2024: Year of Legacy Games

Dorfromantik is a great cooperative tile-placing game, but what happens when it's not? Dorfromantik Duel answers that question. A spin-off of Dorfromantik, "Duel" is what gamers call a "multiplayer solitaire". Both players are playing side by side on their individual "boards" and the actions of one player does not really affect the actions of the other player. They just want to become a single land mass Dorfromantik Duel is almost strictly a "multiplayer solitare" with very little interaction between the two players. The game is well constructed, but it does take up a lot of table space (instead of the one playing area needed in the original Dorfromantik, two playing areas are required). In all four of the games we played our maps ended up bumping into each other no matter how hard we tried to keep them away. Duel came with two "expansions" included in the core box. One module rewarded players for completing tasks speedily. With eve...

With the purchase of an expansion pack, the world of Dorfromantik become more wonderful, more whimsical and more... romantic. Two new types of tasks have entered our sessions, a photographer now wanders our landscapes. Over the past seven sessions we have unlocked 4 new tiles, pushing our maximum tiles to 112 up from the 73 we started with in Game Numeral Uno. Will we ever play a session where all 112 tiles are laid out on the table at the end? That is TBD. One thing I have noticed in the last few games is how inconsistent our scores have been. We have had swings of over 100 points from game to game. This corroborates what I have been reading online- there is a lot of luck in Dorfromantik. But that's part of the blue-print of board games. A game has to be a mix of skill and luck (order and chaos) in order to be fun. Without the elements of luck, you end up with games like chess and little clocks that you punch every time you finish a move. With that said, Dorfromantik is not the re...

When you win a board game there is a feeling of relief and success. Through a combination of skills and luck (you hope it's skill) you have beat out your opponents. But you still feel a little bad. Your friends and loved ones have lost- an hour of their life resulted in failure instead of success. I guess that's the appeal of cooperative games. You and your compadres can succeed or fail together.  Therefore the dopamine rush when you win a cooperative game is untainted. How can I describe the dopamine hit when hitting 400 points in Dorfromantik? Cathy and I worked together to learn and master this game. We unlocked new tiles and abilities. Our scores and skills improved in tandem. And yet, I didn't think we would achieve the coveted 400 point game. I read a lot of tales of other gamers pursuing this grail and coming up short, or only reaching the target after hundreds of games. Cathy and I achieved this together, truly working as a team. At first I thought we had crossed th...

  And so it came to pass that on the last weekend of April, Cathy and I achieved the final four  unlockables of  Dorf Romantik . In our Friday afternoon campaign (Game 17) we met the requirements for two sky-themed hex tiles. The Cloud Tile is a "wild" tile that is achieved at the end of the path on the campaign sheet.  The Balloon Launch Site is unlocked when scoring 300 points in a campaign. We were able to use these two new hex tiles to complete another set of goals in our Sunday morning game (Game 18). The Cloud Tile was especially instrumental in setting up a 20 hex forest with two flags. This netted us the 40 flag points we needed to unlock the Flag Festival. Then, by methodically completing of task after task,  the Construction Site hex was unlocked-  evidence that Cathy and I are growing in our mastery of this game. And with everything in the box unlocked, the end is nigh. Cathy and I might have a few more rounds of "Dorf" in us and I migh...

  I've been pretty obsessed with Dorf Romantik recently. Cathy and I are still unlocking items and still trying to understand the best strategies. In a game that depends on luck, our scores are really fluctuating, but the more we are unlocking items, the more chances we have to score big. In video games the unlocking of items tends to be supplementary to the main story mode- almost like an easter egg hunt- something to be done later. Of course unlocking items is a core concept to legacy games. At the end of our 12th game we unlocked the "Golden Heart" alongside our final red heart. This doubles our heart power for future games. We also recently unlocked "The Warehouse". This piece is probably a game-changer, although we have yet to really utilized it to its fullest potential yet or even yet understood what that potential might be. Strategy, strategy, strategy. Every hex laid in this game is a potential game changer (usually the game-changer being a roadblock tha...

After our fourth playthrough of Dorfromantik I realized that something was off. When we first played the game it was too easy. I hadn't read the rules closely enough. I missed a constraint in the rulebook. Our next three play-throughs the game still didn't feel right. We couldn't get more than 100 points, it felt too difficult. So I scoured the internet for answers. I found a lot of videos of people playing Dorfromantik online but they were all playing it wrong. They were making the same mistake that I made the first time. Their final scores were way over-powered because of this mistake. It took me a while to find a video of someone who was actually playing the game correctly, but when I did, the game finally clicked into place. Of course! It's all right there in the rulebook. Why didn't I just read it more carefully? Misinterpreting rules and missing rules is one of the toughest aspect of board games. And when this happens it can really throw off the balance of the...