Roux Dat: LUZ, Recall, and revisiting Duck & Cover

Our recent trip to Gulf Shores is a blur in my mind right now. All I can recollect right now are the memories of white sand beaches and sargassum. I guarantee that in the entire history of my writing, if you had access to it somehow, this would be the first ever reference to this brown algae, and hopefully the last.

But we are back from L.A., and it’s time for some gaming. Recently, Mitchell, Doug and Jeremy swung by the Gumbo Pot to play a new-to-me euro game called Recall. Billed by most as a spiritual successor to the very enjoyable Revive , one of our top games from 2022, Recall is designed by Helge Meissner,Kristian Amundsen Østby, Kjetil Svendsen, and Anna Wermlund and published by Alion. 

The theme of Recall is pretty abstract, but the best I can relate is that we are exploring a world that features the remnants of three ancient civilizations. Discovering more about those civs — by moving up three distinct tracks — and upgrading our own civilization — by exploring the world, erecting buildings and monuments and the like — with the help of our followers and powerful crystals is how the theme connects with the points you will earn during the game. 

I’m not exactly sure what the big eye is for on the game box, but I did enjoy the action selection mechanism. Mechanically, it works like a lot of engine builders. In this case, you have a set of “key cards” that you slot into your player board which give you access to distinct actions (and a wild). The key cards can be upgraded, as can the key slots, and since you can take free actions by interacting with other elements of the board, this game feels like the true definition of and representation of what an engine builder is like, even more than its cousin, Recall. 

Luckily for me, I love these types of games. I enjoy identifying pathways on the boards that lead to big turns, even if I don’t always score a ton of points. It’s just a satisfying feeling to pull off a cool multi-move combo. The downside? During the last reel of the game, there is some downtime as players try to put together the best, longest, or coolest combo, but even with during-the-game teach, we still clocked a first game at around two hours.

It’s early, but I honestly enjoyed Recall even more than I did of our multiple plays of Revive, and would love to play it again. And I’d love a chance to avenge a loss to Mitchell, who built a great engine with his faction and never looked back. One thing to add — the three ancient civs are revealed in a similar fashion to the alien reveal in SETI, but honestly, that’s the only comparison. Whereas the SETI aliens dictate a lot of the gameplay going forward once they are discovered, in here, the ancient civs grant some really cool boons but it feels completely different. The reveal is still an interesting tidbit of the game that I enjoyed. 

Next up, we dove into LUZ, a unique trick-taking game that takes some familiar elements but gives it a fresh twist. What’s familiar? If you’ve played Hanabi or Mystery Tricks or Xylotar , you’ll recognize the first part. Each player is dealt a hand of ten cards, from five different colors/suits (including the golden sum trump suit), and organizes them from highest to lowest (or vice versa) in each. Then, the hands are passed to the player on the left, but the receiving player cannot look at their cards. The mechanic of playing a card game without seeing your hand still gets me excited every time.

The next parts are the fresh twists. Each player has to bid on how many tricks they are going to win, based on the limited info of knowing how many they have in each suit but not the strength of each card, versus seeing what each other player has (but without the knowledge of ten extra cards that are not dealt out.) That’s familiar too for those who have played Spades, but if you get your bid right, you get increasing points over the course of four rounds. Plus, you can add one more to your bid as a “safety” bet, which gives you a +1 leeway to your bid, but you score only half the points of the round. The final twist is diabolical. Miss your bid, and you lose five points for each trick you win over or under your bid. Ouch! 

This was my second play and the first for the group. It took only one round for everyone to figure it out. It was a close game between Mitchell and Jeremy and me, and Doug also played! I’d love to play this again with some of the hardcore trick-taking fans in our discord like Logan, Dave and Carlos, as I think they’d enjoy the exercise and tension that the bidding mechanic provides. 

Finally, we’ve had the fortune of a good long visit with our youngest grandson this week, and he still loves playing games. We’ve played six — count ’em, six! — games of Duck & Cover (a favorite in the Gumbo from Captain Games) since he got here. As a quick refresh, Duck & Cover is a very easy to teach numbers game where players flip a random deck of cards from one to twelve and use those numbers to move cards around in their own tableau matching each played card. The object is to cover all of the cards with the highest point values by the time the game ends. And if you are lucky enough to get down to one stack of cards, then the point value of the top card actually subtracts points instead of adding. Just like in golf, the lowest score wins, so taking a risk on a higher card to be the last card is a fun push-your-luck exercise. 

I tried to bump him up to the regular rules (the strict cover rules of only covering cards that are orthogonally adjacent to the number), and it worked for a game or two, but he never quite gets the concept without help. (He’s only four). So, we reverted back to the family friendly rule of allowing him to cover anywhere he wanted, which shortens the game immensely. He doesn’t always choose the cover mechanic, for some inexplicable reason, and sometimes he likes to start out with a design that is not four-by-three cards grid. But, he almost always covers the bigger point values quickly, creating a hard timer on the game which makes it very tough on the parents. You have to jettison any plans to get down to one card to take the reverse bonus; instead, you have to focus on knocking out the biggest point cards as quickly as possible if you have any hope of staying even with him. 

I think his days of beating pop-pop using the kid-version rules are over. He’s “4.9” as he says, and when he reaches 5.0, the kid gloves are off. 

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo