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Our more biblically inclined readers may know of a popular verse, Ecclesiastes 3:1, which states: For everything there is a Season, a time for every activity under heaven. For first time players of Asmodee/Libellud's newest game, Seasons, it may just feel like the game has every mechanic under heaven smushed into one package. Instead of leading to a muddled package however, Seasons handles all these things masterfully, and what results is a fantastic experience. 

Like many of the games I've played while running this website, I first heard about Seasons through W. Eric Martin's news article(s) on BGG News. Initial reports didn't have much information, but did provide preview cards with absolutely gorgeous art done by Xavier Gueniffey Durin. If nothing else, I told myself, I'd have to check this game out just to look at the pictures on the cards. 

As luck would have it, Stefan and company had a demo copy available at the Asmodee booth during Origins. So, I sat down and played a game with one of the booth workers; and, even after a clunky playthrough--we drafted 7 cards rather than 9 and forgot to separate them into seasonal piles--I was hooked. The game felt like Magic without being M:tG. I was drafting, I was managing resources, I was rolling dice... my brain was leaking out my ears trying to keep track of everything, but I was loving it nonetheless. After the dust had cleared and I had fully exchanged my energy tokens for Crystals and manipulated the board with some temporal boots, I came up just short of defeating the Asmodee worker (138-129 I believe). Nonetheless, I was impressed and wanted to share this new discovery with my friends.

So I took to BGG, hoping to spread the word about this game. Slowly, and through the help of Asmodee and other reviewers, Seasons started to gain a little bit of visibility. BoardGameArena supported a free online version of the game, Podcasts featured it, Video reviewers got some preview copies, bloggers far more prominent than me put it on their most anticipated lists. All this seems to have had a good effect because, as of 10:45am on Thursday of GenCon, the game was sold out. Fortunately, I was able to snag one of the last 5 copies available at the show; and I've been playing the tangible and online versions quite heavily ever since. 

The first thing one will notice upon opening the box is the component quality and the great insert. Twenty, large, custom engraved die catch your eye. The card art will have you rifling through the deck looking at all the amazing illustrations, and the board and player tableaus have bright colors that pop and demand your attention. The insert itself is very well done (on par with something like the Lords of Waterdeep insert, and gives a definitive "a place for everything  and everything in its place" vibe. I do wish, however, that the two compartments for the cards were a little deeper, as the card stack becomes a little too high if players choose to sleeve their cards. I, admittedly, am a sleever... but I think something like this calls into question the fact that more companies need to acknowledge that players do sleeve their games. By making the wells for the decks deeper, it seems like they could kill 2 birds with one design stone, but I digress.



From a gameplay perspective, Seasons may seem a little intimidating. However, if pared down into its individual parts, it becomes much more palatable. To start, each player is dealt a hand of 9 cards. From that point, much like 7 Wonders, players will draft one card and pass the rest to their left. This will continue until players, again, have 9 cards. The 9 cards are then divided into 3 piles of three, with the first pile starting in the players' hands and each subsequent pile being unlocked once the marker on the seasons board completes one full revolution. With a total of 50 cards (each represented twice in the full deck) available to draft, the number of combinations a player can come up with is staggering.

Once each player has their cards assigned to piles, the real fun of the game begins: a number of die equal to 1+ the number of players is rolled, after which each player will draft a die and gain the benefits from it as indicated by the symbols etched onto its face. A large rectangle indicated that the player can draw a power card from the stack of undrafted cards. A number indicates that the player gains that many crystals (the game's term for VP), Symbols indicate the gain of a Magic-esque resource token (raindrop = blue, feather = red, fire = yellow, leaf = green.), and a star increases a player's summoning gauge. The summoning gauge dictates the maximum number of power cards a player can have in play at one time; and considering that every card left in your hand is worth -5 points at the end of the game, you'll want to get as many on the table as possible. 

I have, as you might imagine, heard a few complaints about the game, which is to be expected. The first, and most minor one is that the score track for crystals/VP is too small. This is a perfectly valid argument and one with which I would agree. The size of the board could have been enlarged; as it stands, if players are on the same number VP, you have to stack their cubes. Doing this makes the cubes much too easy to knock over, and if you get into the game hardcore it's easy to lose track of what number you were on. 

