A Quintet of Games from Cathala and Friends: Kyudo, 1001 Islands, Raptor, Orichalque, and MOW

Whatever you do at today's archery contest, try to keep the spectators satisfied so that they don't wander off to watch someone else. Lose all of your spectators, and you can't win!

Each player in Kyudo takes one of the four role cards and a scoring sheet that depicts the central target, five flags (one in each of the five colors on the dice), and twenty spectators. The starting player takes the four dice, and other players mark off 1-3 spaces on flags.

On a turn, roll the four dice up to three times, re-rolling dice as you wish. The dice show five colors (that match the flags and the colored rings on the target) and an arrow. For each arrow, you can assign it to a color that you rolled, then mark off a space on the central target. With two arrows, one blue, and one red, for example, you can mark off two blue spaces, two red spaces, or one blue and one red space. Once you've marked off all the spaces in a colored ring, any additional "hits" on that color cause your opponents to lose spectators — because you're clearly far more awesome than they are!

If you roll two or more dice of the same color, you can mark off an equal number of spaces on the flag of that color; when you mark off the final space in the corner of a flag, you receive that flag's bonus, such as marking off any two spaces, or taking a token that lets you change a die to the face of your choice, or taking a different token that allows you not to lose spectators during a turn of your choice.


If you roll four arrows, all opponents lose four spectators, and if you roll four different colors, you use the special power of your role, such as forcing others to use only three dice for a round or adding a green or blue circle to opponents' targets.

If you lose all of your spectators, you're out of the game. If you're the last archer in the game, you win! Alternatively, if you've marked off all the spaces on your target and you have the most spectators, you win.

Mamma Raptor has escaped from her run and laid her eggs in the park. A team of scientists must neutralize her and capture the baby raptors before they run wild into the forest.

Raptor is a card-driven board game with tactical play and some double guessing. Players use their cards to move their pawns — with the scientists on one side, Mother and baby raptors on the other — on the board. Every round, the player who played the lowest ranked card can use the corresponding action, while their opponent has movement or attack points equal to the difference between the values of the two cards. The scientists can use fire, can move by jeep on the tracks, and can even call for reinforcements, while the mamma raptor can hide in the bushes, yell to frighten the scientists, and call for her babies.

The more games you play, the more familiar new games will seem to you. You'll hear the rules for the brand new, never-before-seen Game X and immediately parse the game as 60% Claim the King's Throne, 30% Control the Galactic Empire, and 10% new stuff. Whether this development is good or bad will depend on the tastes of your game group, your desire for newness, your outlook on life, whether you were breastfed as an infant, and various other factors.

I've already seen MOW, a new card game from Bruno Cathala that was released in limited numbers at SPIEL '08 in October from Hurrican, being referred to by several people as similar to 6 Nimmt!, but Reiner Knizia's Escalation! is much closer to being MOW's cardy cousin. Here's an edited description of that earlier game from a first impression that I published in March 2007:
MOW plays like a two-dimensional Escalation! as instead of simply piling up numbers and trying to be king of the hill, players lay out numbered cards in a line and on each turn, you are trying to play a card that's higher or lower than the cards already in play. If you can't do so (or choose not to), you must take those cards, then start a new line. The cards in the deck range from 1 to 15 with a slight bell curve in terms of their distribution: a single 1, two 2s, three 3s, three 4s, and so on with a peak of four 7s, 8s and 9s. These cards have 0-3 flies on them, and your goal is to collect as few flies as possible. The game lasts multiple rounds, ending when one player collects 100 flies, and whoever has the fewest flies wins.


As with Escalation!, MOW is an exercise in card counting, hand management, and probability: Have the highest and lowest cards been played? Am I stifling myself in future rounds by playing high/low cards now? Would it be better to eat a few flies now in order to start a new line and ditch a three-fly 9 that otherwise can't be played? Whereas in Escalation! you weigh the merits of playing, say, a 10 versus two 5s — How many of each have been played, and what are the odds of drawing a match compared to opening two spots or one in my hand? — in MOW you're deciding whether to ditch cards in the center of the number line before they become unplayable (despite giving opponents more playing potential) against playing a card near the end of the line to shut down their hand. Small decisions all, but the decisions are there.

The end of the round punishment in MOW matches that of Escalation! — add the cards in your hand to your pile of collected cards — but since those cards vary in point value, you have more to consider once the end of the round nears.

Just as Escalation! has its neighborhood watch and wild cards, MOW has a half-dozen special cards that break the basic number line of the rest of the deck. Those cards are:

—A 0 and 16, which serve as endcaps on the line.
—A 7 and 9, which can be played only on top of a 7 or 9 already in play.
—Two cards that can be played between two others in line, assuming there's a gap.

Each of these cards features five flies and allows you to reverse the turn order when you play it. This last element is a huge plus as you have more control over which players can get slammed with a pack of flies — assuming they don't have an out of their own. Being able to throw five flies on the pile at once is a huge plus, and the end of the round punishment of keeping cards you don't play creates a nice tension in terms of when to play them. Wait too long, and another player might take the line, end the round, and leave the flies in your hand.


Wags have summarized the strategy for both games in simple terms — "draw high cards" for Escalation!, for example — but after more than forty playings of Escalation! and 20-30 rounds of MOW I can say that there's more to the game than good drawing. As mentioned earlier, memory, probability, and hand management all come into play, making it impossible to fall into default strategies of always playing particular cards in particular situations. What's been played previously, how much of the deck remains, who's taken the most points in this round and over the entire game, how much do your opponents gamble — all of these factors come into play to determine what you should play when.

One drawback of MOW is that the two-player rules graft a slot machine feel onto the game. Instead of a head-to-head duel, the two players add an imaginary third player to the game, flipping a card from the top of the deck to represent its plays — if the card fits into the line, you add it; otherwise, you pile it on the side. Whenever one player does take the line, they also take this extra pile of cards.


While players can make unexpected plays in MOW — jumping far down the number line, or breaking out a special card in the early part of the round — the random card play by this stand-in derails your efforts to set up future turns. The game feels more arbitrary and less strategic because it is, unlike Escalation! which sticks to the duel format that you'd expect with two players, a format that lets you count cards more effectively and anticipate moves from the other side of the table with greater accuracy. I've played two-player MOW with the imaginary player and with a strict duel format, and the latter is much preferred for all the same reasons that make 2p Escalation! enjoyable. Yes, one player might score more special cards, but those don't guarantee success, just as they don't in Knizia's game.

Both Escalation! and MOW are light and move quickly, and luck does play a factor as you'll sometimes draw (or not draw) precisely the card that you need on the next turn. Accept that as a given, as is the case in many card games, and you'll have a fun time fighting off the flies or loading up the weaponry to outshine your neighbors.