My Top 10 Favorite Games with Event Cards
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ก.ค. 2024
- Jamey discusses the various uses of event cards in tabletop games. Games mentioned include Pandemic Legacy, Orleans, Eldritch Horror, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Burgle Bros, Robinson Crusoe, Arkham Horror, Charterstone, Forbidden Desert, Yedo, Clank, Dead of Winter, Scythe, Summit, Legendary Encounters: Alien, and The Rise of Queensdale. Clank Legacy and The Siege of Runedar (played after filming this) also have great event card systems.
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Great episode, as always. The Robinson Crusoe thing of cards coming back worse is similar to the reveal of a face hugger in Legendary Encounters. You shuffle the chest buster card into your personal deck and when that comes up again, you are dead. Terrifying, as is most of that game.
One of my favourite stories about event cards is from Cluedo: Super Sleuth, a more exciting version of Cluedo (or Clue in the US) where you build the mansion from tiles as you explore it, and other changes. I played it long before i went to college and discovered Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne and Catan and fell far, far, far into the rabbit hole and never came back up. Dispite this happening about 15 years ago, I still recall it vividly because we all laughed so hard throughout the whole affair.
All the clue cards were in play, so as a table, the only the ones none of us had seen were in the envelope. JP drew an event card. "Hogarth (the Butler, an NPC piece on the board in this version) calls everyone to dinner." All players are placed in the dining room and JP gets to make one accusation to us all, and we each reveal a card if we have it. It's the first accusation anyone has made, and JP looks at his note pad and accuses the top person, weapon and place that he hasn't marked off himself. We go around the table, each of us shaking our head. JP pauses for a brief moment, then his eyes bugle open and he stares at us all.
Jp had just guessed the exact contents of the envelope.
Now in Super Sleuth you have to get back to the entrance hall and stand next to the phone to make an accusation to win the game. The dining room and the entrance hall were several rooms appart from each other. This starts a mad dash to the phone. It gets around to JP's turn again and he rolls another event. He draws it and it reads "Hogarth tells you there is a phone call for you. Place your player piece next to the phone in the entrance hall. Your turn ends." JP is right next to the phone, but had to wait till next turn to make the accusation.
We go around the table, everyone else still rushing to the phone, but with a few rooms between us still when it gets back to JP. The rules state that you must roll and resolve the dice before making an accusation. JP rolls. Another event. He draws it and reads it out. "Hogarth calls you to the dining room. Move your player piece to the dining room. Your turn ends." JP screams something I will not write here, but suffice it to say, the rest of the table erupted in laughter!
I honestly can't recall who won, apart from the fact that it wasn't me or JP, but we still talk about that game every now and then. Yes, it was random. Yes, it was the game playing us. But goodness, it was hilarious!
Outlive uses events cards in an interesting way in that they are negative for everyone, and persistent, but any player can give up resources they’ve collected to defeat an event and remove its effect which will help all players at the table (but they get bonus victory points for doing it). The Artemis Project is a new game, similar to Orleans, where the event is revealed at beginning of round but you have the round to plan for the, sometimes, negative effect. The unique thing is that the event will occur in a specific phase of the round and will vary with each event.
I agree that event cards feel like a slog when they're done badly. One additional flaw I've noticed is when they offer a choice, but give no information as to what the choices mean, so the outcome feels completely random instead of meaningful. This happened a lot in Seafall, which I didn't enjoy.
I liked the event cards in Pillars of the Earth, a worker placement game. The events can be good or bad for everyone, but you don't flip it until everyone's placed their workers. One of the worker spots gives that player a choice to be immune to the event card, or to get a bonus resource if it was a good event (or they don't mind the bad event). Getting 1 resource isn't the best use of a worker, so you hope it's a really bad event if you go there. Only one player (at most) gets to interact with it, but I think it's a fun gambling decision that weighs on everyone's mind while they draft worker spots.
Battlestar Galactica was almost entirely driven by the event cards, and even though it's a constant stream of problems with very rare good news, they could be easily handled IF everyone works together. So your resources are at risk, but it's also the best time to gain information on everyone else's behavior. And there were some neat interactive mechanics to control the pacing of the event deck, such as "scouting" the top few cards, or to throw someone suspicious in the brig so they can't draw events on their own turn.
I wasn't a fan of the events in Burgle Bros. The bad cards felt really punishing, and the good cards sometimes did nothing if drawn at the wrong time. My group got to where we avoided drawing events at all costs because of the risk.
