This has been a hit with us. I like the way everything is information. I also like the fact that everyone is involved in every turn, even the clue giver, often in a deduction game you have to sit and do nothing while every one else talks. This one however is different. We liked that a lot. Can’t think of another example of this, that I’ve played at least.
We have been loving this one. We haven't found it difficult. In fact we haven't lost yet, though we have had plenty of very close games. I should note that is playing the normal game (not hard mode, no added modules). My advice to anyone finding it hard would be to make sure you always have a broad range of cards, and never take a chance with a guess unless you absolutely must.
Sorry to hear it didn't do it for you Tom, thanks for taking a look. (as for my credit on the White Rabbit module... I DID design the base game, and the structure for the expansion, as well as heavy work on every other module... all the others had a name on it, it would be weird for one to not have a name, so we put mine. I hope that adds some clarity.)
@@danielvelazquez5845 it means a lot! Thanks. And yeah... The game is not easy. There is a good strategy guide on the bgg if you want to level up your gardening!
@@BTWalrus Main problem is that I literally cannot figure out what the strategy really even is. Doing hard ones did not reward me as you either fail or succeed and cause the queen to move much faster. Then easy and such moves too slow. Had matches where we had only one wrong guess and everything else right and lost... Idk, kinda lame. One guess might as well stop.
It was a difficult puzzle, but my group enjoyed it. We lost our first game, but won the second. Haven’t played with any modules yet. PS - the components are top notch!
I'd love to see this game reevaluated in a group review. While I think everything Tom brings up is valid, I think it will hit different people very differently. In addition, it *feels* like Tom got annoyed by the imperfect information in the game and once he decided he didn't like it, he started finding reasons to pick at other aspects of the game (including the minis!). I basically knew he didn't like it once he rolled his eyes about the Wonderland theme.
I feel like I missed a few things in this review that might have been left out intentionally but might help some struggling players who missed out on them (especially point 2): 1. In a 2 player game you get 6 cubes to skip having to guess which prevents the queen from moving 2. If you guessed a card correctly you have the opportunity to IMMEDIATELY guess again before the queen moves you can do this until you fail (which means she moves her speed twice) OR forgo an extra guess (which means she only moves her speed once), this means you can get A LOT more points in a single guessing round than a single card worth of points. In essence the easy cards fulfill a similar role to these skip cubes in creating some room early game to work up to those 50/50 guesses if you can't get there immediately. In my experience the best thing is to create as much room between the queen and you early on, yes this speeds the queen up but gives you the breathing room to take the misses on those forced guesses or rather the 50/50's since with higher players counts you can afford to have someone always have an easy card which are generally speaking fairly easy to get. That being said I can understand the game is not for everyone, especially if you are used to being able to get the deductions down to 100% which this game does not give you the time to do a lot of the time (at least not before failing a 50/50 generally speaking). Also someone on the BGG forums made a simple webpage that people can us instead of the paper sheets : boardgamegeek.com/thread/2868282/interactive-note-sheets-best-viewed-mobile-phone
My friends like this one. I like solving the problem as a team. I was very surprised by this review. Equally surprised by the comments overwhelming disagreement with Tom. Sort of validated my personal opinion.
@@thedicetower No criticism intended. I make a point of watching your reviews of games I've already played. Almost always, you confirm my first impressions. This was the first time we came to distinctly different conclusions.
I really like it, good game for a group and I think the more you play the more you see how clever you can be with tile placement and also what you don't play. Only played Alice module but looking forward to trying them all. I think you need the forced guess because you can get very far ahead with an easy card and two mediums. I want going to laminate pads so they can be used over and over.
Good review. I was eyeballing this game, but I don't like the sandbagging aspect to it. I think Tom's right, you want to focus down easy cards to keep the queen slow to give yourself a lot of time to place tiles out. Then I guess you can start doing mediums if she is getting close and has some roses. You have a fixed amount of tiles to place, but a variable speed, so you want to sandbag as much as possible. I don't like that because it feels good to guess a hard, but for most of the game it only hurts you to do it.