The second complaint about Seasons that keeps getting thrown around is that the cards are imbalanced. I think this is complete and utter B.S. Yes, some cards present ridiculous combos (e.g. The Longneck+Boots combo that seems to be all the rage online, or the Olaf's Statue+Runic Cube that gives you 30VP for 3Blue) and some cards are better in certain years than others, but no card is an auto-win all by itself. Take the Bespelled Grimoire for example; it grants you 2 energy tokens and lets you store up to 10 (normal max = 7). Many people argue that, if taken in year 1, the Grimoire provides a nigh-insurmountable advantage. FALSE. Absolutely False. For starters, in order to take full advantage of the Grimoire, you need to draft cards that give you 2 resources. If you're doing that, you're not drafting dice that increase your summoning gauge, which means most of the spells you would summon with said increase are going to be stuck in your hand. Conversely, if you draft a card to increase your summoning gauge and negate the drawback of the Grimoire, that's one fewer true power card you have to cast. The name of the game in Seasons is balance; generally speaking, the more things your drafted cards can do and react to, the higher the higher the likelihood is that you'll win.



The other reason that I really enjoy Seasons is that, without fail, every time I play, a story is born that I feel like I need to share with all my gamer friends who weren't present. Whether it be the 180 beatdown Grant Rodiek put on a few of his fellow gamers at GenCon or the epic 2+ hour, 4P game last night that included a perfectly timed Air Elemental --> Glutton Cauldron combo and a Double Amsung Longneck into Temporal Boots combo that rewound the game from late year three to very early year 2, there always seems to be something to talk about after a game is concluded. As stated earlier, Seasons is the game this year that's changed more apprehensive gamers, asking "does this have a tutorial" into convinced fans who constantly blurt out "I love this, let's play again." To me, that's the mark of a great game. 

So, to celebrate the Olympics, and this event, I wanted to look at Decathlon, a 1984 Avalon Hill / Sports Illustrated board game.  In Decathlon, 1 to 7 players play as a famous decathlete in history.  Through dice rolling and chart-reading  players can recreate their own fantasy decathlon.  

At some level, I hesitate to call Decathlon a "game."  It truly is more of a statistical simulation of the events.  Players don't really have many choices throughout the game.  They are at the mercy of the die rolls and the charts.  There are certain points where some choices can be made, which helps the game be a bit less dry.  

I said earlier that 1 to 7 people can play, but in fact, 8 can play with the AH / SI edition of the game, as they added a "Super Decathlete" which is an amalgamation of the best charts of each of the included real life athletes.  In theory, this super character should be able to blow away all of the other character... in theory.

In order to test this game, I set aside a fair amount of time (I turned on a Red Sox / Yankees game), and decided to see who the best decathlete of all time was.  That's right, I played an 8-player game of Decathlon, by myself (I know how to live the high life).  It's a very easy game to solo play (with as many or as few athletes as you wish)l.  In the box, you get three dice, two boards (which are only truly necessary in one event), a set of rules, a booklet of athlete charts / biographies, and chits for each athlete.  

So, who can you play in Decathlon?  Such luminaries as Milt Campbell, Rafer Johnson, Vasily Kunetsov, Bob Mathias, Bill Toomey, Jim Thorpe, and C.K. Yang.  Yeah, don't worry, even as a fan of the sport, I only knew of three of these guys before I sat down to play.  To help introduce you to them, however, the designers did write up 2-3 paragraphs about each man's history.  I greatly appreciated this history, and in some cases, the stories even play a part in the game.  

The game works like this: each event has a slightly different set of rules, but they all follow a few basic principles.  When it is your turn, you roll the three dice.  The dice will be read in such a way as to come up with a two-digit number.  The black die is always first, the two white dice are added together to make up the second digit.  You then cross reference that two digit number in the athlete's chart for the current event.  You will find a time, distance, or height depending on the event.  You record that on the score sheet.  Once the event is done, you take the athlete's result, and look at a points chart located in the rule book. You then get their score for the event, which is placed on the score sheet. So, with everything set up, let's take a look at the 10 events (and some highlights from my game).

100 Meter Dash - the first event is also the simplest.  This event is simply roll the dice, and get a score.  In my game, the times ranged from 10.4 seconds to 11.0.  The 10.4 was run by Jim Thorpe, named the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th Century.  

Long Jump - In the long jump, each athlete gets three chances to jump as far as they can.  Before each roll, the player chooses one of three charts "Safe, Average, or All Out"  this determines how hard the athlete will try on that jump.  Safe means you'll get a below average score, but there's no chance of injury or fouling.  Going up the charts increases both of those chances, but also brings you chances of having better scores.  In the long jump, Bill Toomey had the first 1000 score of my decathlon.  A 1000 score is considered to be an extremely good score.  He jumped 26'6" on his first attempt to score 1035 points.  The decathlon record is only 6 inches farther. 

