YORKTON - Regular readers will know myself and guilder Trevor have become definite fans of offerings from Button Shy Games.
The publisher does mostly 18-card games – almost all available in Print ‘n Play – and since they have a small print footprint they are quite low cost in such a format.
That many of the games coming out from this publisher are two player they fit snugly in our wheelhouse over a cold drink or coffee too.
The latest such game to hit our table is the yet to be officially launched Dionysia. We were fortunate to be sent the pnp files for an early look.
The game is from designers Franco De Joya, and Joebyn Sewell, with art by Dan Gartman.
Very crisp and wonderfully rendered.
Here the designers have created a game where players are drafting a card from one of three offered each turn (except for the last), and then placing the selected card into their own ‘play’ area.
Through the game players create three scenes for their play that they will score points from based on criteria of certain cards on heir stage. Each card in the game has a way to score points, but you only do that for three of the nine cards in your ‘play’ each game.
Generally, you are trying to create specific scoring patterns of dramatic elements through the arrangement of your scenes while taking advantage of powerful effects available through each act’s key (topmost) scene
So you shuffle all 18 scene cards and reveal three of them in the shared stage between the players, and the game is set up.
The basic play is a cinch to learn, but how to maximize points is tricky. The truth is the optimal move to score off one card can actually negate another card you may have in a position to score from.
Early in a game you can mitigate the situation with some skill in choosing where to place a selected card, but as the cards play out your placement choices narrow, and the cards you have to pick from may all be bad and yet you must take one. There are good choices early, but the frustration level tends to over balance things late game.
This one is trickier than it looks with enough here to entice repeated plays, but long term the frustration which sometimes occurs with only 18 cards and having to play all of them in a game may put this one in the back half of Button Shy (www.buttonshy.com) offerings.