This game worked well for my family. My wife and I played with our two sons (14 & 8). I was worried it would be too much, but it really clicked for everyone. We had one "forced" guess and failed that but it setup a sure guess the next round. We ended up winning narrowly and look forward to playing again. I do think this game will be group dependent as everyone needs to be on the same page.
Wow, i would have bet you would like it. Its a huge hit in our groups and havent yet found one person to not like it. Normally, Tom, we have quite the same taste but here we really are on opposit sides of the spectrum. We never had the problem that guessing was that bad. And i think the scoring is kinda clever. But hey to everybody their own. Nobody can like everything. What really surprised me is, that nobody at the Dice Tower liked it??? Really??? Sorry, thats hard to believe.
Only played it twice but I never felt we were forced to make a long shot guess, it was always at worst a 50/50. I could see you getting bad draws on the tiles which could making the guessing a lot harder. Maybe having a limited number of passes on the guessing during the game could ease that "forced to guess" part
3:43 wouldn't the purple player place 3 cubes since their pattern shows up 3 times? purple spade next to purple spade makes the pattern twice with those two tiles
It is one cube per adjacent tile that creates your pattern. So one cube would be placed on your purple spade example, not two despite creating your card twice. Placing 2 cubes would tell someone that you had two tiles that made your whim card.
Well, I personally think it's a great game with awesome tension. I have played this with multiple groups and they all loved it.. I think you missed the mark on this review unfortunately..
Surprised you weren't keen on this one, I think its on the heavier side, its a difficult coop thats meant to be played multiple times. Anyway, I really enjoy this.
I completely agree with this review and on your negatives. My main negative was the queen moving every turn regardless. It felt like there was this tension that didn't need to be there and a lack of satisfaction when you got a clue. Sweet, we moved 3 spots, oh the queen did too... Cool... Fortunately since people have been enjoying this game i was able to sell it for what i paid via the Kickstarter. I'll stick with Shipwreck Arcana, The Search For Planet X, and Code 777 for the logic/deduction style games.
I enjoyed this one, but I did feel the deduction part to be a little more tedious than some other games. It probably gets a 7 from me. Easy and medium cards were pretty easy to keep track of, but hard ones really take a lot of thinking and making sure you don't miss one of the possible matches. This is true both for placing tiles while holding a hard card and making sure you don't put the wrong number of cubes, but also keeping track of someone elses hard card and checking matches or non-matches over and over on a sheet. I had fun but wouldn't play it all the time.
I did enjoy the puzzle of the game and the co-op nature. However, I own Shipwreck Arcana, and my game group unanimously agreed that we’d always rather play it over PtR. However, if you want a deeper, longer game (especially with the expansions), you might prefer PtR.
It seems like Tom, and others of the Dicetower, seem to be getting tired of anything that isn't "new". Maybe it is playing too many games and burning out. I used to be on the same page with their reviews but lately....thankfully I played this multiple times already and if you think through not only your combinations but the possible combinations around the table it is never a long shot or guess. Most of all it is fun. That's what I need my games to be, fun.
Even if you disagree with him, these critical reviews should be encouraged since there are so many others who love everything or only review what they like. A lot of us have been playing games for a while and appreciate strong opinions (positive or negative) from those who have been in the hobby a while and know what feels fresh or not.
@@wolflarson71 I’d agree however I have found that a lot of people treat Dice Tower reviews as absolutes. If the Dice Tower loves a game than everyone will love it and if they dislike a game than it must be a bad game. I agree critical reviews are necessary; but I wish people could separate the review as just one persons opinion. It doesn’t matter how long Tom has been in the hobby or anyone else, it’s still just an opinion. I have had to sell games in the past because I can’t get them to the table in local gaming groups because everyone thinks a game isn’t worth a shot because Tom Vasel or some other member disliked the game. On the other hand Wingspan and now Ark Nova have become the equivalent of an actual Holy Grail and everyone thinks they are the best games ever made. It’s disheartening when I show up to a meetup and all I see being played are games that the DT have deemed as good games. People need to stop treating the Dice Tower reviews as the word of God.
