Roux Dat: Recent plays of Bordeaux (Viticulture Expansion), Escape Comics: The Alien Ship, and Golem

Dreary, rain Saturdays in south Louisiana can only mean one thing.

Time to play some board games! Mitchell and Connor made a pass by the Gumbo Pot (Connor’s first time!) to while away the time between raindrops. First up, we played an escape room style game called Escape Comics: The Alien Ship. The best way to describe this is an Exit style game but with the hook that the story is revealed through a beautiful graphic novel. In this world, the League of Nations still exists, and assigned us to rendezvous with an alien space ship that may be threatening our Earth. 

Escape room style games are hard to review from the standpoint that a lot of the best parts of the game are puzzles and surprise experiences that can be spoiled if discussed. But what I can talk about are things both expected and common to the genre. This is a cooperative game, of course, but where players work together to solve the puzzles of the game as efficiently as possible, as there is a scoring mechanism. (To be honest, though, the scoring part of these games are never that attractive to me.) Secondly, the big question is always about the cleverness of the puzzles. The game scores high marks for me in that regard, because I found that the puzzles seemed fresh, they were surprising yet absolutely familiar once discovered, and each time the three of us had that ‘click’ moment, it felt very satisfying. 

I also really dug the story itself. Telling the story with characters and a friendly helpful computer (an answer wheel that we’ve seen in lots of other games of this genre) all through a big graphic novel was a stroke of genius. Let’s face it — most escape room / exit style games have a very thin veneer of a story. They are really just puzzles interconnected with some pretty artwork or ingenious mechanics. Not so in The Alien Ship, the graphic novel really pushed the story along and breathed some life into the other ‘characters’ that were helping us along. On the downside, the puzzles are linear and for the most part, there was very little for the players to do anything except brainstorm while the active player (the one handling the components) tried to sort it out. That’s a small quibble, though, because there were plenty of opportunities for each of us to shine in the campaign we played. 

Next up, we broke out Golem for the first time in many years. I had played it before at BGG CON with Cam and Rob from the Board Boys Podcast., and wondered if it would come back to me quickly and if it would hold up. Yes sir to both. A quick teach from Mitchell got us up and running, and most of the mechanics came back to me in the first turn or two. 

Now figuring out how to be efficient and maximize your scoring, well, that’s a different thing. I chased after building a good solid engine for the income each round, and had tons of resources. But you have to run the engine, too, and I missed out on two objective cards (both by very thin margins) and left a lot of scoring multiplier on my board just waiting to be uncovered. I think it’s because there are just so many combos on the board, and so many ways to get to where you want to go. Between the two, I prefer playing Tiletum, because it has a spatial puzzle that I really enjoy, but Golem was a lot better than I remembered. I told Mitchell that I would be happy to play this one again soon. 

Finally, we had just enough time to break out Viticulture: Bordeaux Expansion, an expansion to one of my favorite all time games. I’ve got dozens and dozens of plays of Viticulture under my belt, but this Bordeaux expansion breathed much needed new life into the game. Let’s talk about the additions before diving into the thoughts of the gameplay itself. Bordeaux plusses up the Viticulture experience, in a way that is familiar to fans of Tuscany but is different enough to still feel like Viticulture’s essential edition. 

First, there is the new board. While I am not a fan of taking away from the beautiful artwork of the vineyard, I have to admit that the new game makes it very easy to play, as almost everything you need is right there on the board. That includes the new wake-up and trading tracks, which clearly lay out the benefits for going early or late during the year, and what bonuses you will get as you pass from season to season. Even though the designer’s stated intent was to get away from the play-cards-don’t-make-wine strategy (which admittedly is fun to try once in a while), there are still points all over this board given for taking various actions. 

But the emphasis of this expansion is on making wine and upgrading your vineyard. I love how Bordeaux jumpstarts that process, giving you plenty of money and other resources, as well as one built field and some cash, and expects you to start the wine making process almost immediately.

But what I really love is the tough decisions you have to make with four little cubes. These cubes represent your expertly trained workers, which give you bonuses every time you take a certain action that is tied to that cube. With four seasons of worker placement spots, and only three or four workers at the early stages of the game, there are some excruciating decisions to be made, but the expertly trained worker bonuses mitigate those tough decisions a bit. 

Since the expansion comes with a double-sided board, there’s just no reason not to recycle the old board (or better yet, make it into wall art!) and move all of the Bordeaux stuff right into your Viticulture: Essential Edition. I am hoping to get my wife to take a short break from our nightly ritual of playing Tipperary to teaching her the new Bordeaux stuff, especially while it is fresh in my head from today’s play.

So that’s our Roux Dat for the weekend. We also got a chance to play a card game or two, as well as six more games of Tipperary, so the gaming has been good here in Louisiana. I hope you are getting some good games to the table, too!

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

** Complimentary copies of some of the games were provided by the publisher. **