Cryptozoic Entertainment Portal CZE01823 The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game

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It’s fun, and I think that’s always a positive thing to be able to say about something that you’re going to spend 30 odd minutes doing. On one hand I like that it’s basic and uncomplicated but with that, I don’t think it massively stands out. At the end of January, Portal Games announced their publishing plan for 2021. The football fanatic in me was drawn to one game in particular: Eleven: Football Manager Board Game. Each hero card has 1-4 symbols across the top that correspond to the different food types you can play. If you manage to play a card into a seat at the table that matches some of those symbols, you’ll take a coloured gem for each match – not a bad day’s work. However, if you can perfectly match what the hero needs, not only do you get all the gems, you also gain a lucrative Perfect Match Bonus (or PMB) as indicated in the top-right of the card. This could be an extra gem, a white diamond (a wild gem that must be assigned one of the four main colours when you take it), a card or even a combination of those things.

Those cards you can collect – these do lots of cool things. They can award you cake. They can incinerate test subjects. They can activate conveyor belts that move all your test subjects further in or away. They can generate Companion Cubes to distract your opponents. They can also be used to fire your portal gun. I don’t know whether the box art of Eleven is a knowing nod to Gareth Southgate’s waistcoat and long sleeve shirt look, but it immediately gives me nostalgia of that warm summer night watching events unfold at the Spartak Stadium in Moscow where England won their first penalty shoot-out for what feels like an eternity. I love that the game takes the approach of making you feel like one of the cold bastards running this experiment. And I love the fact that, apart from anything else, this is a solid area control game with a real puzzle feel and a nasty streak a mile wide.Now, it is time to recycle the activated test chamber. You can flip the tiles and move them to any of the three rows on the new edge on the game board. It is important to make sure that all rows maintain three test chambers at the very least. Otherwise, you can place the tile on any row of your choice. Or, perhaps you throw all of that away and design a board game that captures the feel of Portal. You make it feel like a puzzle. You make it cold, tough, ruthless. You make it quirky, fun. You introduce a little bit of chaos. Eleven is a 1-4 player economic strategy game. You will oversee a football team for one season. In that time you will be responsible for transfers, hiring staff, securing sponsorship, and basically making sure the club is managed to meet its expectations. There are also a number of starting scenarios. These are varying from overhauling an ageing squad to meeting tight deadlines in completing expansion work of the club’s stadium. No stone has been left unturned by designer Thomas Jansen. He has already flexed his football-themed board game muscles with 2017’s co-operative/solo game Club Stories. Not a single-person game, the Portal Board Game requires 2 to 4 players. In this board and puzzle game, each player gets eight pieces of cake of their color. The players make their moves by placing their cake pieces onto the game board. Players navigate their test subjects through test chambers to collect cakes from the other side of the board. The game comes with cards that have special actions printed on them. The players move according to the instructions on the card. Simply put, the game requires you to remove your opponent’s test subjects and gain the most cakes. The person with the most cake pieces on the board at the end of the game wins. In quite a curious departure from the adventuring fare typical of all things bearing the Dungeons & Dragons brand, Avalon Hill’s new board game, Dungeons & Dragons: The Yawning Portal, has players taking on the quiet role of tavern staff, trying to fulfil the desires of hungry and thirsty patrons.

A DIFFERENT WAY TO PLAY D&D: Whether you’re a D&D expert or curious newcomer, the Dungeons & Dragons: The Yawning Portal board game is a fresh D&D experience that brings the whole family to the table Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands) may take longer to reach you. Each tile is double sided, and when you’ve taken the action that’s showing, you flip it over to reveal a different set of actions. The sheer charm of pairing this premise with such a well-established fantasy world piqued my interest ahead of launch. When I randomly saw it show up at a local store with zero warning, I was surprised – there was seemingly no anticipation or build-up to its release. Having now experienced several games of The Yawning Portal, both solo and with a full group of four, I realise that it’s probably a good thing the game is as subtly charming as it is, because there isn’t really a whole lot of excitement to it. Image: GamesHub How to play The Yawning PortalIt’s pretty easy to learn and I think you can grasp the basics of it with in a few minutes. Learning how and when to best mix up the board to move things in your favour needs more thought and probably a good degree of adaptability in-game Final Thoughts The artwork is beautiful, the components are great – with the exception of the map tiles. They're too thin, too fiddly. But man – seeing the whole laboratory move and change, that's just wonderful.