Love this game. Shame you couldn't enjoy it. It is a huge puzzle for sure that includes not only guessing other whims but when to "guess" specific difficulty whims so you don't needlessly add roses and thus movement to the Queen. I find it an excellent deduction game.
P.s you'v e mentioned in the past also how you like to win games and prefer easier co-ops so this is probably another reason for your dislike. It is difficult.
I love deduction and I love the theme here, but after watching a playthrough I wasn’t sure if I would like this one. As you said, it’s deduction but often not really on your own terms, and comes with too a weird flow of tension.
Well yea, it is supposed to feel like your being chased. Does that wonderfully. It is like fleeing for your life and having to make decisions on the fly to escape safely without mistake. Mess up too much and you hit a dead end and get caught. Idk, makes sense.
And this is the reason why I subscribed to many different channels. Mike from the one stop co-op shop loves this game . And I thought I would too. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Thanks for the review.
This game has been a big hit for us as well. We have introduced it to a lot of people and it has turned into a really great gateway! Respectfully disagree with ya on this one Tom!
Maybe I'm crazy and granted I haven't played this game but maybe with the forced guesses at the end of the round. Maybe you should allow more easy cards? Any thoughts from those who have played?
I definitely agree with your assessment! The notepads also bothered me quite a bit, you can really burn through them quickly if you use one for each challenge. What attracted me to this game was that it was a deduction game for 2 players. There are so many out there that require 3+ players. I would love to see a top 10 list of deduction games for 2 players :) Are there even 10 good ones out there?🤣
Yup, I agree exactly with the points you made, those were my problems as well with the game. I remember we lost and I thought: well we did all the logic analysis exactly right, there wasn't anything we could have done better, we just guessed wrong twice...Also, you didn't mention this but there is definitely a chance of alpha-gaming this: one person who sees the possible solutions before anybody else, and the rest just sort of goes along..
Think you might have to file this one with Flamme Rouge Tom. It's you, not the game. Its definitely not worth sandbagging on easy because the queen will move multiple times even if you keep getting easy.
The way you described me he educated guess reminds me of the solo game Maquis, where sometimes you have to make educated guesses where to place workers and taking risks is what you need to do to win more often. In that game you are deducing where the patrol will go next. This game looked a little abstract for me. I don’t think any of the Alice in Wonderland games have attracted me yet. Is there a Legends of Andor-like Alice in Wonderland-themed game?
Timers aren't supposed to make sense in Wonderland :-P But yeah, the game 'Parade' did the whole 'up is down' thing better. Kept the nonsense sensical.
I agree with Tom on this one. The rules are terrible and no one in my family wants to play it with me. I will try to make new rules to make it more enjoyable and report the ones that work on BGG.
This has been a hit with us. I like the way everything is information. I also like the fact that everyone is involved in every turn, even the clue giver, often in a deduction game you have to sit and do nothing while every one else talks. This one however is different. We liked that a lot. Can’t think of another example of this, that I’ve played at least.
We have been loving this one. We haven't found it difficult. In fact we haven't lost yet, though we have had plenty of very close games. I should note that is playing the normal game (not hard mode, no added modules). My advice to anyone finding it hard would be to make sure you always have a broad range of cards, and never take a chance with a guess unless you absolutely must.
One other piece of advice I should add, don't forget to use the non-clues as clues. Hopefully you get my meaning.
Sorry to hear it didn't do it for you Tom, thanks for taking a look.
(as for my credit on the White Rabbit module... I DID design the base game, and the structure for the expansion, as well as heavy work on every other module... all the others had a name on it, it would be weird for one to not have a name, so we put mine. I hope that adds some clarity.)
