Roux Dat: Treat, Please! Covenant, Mystery Tricks

We finally got back to our regularly scheduled Euro Mondays, a night we were try to set aside an entire game night dedicated to euro style strategy games. It doesn’t always work that way — Spooktacular has snuck its way into Euro Mondays before. And sometimes, we have small little games that we will play while waiting for someone to show up or before setting up the main game.

That was the case two Mondays ago. Our plan was to play Covenant from Devir Games, but Logan was running a few minutes late, so Doug and I set up Treat, Please!, a family weight deck-building and set collection game all about friendly dogs.

The premise is pretty simple — each player starts out with a hand of four “dog actions”, and play two of them each round (until the weekend comes, when you have more time to spend with your pup) to gain bones or happiness or energy. You need all three to win this game, so balancing your “getting” versus your “spending” is key. 

Each turn cards from a market are reviewed, and like in typical deck builder fashion, these cards are better for the most part than the ones in your hand. You want to add more cards to the hand. But to do that, you need to be sure you have enough resources, so be careful. But Treats, Please! does something that I really enjoy in deck-building. Instead of putting the card you purchase into your discard, hopefully to come back to your hand someday, this game recognizes that if you buy something, you want to use it right away. It’s like that with board games, right? When you get a new board game in the mail, you just want to rip open the shrink wrap and call a couple of friends to play it right away! 

The hooks are two-fold: the game has insanely cute dog art (and actions), and has an interesting three way economy. But other than the art and economy, this is pretty standard deck-building fare mixed in with a race to collect the objectives (which can get pretty expensive as the game goes along). I’ve played it at two and three players, and it seems very appropriate to mix in with families. There’s no question that gamers that like this cozy theme will definitely want to play Treats, Please!, but other than that, it seems like the kind of game our group will enjoy a time or two but lose interest thereafter. 

Next up, we played Covenant from Devir Games. Hoo boy, this one is on the opposite end of the cozy / comfortable scale. If you have played The Red Cathedral or the White Castle, then you know what you are in for. Devir is really putting out some very combo-y, icon heavy, take-as-many-actions-with-one-turn-as-you-can-spot games, and Covenant is in that vein. 

I found it longer and meatier than either of the other two. After every turn or so, I could see where I should have planned the turn better. The game gets players to mine a huge dwarven mountain, putting out lots of interestingly shaped pieces along the way for points and extra resources, and has four fairly simple actions (like mining or building or buying tools that will help you play better) that are easily taught but can lead to some very spicy turns. 

Logan wiped the floor with me and Doug. Right from the get-go, he was adding layers to his board, with a round-by-round income and bonus actions everywhere. Me? I thought that battling the angry orcs and goblins sounded pretty good, but the reality was that I struggled getting those fights to launch into other actions. With only 12 turns, and a lot to accomplish, you really need a way to graft onto your normal turns lots of bonus actions and outcomes, and Logan had it down pat. This one deserves another play. 

Finally, we ended the night with another round of Mystery Tricks. We all really like trick-taking games here in Acadiana, raised on bourrè (and Hearts and Spades) as we all are ’round here, and Doug and I enjoyed our first play of Mystery Tricks a few months back. (A win, I might add). This is a cooperative, deduction based, trick-taking game, and really melts our brains. Think Scooby Doo meets Clue and you probably have the right idea. 

Players are given a hand of cards representing the gang (I.e. Scooby and friends), the suspected criminals, the crime, etc. All of the parts of Scooby Doo episode are in play. Our job is to win tricks, which allows you to peek at the cards in the center that were not handed out to the players, and also try to have all of the elements of the crime figured out (I.e. get down to one card of each type AND suss out what those cards are.) 

We came so close. We had all but one set of cards figured out, but somehow lost track of the numbers and did not have a way to guess that card. This time, those meddlin’ kids did not foil the bad guys’ plans. But next time, if I know my Scooby snacks, we will. Mystery Tricks is a tiny little box and well worth an add to your collection for anyone that enjoys the trick-taking and deduction genres. 

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. **