Review #14: Oh My Goods! Longsdale in Revolt & Escape to Canyon Brook

# of Players: 1-4
Playtime: 30-60 Minutes

Core Mechanic: Hand Management/Push Your Luck

Theme: Medieval

Type: Card

Weight: Medium

Year: 2015

Rating: 8*

I was originally drawn to this game because of the Klemens Franz art, which is typical of almost all games he does the art for, but was very put off by the name. It's so tongue-in-cheek that I never gave the game a second thought until I tumbled upon one of Rahdo's lists where he mentioned that the campaign expansion, Longsdale in Revolt, completely revolutionized the game for him. The small form factor was appealing to me, so I decided to check this game out and was particularly interested in the campaign. It is a fun mix between an engine-builder and a push-your-luck game, but I think I was swept into the hype of the campaign and left thinking it was not as amazing as some were making it out to be.

I will explain the base game before moving onto the two campaign expansions. As is typical with most euro games, you will be constructing buildings to gather resources to construct more buildings and gather more resources, all in the hopes of having the most victory points at the end of the game. Each player starts off with one worker, a building that produces coal, and a handful of cards that can be either constructed as a building or used as an input resource for the buildings you already own. The base game is played over several rounds and ends after a player builds their eighth building. Victory points are then tallied based on buildings, workers, and goods.

Each round is divided into four phases. In the first phase each player is able to discard his or her hand for a new one, or keep their old hand, and then add two more cards to their hand. In the second phase, cards are revealed from the draw deck until two half sun icons appear. The cards revealed represent the common market of goods that each player will be able to use as inputs into their building during the production phase. Players will then decide which building they want to activate in the fourth phase with their worker and select a card from their hand that they would like to build in the fourth phase. This where the meat of the game emerges.

In order to activate a building you need to have a worker assigned to it and the required input resources as listed on the building card. The goods revealed in the second phase can be assigned to the card, along with additional goods that will be revealed in the third phase. If the revealed goods do not meet the requirements, you are able to discard goods from your hand. Because you need to assign a worker before the third phase, it becomes a push-your-luck mechanic - if you don't have the goods in your hand and the goods weren't revealed in the second phase, will you try to activate a building you need anyway and hope that the goods will be revealed in the third phase? Or will you just activate a building that isn't as important but possible so you don't waste your production?

The third phase then occurs with more goods revealed, followed by the fourth phase - production and building. During production, you produce goods with workers or assistants, more on that in a bit, if you have the required input goods as revealed in the common market or played from your hand. For each building that is activated via production of goods, you are then able to use its production chain which takes either more goods from your hand or goods on other buildings to produce additional goods. This is the second important mechanic of the game, engine-building, where you can attempt to chain buildings together so that outputs from one can be used as inputs for the next. This is exhilarating when it can be pulled off. At this point you are also able to build one of the buildings that you selected earlier by paying the cost equal to the value of goods stored on your existing buildings or you can hire an assistant instead if you can pay the cost and meet the building requirements. Assistants are pretty much additional workers that you can permanently assign to one of your buildings so that you can produce at more than just one building.

That is the base game, which combines push-your-luck mechanics with engine-building using nothing more than a deck of cards. It is definitely swingy and sometimes you feel at mercy to the luck of the draw as nothing you need for your engine to work is revealed. I have only played the base games a couple of times and while it fills the gap for a short engine-building game with a few neat twists, the overall package doesn't come together as smoothly as I would like. Are the expansions able to fix this?

These two expansions simultaneously expand and focus the gameplay mechanics of the base game while also layering a story over the entire game. Instead of playing until eight buildings are constructed, each game is played over nine rounds and in each round an event happens. These events can include modification of the existing rules for a round, additional production, or adding new buildings or assistants to the game. Each game begins with a chapter card to tell players which story card to read and which round cards will be used for that chapter. The story cards progress the plot and also add requirements that must be met each round in order to avoid victory point penalties. For example, in one game each player may be required to produce a certain amount of food or else they will lose victory points at the end of the game.

These requirements give a lot more focus to the game. Now players will be searching the decks for cards to build the particular engine required and will also be competing for the same buildings and resources. It did not feel too strenuous in a two-player game, but I could see it becoming more difficult in a four-player game. Another change to the rules is being able to construct a building and hire an assistant during the fourth phase instead of only one or the other. This is likely out of necessity due to the changed end-game conditions.

Most chapters will introduce a new building type that will stay in the game permanently until the campaign is completed. A couple notable ones are buildings that do not need workers and instead produce a good each round automatically and buildings that can be attached to an existing building to reduce the input resource requirements as well as add strength symbols which are compared to your opponents at different points in the game for additional goods bonuses.

Character cards are also introduced slowly into the deck. Depending on the effect, these cards can be played in different phases of the game to give the player a small advantage, such as drawing extra cards. In Escape to Canyon Brook, new assistants are added that quite a bit different - some need requirements other than building types to be met and others give special bonuses or discounts. From a story perspective, depending if you are able to accomplish the end game requirements the story may branch into different directions and for the next game you will either play the A or B chapter card. This really doesn't change anything too much from a game play perspective and the story isn't interesting enough that I would play it again just so I could see the other plot. The story itself was very much in the background, so much so that I can't really remember much of it. Some shades of Game of Thrones is all I can recall.

Overall, the two expansions are great additions to the game, but I am not sure if I would qualify them as essential. On one hand, they add more depth, focus, and variety to the game. The addition of new cards as the game progresses is fun, as legacy games have proven, and having objectives to meet is rewarding when complete. On the other hand, they do add more bloat to what would otherwise be a relatively quick card game. In addition, it would be best to play the campaign with the same group of people, which is typical of any legacy game, but this one might be a bit of a harder sell. Or you could play the campaign solo.

For now, I would categorize that Oh My Goods! without any of the expansions would be a good fit for a Middleweight collection - there is a bit of depth, some luck, and it can be used as a filler game. With both expansions, I would place it in the Collector collection as it is quite an experience to work through, either solo or with a couple friends, but it might not be worth it for everyone.