For what it’s it worth, I’ve played your game 8 times and have really enjoyed it! Only won once though 😅
@@danielvelazquez5845 it means a lot! Thanks. And yeah... The game is not easy. There is a good strategy guide on the bgg if you want to level up your gardening!
@@BTWalrus Main problem is that I literally cannot figure out what the strategy really even is. Doing hard ones did not reward me as you either fail or succeed and cause the queen to move much faster. Then easy and such moves too slow. Had matches where we had only one wrong guess and everything else right and lost... Idk, kinda lame. One guess might as well stop.
Great game!
We found out the strategy to win is to choose the right cards in the right time and to leave 1 obvious guess for next turn
It was a difficult puzzle, but my group enjoyed it. We lost our first game, but won the second. Haven’t played with any modules yet. PS - the components are top notch!
I'd love to see this game reevaluated in a group review. While I think everything Tom brings up is valid, I think it will hit different people very differently. In addition, it *feels* like Tom got annoyed by the imperfect information in the game and once he decided he didn't like it, he started finding reasons to pick at other aspects of the game (including the minis!). I basically knew he didn't like it once he rolled his eyes about the Wonderland theme.
I feel like I missed a few things in this review that might have been left out intentionally but might help some struggling players who missed out on them (especially point 2):
1. In a 2 player game you get 6 cubes to skip having to guess which prevents the queen from moving
2. If you guessed a card correctly you have the opportunity to IMMEDIATELY guess again before the queen moves you can do this until you fail (which means she moves her speed twice) OR forgo an extra guess (which means she only moves her speed once), this means you can get A LOT more points in a single guessing round than a single card worth of points.
In essence the easy cards fulfill a similar role to these skip cubes in creating some room early game to work up to those 50/50 guesses if you can't get there immediately.
In my experience the best thing is to create as much room between the queen and you early on, yes this speeds the queen up but gives you the breathing room to take the misses on those forced guesses or rather the 50/50's since with higher players counts you can afford to have someone always have an easy card which are generally speaking fairly easy to get.
That being said I can understand the game is not for everyone, especially if you are used to being able to get the deductions down to 100% which this game does not give you the time to do a lot of the time (at least not before failing a 50/50 generally speaking).
Also someone on the BGG forums made a simple webpage that people can us instead of the paper sheets : boardgamegeek.com/thread/2868282/interactive-note-sheets-best-viewed-mobile-phone
I believe you only get 3 cubes to pass in a 2 player game.
@@dpearson588 You are correct, it's only 3 cubes in total when playing with 2 players
My friends like this one. I like solving the problem as a team. I was very surprised by this review. Equally surprised by the comments overwhelming disagreement with Tom. Sort of validated my personal opinion.
Hey, I'm glad people like it! I put it in the Dice Tower Library.
@@thedicetower No criticism intended. I make a point of watching your reviews of games I've already played. Almost always, you confirm my first impressions. This was the first time we came to distinctly different conclusions.
I really like it, good game for a group and I think the more you play the more you see how clever you can be with tile placement and also what you don't play. Only played Alice module but looking forward to trying them all. I think you need the forced guess because you can get very far ahead with an easy card and two mediums. I want going to laminate pads so they can be used over and over.
My retail copy has a single-layer board, cardboard tiles (albeit good quality), and no expansion, BUT great artwork and fun to play with.
Totally respect your opinion! But first time I've totally disagreed. Bound to happen some time, right? Love the reviews thanks
Good review. I was eyeballing this game, but I don't like the sandbagging aspect to it. I think Tom's right, you want to focus down easy cards to keep the queen slow to give yourself a lot of time to place tiles out. Then I guess you can start doing mediums if she is getting close and has some roses. You have a fixed amount of tiles to place, but a variable speed, so you want to sandbag as much as possible.
I don't like that because it feels good to guess a hard, but for most of the game it only hurts you to do it.
