The Re-Review: The A's Have It

Alchemists

• 1 play with 4 players
• Played before

In a previous week, I played a two player game of Alchemists and didn’t have a great time with it mostly due to my own poor record keeping, but the game permits it and does nothing to help you out (an in-app history would be lovely). A friend of mine wanted to try it out and I agreed. I figured it would be a good reason to get the game back out to see if my dislike was founded.

Well, it was and it wasn’t. When reading out the rules, I kept harping on one very important point:

Double and triple check your results and ensure you’re putting the right result in the right space.

As long as you do this, the game is fine. It slows down a bit, but I’ve never had an issue with the length of Alchemists anyways. In my eyes, the game is redeemed, so long as you never go in with the mindset of playing a quick game.

Recommended.

Arcadia Quest

• 1 play with 4 players
• Played before
• Part of my 2016 10x10 Challenge

This was the sixth and final game of our campaign. As we went into this one, there were a few ties for medals, with Dane and myself in the lead. The last game of the campaign is different from the previous five: dying results in you getting a death curse immediately, monsters do not respawn, and there’s only one quest: kill the boss. The vast simplification of the game combined with our increased knowledge of the rules lead to a much faster playing game that was more fun that previous matches. The whole thing was tense, with kill stealing left and right, but with no PVP kills—there was no point. The winner of this game was Scott, but I ended up winning the campaign due to tying on several of the medals. In the end, it wasn’t the winning that mattered at all here, it was the dice chucking and the trash talking. Sign me up for the next campaign.

Highly recommended.