Shot Put - This even uses the exact same rules as the long jump.  The results were extremely different, however.  In Bill Toomey's biography, they talk about a childhood injury that meant he didn't have full strentgh in his hands as an adult.  This showed up as a dismal 680 point performance in the shot put.  Jim Thorpe took his second event with a 57'6" throw.  This is actually 10 feet further than he ever threw in real life (I'll come back to this later).  Oh yea, my super decathlete?  Injured himself on his first throw, and had to play it safe the rest of the event.  

High Jump - High Jump and Pole Vault are the most strategic events in the entire game.  There's an amount of cat and mouse, bluffing, and even press your luck you'll have to play to win this event.  In each athletes charts for these events, there are a series of heights. When you roll, you check to see if the height is greater than or equal to the height you are trying to jump.  If it is, you pass, if not you fail.  These two events are the only ones where fatigue play a factor.  If you take too many jump attempts, you will end up too tired to perform your best in later events in the day.  I think with more players, this event would be a lot of fun.  In my game, unfortunately, the dice were unkind...with all decathletes bombing out at either 6'4" or 6'6"...except the super decathlete who injured himself attempting 6'7",  knocking himself out of the competition altogether!

400 Meter Run - Take the 100 Meter Run, and multiply it by 4.  That's this event.  However, if you were fatigued from the high jump, you suffered a time penalty in this event.  Bill Toomey proved that he has great endurance for running, by scoring 970 points with a blistering time of 46.6 seconds. Coincidentally, Bill Toomey currently holds the real life 400-m record at 45.68 seconds.

At the end of the first day,  Rafer Johnson was actually leading, despite not winning a single event.  His score was 4490.  The low man was CK Yang at 4190.  

100 Meter Hurdles - Another one roll and done event.  Milt Campbell proved to be the best hurdler, coming in at 14.2 seconds, and 940 points.  

Discus - This event works exactly like the Shot Put and Long Jump.  Bob Mathias won the event at a good, but unremarkable 172'.  Of all the events, this one probably showed how much Bill Toomey was set back by his childhood injury, only throwing 137'.

Pole Vault - Again, this event works the same way as High Jump, but the fatigue penalties can be more severe in the 1500 Meter Race.  CK Yang ends up destroying the competition in his specialty event.  He jumps 16' whereas only one other contestant even made it to the 15' height.

Javelin - ANOTHER three try event.  This event proved to be quite an interesting one in my game.  Vasily Kuznetsov actually won the event with a 238' throw.  Jim Thorpe, who had taken over the lead after the hurdles, threw 194' and actually gave up the lead to Kuznetsov.  

1500 Meter Run  - Finally, the board comes into play.  The 1500 Meter Run is a brutal way to end up two days of tough athletic competition.  In the game, you have a track board, marked off in a number of spaces.  On each player's turn, they roll the dice and check the chart like normal.  This time, instead of finding a time, they will find a number (and sometimes a letter).  This number tells them how many spaces they move along the track.  The letter relates to their fatigue penalty in the pole vault.  If the letter matches your fatigue level, you move one fewer space that turn.  Off to the right of the track is a timer.  After each player has moved, that timer is pushed forward 10 seconds.  This roll and move aspect continues until each athlete completes roughly 3 3/4 laps of the board.  In my game, Jim Thorpe absolutely obliterated everybody in the field.  Scoring 1085 points in 3 minutes 32 seconds...or 30 seconds faster than the real world decathlon record is today.

Final results:  Jim Thorpe proves himself to be the greatest athlete ever, scoring 8800 points.  That score was not hit in real life decathlons until 1992.  

If there is one major issue with the game, it is that  Jim Thorpe is too powerful.  They obviously bumped his numbers a bit to compensate for advances in the sport from the time he played.  Unfortunately, I think they juiced him too much. He's a phenomenal runner with great endurance, he can throw everything but the javelin a country mile (remember the shot put result?), and he can jump over the moon (his score in the pole vault was 12'8" in my game, he never cleared over 11' in real life)...there's nothing he's really bad at.  So, if you want to beat him in this game, you either have to injure him, or get lucky beyond luck's limits.  Of course, in a simulation like this, you have to expect that everything isn't perfectly balanced.  I just wish his card was a little more realistic.

That being said, I kind of enjoyed my time with Decathlon.  I learned a great bit about some of the greatest athletes ever.  I would love to see updated athletes like Bruce Jenner, Dan and Dave (you remember those guys right?) , and Daley Thompson.  Perhaps someone on BoardGameGeek has done this already?  I may have to find out.