Thanks for an interesting discussion. I must say I have learnt so much about game design by just watching your videos.
thank you Jamey for making different lists! Congrats on the Wingspan win!
I think Shadows Over Camelot does it well with the Special Black Cards. You can mitigate how many of these you see by choosing other bad things that happen to the realm (a health of damage to you or Siege Engine shows up outside Camelot), but it is a choice. Players can also deal with it with their Merlin Cards, and as there may be a traitor, the decision to not deal with it may reveal that they are the traitor. I really think this is a great story element and really adds to the theme.
Koi is a game where you are in a koi pond eating dragonflies. I think the game is played over a "week" (7 days), and you lay out 7 cards at the beginning, which will be the "weather" for each day. The weather sets a special rule for that day only. The weather is revealed at the start of each round.
Spirit Island - when you generate enough fear, you draw a card which, unlike the usual story for a co-op, is a boon for the players not a disaster. The fear cards give you sometime a tide-changing effect that takes you from the brink of losing to new life. I handn't experienced that in a game before where you teeter close to losing, then get that event card and get a breather. (We always still lose, but it's nice to get a couple of hopeful moments before the end!)
Pax Pamir's main play loop involves drafting cards from a (duplex) river, using the ‘pay the cards to skip them’ mechanism. A few event cards are inserted into the card supply in a controlled way. They are interesting because you can voluntarily draft the cards for one, typically private, effect, but if they flow off the river unbought they have a different (though typically related) global effect. And, some of these draftable/purchasable events trigger scoring rounds. Also, there's a restrictive, closed economy. So you see the events coming, and you can pay to trigger them at a time or in a way that benefits you, but you can also play to constrict other people's cash supply and limit their choices. It seems swingy, but the dynamics are fascinating (and it's a game about seizing advantage, anyway-everything about the game is designed to support sudden phase changes within a uniform ruleset).
I really like Gloomhaven's event system. You're given a tough choice, and the result of your choice may depend on who is in your party. So you're encouraged to role-play to add to the theme of the game.
The one that springs to mind is Spirit Island with the Branch & Claw expansion.
Edit: Oh, forgot Folklore, which had a great event card system. If you're travelling on the world map, and you stop on a road, you draw a Road Event card and resolve one of two effects depending on the time of day.
If you stop off road, you draw an Off Road event, which is usually more difficult but does give you a choice between two effects. Then you flip the card over see what your choice did.
Great list Jamey, I completely agree with your top 2! Another one I'd add would be the "events" in Chronicles of Crime. They often move the story forward while also often adding an element of pressure or stakes for the players (someone has just died, time is running out, a suspect has run and their whereabouts are no longer known, etc)
How about Champions of Midgard, the ocean cards are events you can actually check on before you go over them, but that means taking an extra action to find out.
I enjoyed the events in Stuffed Fables. Every page is it's own event in that chapter, and each one typically has story events that happen when you reach a space or complete an objective. Additionally, there are optional events you can trigger from board spaces that present you with a situation and give you a choice that affects your outcome/reward.
One of my favorite games with event cards is The Primary. This game does a great job utilizing this mechanic.
They operate on the game in a very limited way, only affecting prices, but I like the event cards in Tulip Bubble. They feel thematically appropriate, causing wild fluctuations in the market prices, but only from a predictable set of events. Either one of the three types of tulips becomes more valuable, the least valuable surges up in price, the most valuable busts, or the market collapses and the game ends. All the outcomes are predictable, more so as the game progresses and options for the card draw are gradually eliminated.
Thanks for the discussion, Jamey! I always look forward to these videos.
Excellent inclusion of the Orleans event tiles. When we play quacks we play all the event cards as universal as some of those events are game winningly good. Thematically brilliant event cards are in Viral.
Love this list! Rise of Tribes and especially We're Doomed both do this well, IMO
Lots of comments on Eldritch already, but I’ll throw my vote there too. There is always that looming sense of doom with the Mythos deck, where even if you had a great round of encounters and have the game under control, one mythos card later and everyone is scrambling to survive.
Dude! I just played Scythe for the first time with my family and... damn! What a great game! I got those little butterflies in my tummy I get when I am discovering a game I am going to LOVE. This game is not hyped. It deserves all the kudos it has gotten. Thank you for designing Scythe. I can see all the love and thought you infused into this game. I know I am late to the party, but I had to say something.
