - the winner was someone who built an orchard and then sat there picking apples all game. It turns out that apples are worth a lot more points than crushing monsters. She didn't even enjoy the win because other people's turns were exciting adventures with at least some choice involved, while her turns were "I pick my apples. Done." Her strategy was powerful, but boring. I don't much like games where the best strategy is really boring to play.
Also the designer obviously didn't think hard enough about how the cards work. For example, you can recruit new villagers to do stuff for you but you need a bed for each one. I bought a building with two beds and two new villagers to fill them by the end of turn 3, which is the fastest you could possibly do it. The game is 7 turns long, so I got 4 turns of 2 actions each from my new people. Gross benefit: 8 actions. However, it took me 3 actions to set this up, and cost me 15 gold. Net benefit: 5 actions, at the cost of 15 gold. That is *terrible*. I would have been ecstatic to be able to get 3 gold for an action, and here I was making that trade in reverse.
The cards in the game that set up an engine are just trash. What you want to do is just buy points. I should have simply bought the expensive building that the winner eventually purchased to solidify her game and even though it wasn't that good for me I would have done much better had I done that instead. I am completely okay with cards being situational and rarely used but I can't see any reason to buy the engine type cards ever, and that is a sad state.
The funny thing was that my strategy had the two experienced players at the table terrified. They seemed convinced that I had so many villagers and so much stuff going on that I must be winning. Problem was, I had bought a powerful engine, not points. My cards *looked* exciting but didn't actually do anything, in fact they were terrible.
Above and Below is pretty, and graphically speaking well designed. Unfortunately the game has massive balance problems, more randomness than I want, and the ideal strategy ignores most of the game and just buys points as fast as possible. Not a game I will be returning to, I think, even though there is definitely a market for it.
Your woman comment has bothered me a bit.
ReplyDeleteWe played 2 games tonight (1v1) and confirmed that most encounters are with "glogos", with no sex defined, or monsters.
The other encounters had women in them. Captured woman (by glogos) who was a demon, a bald muscular woman...don't remember the others. There was a crazy guy in a red cape.
I think they used some stereotypes - the old tinker in a wagon is likely male - but the adventurers you can recruit are gender-balanced with many (all?) of the best ones being female, suggesting that the creators were not blind to the issue. Prior to your comment, my only thought was how pro-female it was with all these kick-ass girls you could recruit.
The rewards are random, but I believe you exaggerate the time you hit the high mark but still got a net negative. I found that the treasures have variance, but the true variance relates to what you're looking for. Getting 6 coins on the last turn when you have no builders left is useless. Getting 2 ore when you have ore at the 1VP spot isn't so hot. But 6 coins early, or 2 ore when you have none and each is worth 4VP is amazing. And you can't predict that, which certainly adds randomness.
Tonight I sent two people in and got 2 coins and -1 Reputation, which is strictly worse than if they'd just worked for 2 coins. But that was 3 or 4 lanterns, so I'm okay with that - 3/4 is a bit of a gamble. I don't think 5+ is ever net bad except if the rewards are near worthless and it costs you valuable reputation.
Since we were 1v1, I wanted to try the fruit strategy (less waiting with only one other player, so less dull). It was completely non-viable. I was very worried that we'd "broken" the game with a super dull strategy, but that was a one-off situation where all the right cards came down and were available.
Kate got the highest score we've ever seen with your strategy - 6 beds, top quality adventurers.
What intrigues me about the game is that I can't "solve" it. I can't compare actions because I can't price the actions. How many VPs is adventuring worth? What do I want to pay for goods? What is the optimal number of people to get? How valuable are re-rolls?
I don't have a feel for it. Possibly because of the randomness of adventuring? Possibly because they fluctuate dramatically depending on what buildings are available? Every game I feel like I could have played it better, and/or I don't know if I played it optimally, and that's often a sign of a deep/rich game to me even though that seems counter-intuitive because of the simplicity and randomness.