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Svarog's Den - Board Games

Stack Trash, Collect Food with Mice, and March Dice in a Line

by W. Eric Martin

I haven’t traveled to Game Market in years, so I’m mostly following Japanese game releases from afar, opening a tab in my browser whenever I see something interesting, then slowly investigating each game as the weeks pass and I have time to work through translations. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve seen:

Line Dice was released in December 2022 by SUNNY BIRD, and this backgammon-style design is from Yoshihisa Itsubaki, who is probably best known for Streams, which has had several licensed versions released since that game’s 2011 debut.

Here’s how to play this two-player game:

In Line Dice (ラインダイス), your goal is to reach your finish line first with your six dice.

Each player has their own movement track with six lanes for their six racing dice. The racing dice all start off the board on their 1 symbol, which is also wild. On your first turn or two, you’ll roll two six-sided dice, choose a die, flip a racing die to the matching number, then place it in the “start” space at the beginning of the lane; you’ll then repeat this process with the other die.

Once you have at least one die in a starting space, on a turn you roll the two six-sided dice, then use each die to either change the face of one of your racing dice or advance a racing die of the matching number. If you create a line of racing dice of the same number, say, two 4s that are adjacent to one another, then you can use a rolled 4 to move both of the racing dice four spaces at the same time. (A 1 counts as all numbers, so it automatically creates a line when adjacent to another racing die.)

If you land one of your dice on a change space in a lane, you can change an opponent’s die to the value of your choice.

Starting positions

You must land a racing die in the goal space at the end of the lane by exact count. If you would have extra movement, then you move the racing die backwards in the lane until the full value of the die is used. However, if you land a racing die in the penultimate space in a lane, then when you roll that number again, you can push that racing die forward one space onto the goal.

Get all six of your racing dice onto the goals first, and you win. Alternatively, you can play multiple games, with each player scoring points for the face value of the racing dice in the goals and losing points for dice that didn’t make it, with jokers now counting for -10 points.

• SUNNY BIRD has also released a new version of Carlo A. Rossi‘s Ab in die Tonne under the name Mountain 53, with no apparent changes other than to the name and the cover art. Here’s how to play:

Players in Mountain 53 need to toss trash into the garbage bin, but unfortunately they’re all a bit lazy and instead of emptying the bin when it’s full, they’re content to pile everything as high as possible in the hope that someone else will knock it over and have to clean up the mess.

Before the game begins, each player takes a set of cards numbered 1–10, and the forty pieces of “trash” — milk cartons, tin cans, bottles, and apple cores — are placed next to the garbage can.

Each round, players secretly choose one of the three cards in their hand, then reveal them simultaneously. In order from low number to high, each player places a number of pieces of trash equal to the number they revealed into — or onto — the garbage bin. If a player makes the garbage mountain collapse, they receive a penalty token, then empty the bin, with the next player in that round starting with a clean bin. If someone places the final piece of trash into the bin without knocking anything over, they receive a bonus.

The game ends after the sixth penalty token has been handed out, and whoever has the fewest penalty points wins.

• Designer/artist douguyasan ran a Make100 campaign on Kickstarter in early 2023 for the two-player game The Cheese was in its Place, and while that campaign is over, perhaps the print-and-play version will be made available again or the title will be licensed. Here’s how it works:

You make only four moves in The Cheese was in its Place, so make them count!

Each player receives four mouse cards at random from a deck numbered 5-13; the remaining card is set aside face down. In the first round, lay out in a 3×3 grid nine bait cards, which are numbered 1-6 and depict food: acorns, strawberries, and cheese. Each player in turn places a card face down next to one of the rows or columns in the grid, then they reveal them, then they do this again. Whichever mouse is smallest takes food first, but it can grab cards only up to its size, e.g., the 5 mouse takes bait cards from the end of the row or column where it’s located, stopping if a card would make the sum of the bait more than 5.

After resolving all four mice, refill the grid with bait cards, then play another round with the remaining two mouse cards in hand. Each trio of acorns or strawberries you collect is worth 1 point, while a trio of cheese is worth 2 points. Whoever scores the most wins.

Greeen Mafia is a solitaire game from designer Hakushi (はくし) and publisher Kuuri Keikaku (空理計画), and you can download the English cards and rules in order to play the game immediately.

Here’s an overview of the setting and goal:

The silent facility has become a deadly, inhospitable fortress. You are a warrior on a mission to destroy the evil mafia, and you are alone in this fortress. The enemies are huge, but the more you defeat their members, the more vulnerable the security becomes and the fewer obstacles you will face that will prevent you from taking a bite out of the boss.

In the game Greeen Mafia, you will enjoy the exhilaration of defeating enemy after enemy with your enhanced body. However, whether or not a facility can be damaged by defeating the enemy depends on the damage inflicted on the facility beforehand. Furthermore, the damage inflicted on facilities is gradually removed, defeated enemies will eventually be replenished, loopholes will be blocked, and destroyed facilities will be repaired. You can control the movements of your enemies to some extent by devising the order in which you defeat them. Conversely, you need to remember which enemies you have defeated and when; otherwise you will not be able to take advantage of the game.

Once you have inflicted the default damage to the facility, defeated the gatekeepers waiting for you on the way, and overcome the final objective — the boss — you have completed your mission and won the game.

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