Also, I believe you have the exclusive deluxe edition with the acrylic tiles and double layered board
This game worked well for my family. My wife and I played with our two sons (14 & 8). I was worried it would be too much, but it really clicked for everyone. We had one "forced" guess and failed that but it setup a sure guess the next round. We ended up winning narrowly and look forward to playing again. I do think this game will be group dependent as everyone needs to be on the same page.
Wow, i would have bet you would like it. Its a huge hit in our groups and havent yet found one person to not like it. Normally, Tom, we have quite the same taste but here we really are on opposit sides of the spectrum. We never had the problem that guessing was that bad. And i think the scoring is kinda clever. But hey to everybody their own. Nobody can like everything. What really surprised me is, that nobody at the Dice Tower liked it??? Really??? Sorry, thats hard to believe.
Only played it twice but I never felt we were forced to make a long shot guess, it was always at worst a 50/50. I could see you getting bad draws on the tiles which could making the guessing a lot harder. Maybe having a limited number of passes on the guessing during the game could ease that "forced to guess" part
Pretty sure it had like 3-4 passes built in, providing limited penalties. Like only moving the queen once or something.
3:43 wouldn't the purple player place 3 cubes since their pattern shows up 3 times? purple spade next to purple spade makes the pattern twice with those two tiles
It is one cube per adjacent tile that creates your pattern. So one cube would be placed on your purple spade example, not two despite creating your card twice. Placing 2 cubes would tell someone that you had two tiles that made your whim card.
Um you know you can guess anyones card on any turn right? Opens up more options especially in higher player counts
Such a good review. Thank you..
Subscribed!
Well, I personally think it's a great game with awesome tension. I have played this with multiple groups and they all loved it.. I think you missed the mark on this review unfortunately..
Surprised you weren't keen on this one, I think its on the heavier side, its a difficult coop thats meant to be played multiple times. Anyway, I really enjoy this.
Star of GenCon with our group. We are still winless
I kickstarted this but haven't played it yet. Hope I like it better than Tom did.
I was excited for this on KS but I passed very quickly once watching gameplay,shame
I completely agree with this review and on your negatives. My main negative was the queen moving every turn regardless. It felt like there was this tension that didn't need to be there and a lack of satisfaction when you got a clue. Sweet, we moved 3 spots, oh the queen did too... Cool...
Fortunately since people have been enjoying this game i was able to sell it for what i paid via the Kickstarter.
I'll stick with Shipwreck Arcana, The Search For Planet X, and Code 777 for the logic/deduction style games.
I enjoyed this one, but I did feel the deduction part to be a little more tedious than some other games. It probably gets a 7 from me. Easy and medium cards were pretty easy to keep track of, but hard ones really take a lot of thinking and making sure you don't miss one of the possible matches. This is true both for placing tiles while holding a hard card and making sure you don't put the wrong number of cubes, but also keeping track of someone elses hard card and checking matches or non-matches over and over on a sheet.
I had fun but wouldn't play it all the time.
I did enjoy the puzzle of the game and the co-op nature. However, I own Shipwreck Arcana, and my game group unanimously agreed that we’d always rather play it over PtR. However, if you want a deeper, longer game (especially with the expansions), you might prefer PtR.
Did Zee play this? It's very much like Shipwreck Arcana and I remember him liking that.
It seems like Tom, and others of the Dicetower, seem to be getting tired of anything that isn't "new". Maybe it is playing too many games and burning out. I used to be on the same page with their reviews but lately....thankfully I played this multiple times already and if you think through not only your combinations but the possible combinations around the table it is never a long shot or guess. Most of all it is fun. That's what I need my games to be, fun.
Even if you disagree with him, these critical reviews should be encouraged since there are so many others who love everything or only review what they like. A lot of us have been playing games for a while and appreciate strong opinions (positive or negative) from those who have been in the hobby a while and know what feels fresh or not.