Thank you so much, Jessica! I'm happy for people to discover Scythe at any time, and I know that "butterfly" feeling when I really connect with a game. I hope you enjoy exploring Scythe in the future!
The crossroads cards in Dead of Winter are great! Gives a story element to the game. My group tends to forget to draw it sometimes 😅.
Through the Ages has an excellent event system. Also Troyes.
I like the event cards in The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire. They are triggered at the end of every round but there is a game mechanism that gives players the opportunity to sneak a peek at future cards and try to mitigate any negative effects/optimise for positive effects. Also, the first three cards are mostly positive and the three last mostly negative, which fits the game excellent thematically.
I like them in the Card Driven Games family most famously Twilight Struggle but Paths of Glory or Hannibal are great examples too. The events can (mostly) be played either as events or for general utility so the players have more control over what happens.
COIN games are also underpinned by events and every one of them has two states - each favouring one set of the factions involved. This means that they can all be resolved in 3 ways, including the middle no change way. This gives strategic choice as well as allowing historical counter factuals which are quite unusual.
I was worried when you got to #2 and DOW didn’t come up, and I saw scythe in cover image. Then I remember that you don’t include your own games and there it was! I agree with your thought on can my choices matter, and in DoW they do but you can never know which actions will or won’t matter.
I have to mention the greatest moment ever in it was a crossroad card, and it was from over 6 years ago, but I still remember called “your tired” and if any player yawned it triggered the card.
I love the encounter cards in Scythe because they are always positive, give you a choice, and players choose to trigger them.
I once played a game of Scythe where I was the first player. Due to the airship ability, I was able to get to the encounter territory on the first turn of the game. I drew the "burn the factory" encounter! It was so funny!! :)
This happened in one of our games too with Boost. We played a 7 player game with the new encounters, and all 7 of us used move as our first action to hit an encounter. Talk about a great way to get exposed to those cards quickly.
A recent favorite on our table that uses events brilliantly is Jaws. If you get a chance to give it a go Jamey, I would highly recommend it. Basically each round (day) a card is drawn that gives some narrative from the movie that will set the scene: where swimmers spawn, beaches getting closed (or opened because the Mayor is a idiot 😋) or even a shark sighting that draws all the players to the opposite side of the isand!
When you combine the wonderfully thematic event with the hidden movement of Jaws, you get a very tension filled day at the beach - will the shark use the feeding frenzy to eat ALL the swimmers at South Beach? Should we close West Beach now before more tourists come? But dont forget we need Chief Brody to bring more barrels to the dock!
The pacing is genius for a hidden movement game because of the events.
So that's my current favorite. Thanks for sharing Jamey!
That sounds really neat! I need to try Jaws.
I have about half of those you've listed. I like personal event cards better because they lend toward storylines
Hit Z Road is an easy to play zombie apocalypse game. You play through a Game made by a small child who is going through a zombie apocalypse. Throughout the game you bid on cards that contain different events. The outstanding theme and artwork for this game ,along with the event cards really make it stand out.
I defence of Eldritch Horror and to a lesser extent AH I feel the events are more part of action resolution than just events so multiple layers of randomness is fine - you can still direct the sort of thing you are trying to do and hope. I do like being in control in most games but these games are thematic and part of the theme is being at the mercy of forces greater than yourself.
The interesting part about Burgle Bros and its event cards is that you often have to hide in a corner for some rounds to avoid the guards. In these cases you very often don‘t want to take any actions at all end just stand still. But it forces you to take an event card. So actually it‘s impossible to just hide and do nothing without the risk of a negative event.
The new events deck added in Orleans Trade and Intrigue really changes things up.
My favorite event game is eldritch horror, they can be random and sometimes frustating, but overall they bring a good story and fun memories, like finding 4 artifacts in one turn!😁
Jamey, have you ever played World Without End? It's the sequel to Pillars of the Earth and it has a pretty cool encounter mechanism. Some of them are rough but the game is pretty unforgiving in general so it just fits. It's one of those games I really like even though it beats me up.
I haven't played it, Steve, but I'm intrigued!
I tend to prefer event cards in co-op games, or games where the events happen to everyone and are fairly restrained in what they can be - For me Orleons not only is good because you have a turn of knowing exactly what the event is, but because there's only 18 events, they're all coming out at some point, and there are 3 each of six event types. That gives you enough information to not only deal with what's happening this turn but the event deck is constrained enough that you can anticipate what's going to happen in later turns without having certainty.