@@wolflarson71 I’d agree however I have found that a lot of people treat Dice Tower reviews as absolutes. If the Dice Tower loves a game than everyone will love it and if they dislike a game than it must be a bad game. I agree critical reviews are necessary; but I wish people could separate the review as just one persons opinion. It doesn’t matter how long Tom has been in the hobby or anyone else, it’s still just an opinion. I have had to sell games in the past because I can’t get them to the table in local gaming groups because everyone thinks a game isn’t worth a shot because Tom Vasel or some other member disliked the game. On the other hand Wingspan and now Ark Nova have become the equivalent of an actual Holy Grail and everyone thinks they are the best games ever made. It’s disheartening when I show up to a meetup and all I see being played are games that the DT have deemed as good games. People need to stop treating the Dice Tower reviews as the word of God.
This is a great game!
Hmmm....I've seen nothing but positive comments about this one so far. I guess I won't know until I give it a shot.
Love this game. Shame you couldn't enjoy it. It is a huge puzzle for sure that includes not only guessing other whims but when to "guess" specific difficulty whims so you don't needlessly add roses and thus movement to the Queen. I find it an excellent deduction game.
P.s you'v e mentioned in the past also how you like to win games and prefer easier co-ops so this is probably another reason for your dislike. It is difficult.
I love deduction and I love the theme here, but after watching a playthrough I wasn’t sure if I would like this one. As you said, it’s deduction but often not really on your own terms, and comes with too a weird flow of tension.
Well yea, it is supposed to feel like your being chased. Does that wonderfully. It is like fleeing for your life and having to make decisions on the fly to escape safely without mistake. Mess up too much and you hit a dead end and get caught. Idk, makes sense.
@@merccc1 I would still try it if someone wanted to play though!
And this is the reason why I subscribed to many different channels. Mike from the one stop co-op shop loves this game . And I thought I would too. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Thanks for the review.
This game has been a big hit for us as well. We have introduced it to a lot of people and it has turned into a really great gateway! Respectfully disagree with ya on this one Tom!
I'm glad you all enjoy it!
Maybe I'm crazy and granted I haven't played this game but maybe with the forced guesses at the end of the round. Maybe you should allow more easy cards? Any thoughts from those who have played?
I definitely agree with your assessment! The notepads also bothered me quite a bit, you can really burn through them quickly if you use one for each challenge.
What attracted me to this game was that it was a deduction game for 2 players. There are so many out there that require 3+ players. I would love to see a top 10 list of deduction games for 2 players :) Are there even 10 good ones out there?🤣
Break the Code, The Search for Planet X, So Clover, and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective all work really well at 2p!
Yup, I agree exactly with the points you made, those were my problems as well with the game. I remember we lost and I thought: well we did all the logic analysis exactly right, there wasn't anything we could have done better, we just guessed wrong twice...Also, you didn't mention this but there is definitely a chance of alpha-gaming this: one person who sees the possible solutions before anybody else, and the rest just sort of goes along..
Think you might have to file this one with Flamme Rouge Tom. It's you, not the game.
Its definitely not worth sandbagging on easy because the queen will move multiple times even if you keep getting easy.
The way you described me he educated guess reminds me of the solo game Maquis, where sometimes you have to make educated guesses where to place workers and taking risks is what you need to do to win more often. In that game you are deducing where the patrol will go next.
This game looked a little abstract for me. I don’t think any of the Alice in Wonderland games have attracted me yet. Is there a Legends of Andor-like Alice in Wonderland-themed game?
Timers aren't supposed to make sense in Wonderland :-P
But yeah, the game 'Parade' did the whole 'up is down' thing better. Kept the nonsense sensical.
I agree with Tom on this one. The rules are terrible and no one in my family wants to play it with me. I will try to make new rules to make it more enjoyable and report the ones that work on BGG.
This game is quirky. You can force someone sitting next to you to work harder!
Day 13 asking for a Mare Nostrum Empires review :D