I enjoy how Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu handles event cards - They're an aspect of how epidemics work in most Pandemic games, you each time you draw whatever the epidemic equivalent is you flip over the next Old One and that either has an immediate or ongoing effect on the game. There are 8 or so of them and you use a random 5 each game, plus Cthulhu who when you flip you lose the game who's always at the end, meaning one of the loss cases is handled in the same way as the event cards which I think reduces overall rule overhead.
I also like the way events are handled in Knizia's 2000 Lord of the Rings game, where you have a table of events that you advance down as you reveal sundials. I wish the overall game system wasn't as swingy as it is, though I'm not entirely sure how that could be fixed (maybe a bag system which you restock periodically rather than having everything in the deck from the start?), but the actual handling of the events? You know what's coming up, in what order, what's good, what's bad, what's mitigable and how, you just don't know when the event cone will advance to it's next step.
I'm not sure that this exactly qualifies, but Solomon Kane (not yet released) has story cards that define what's happening in the scenario you are playing. Specific goals for that scenario are printed on the card, and whether/how well you achieve them determines which card you read next. The next card could be good or bad, but it's more likely to be bad (or worse) if you don't achieve the goal.
I know Dead of Winter head to be number 1. Great list.
Quacks has 9 rounds. I just got it yesterday and played it twice already, what a fun game!
Loving that list brother. Been really thinking about trying Burgle Brothers and you gave me another reason to consider it. Why'd you get rid of your number 1 pick if you don't mind me asking?
Well, there were a few aspects of it that I really enjoyed (Crossroads cards and how each player has their own goals that sometimes conflict with the shared goal), but there were also certain elements of the game that I found tedious or uninteresting enough to deter me from wanting to continue to play. I still admire the game, though.
I agree that Eldritch feels punishing, but some of the most memorable gaming moments have been the mythos deck just being disastrous. I think it helps that we've played a lot, so we kind of know that 'shit's going down' even if we don't know what it is. The cities in ruin expansion killed off my fella's characters twice in one turn, which is something we still talk about, like that game where a different friend hid in Sydney and refused to fight any monsters... Happy days 😁
Tsukuyumi has an event phase that each player gets to choose whether they will interact with that phase or not.
Great video and I have to agree that the event cards in Dead of Winter are fantastic. What are your thoughts on event cards where your choices unlock special, player specific abilities?
I think it depends on whether or not the player has some level of agency over their choice. If they just luck into a powerful ability without any type of choice or sacrifice, I wouldn't be excited about it.
@@jameystegmaier thank you! I appreciate the reply! I'm designing event cards which will have the choices being obvious enough as to what ability you unlock. However the specific consequences of the choice aren't immediately obvious.
Hopefully I can get it to work!
First time I've seen someone say "I was so hungry I ate my sherpa..." with a smile on their face!
Event cards are like real life. One of my favorite games with event cards is Pillars of the Earth.
I like them in Andor because I feel they are necessary to spice up the game that would mostly be planning ahead otherwise.
Also, Aeon's end is all about dealing with events from the boss deck.
Would epic cards from Inis be considered events too even if played by a player (the red card)? Because they also provide the bit of chaos that make the game better.
Damien: I think it could be debated either way, but if they are considered event cards, I like how organically they're integrated into Inis.
Currently awaiting my copy of scythe (I'm late to the party!).....will be looking at the expansions too - pretty excited to be honest.
What are your thoughts on the events in 'This war of mine? I love that game as, yes it's dark, but dripping in theme and really challenging in many ways. Not least testing your morals. Tje expansions also add great depth and variety. It doesnt get many mentions but it's one of my favourites. Curious on how you see this one?
I'm glad you mentioned This War of Mine, Paul. I haven't played it in a while, but I recall my favorite mechanism being related to the event-style cards you reveal as you explore different areas of the game.
Évolution: climat. Big time event cards.
Do you consider 7th Continent's Exploration cards to be event cards? If so, how do you feel about them, since they interrupt your explorations but are part of the core gameplay loop?
I do! And I do enjoy them, especially because they're a part of the core gameplay loop.
Im a huge fan of burgle bros. The events make everyone in the cooperative group cringe in anticipation of what's most likely a bad or possibly neutral event (rarely good though). I'm looking forward to Sabotage
"The thing I like about this game that uses event cards is that you can leave them out entirely" made me pause the video and laugh for a while.