Skiing looks great. No, really, it does. If you’re into that sort of thing. Strapping a couple of planks of wood to your feet and chucking yourself down a mountain-side seems like a perfectly logical thing to do. Then you sit in one of those swinging death traps they call ‘ski lifts’ until you get to the top and do it all over again. Hurtling towards some agonising doom, listening to all of the screaming around you until you realise that the person screaming is you. Yeah, I’m sure it’s great. I’m totally convinced that it definitely isn’t better to grab a seat by the fire in the lodge while chucking down the hot toddies.
That’s all good, but it’s the cold I’ve got a real issue with. I’m more of a warm weather kinda guy. I’ve recently become convinced that there was some form of admin error before I was born, and I got sent to the ruddy North East of England when I was supposed to pop up in Gran Canaria, and some other sun of a gun is living my life, and I’ll find him one day, I will, but that’s between me and the tablets I take. Suffice it to say, I don’t ski and I don’t do the cold.
A game about skiing, therefore, isn’t really my bag. So I’ll catch you later.
Except Alpenglow isn’t about skiing, is it? Alpenglow from Water Works Games is for 2-5 players and plays for around half an hour per player (this is fairly accurate, so bear in mind that a four player game will tilt easily towards the two hour mark), and it’s about running a ski lodge. It’s a management game. It’s about balancing resources and running an efficient business. After too many years playing all kinds of sim games on all kinds of platforms, this is most definitely my jam. It’s a fairly unusual theme – I’ve certainly never stumbled across It before – and I love it all the more for its uniqueness. You, then, are the manager of the ski slopes and the nearby village, and you’ve got two seasons to get the place up to scratch. You’ll be introducing new facilities, upgrading those already in place, and oh yeah, get some ski lifts built – those slopes can’t ski themselves. Or something.
First Impressions
Alpenglow is not a cheap game, and there’s a reason. Yep, high quality components, and a lot of them. There’s a lot of piece popping and sorting to do when you first set up, and if you’re anything like me then you’ll find this to be a blissful process. The many tokens are a good thickness, the cards are made from sturdy stock and are well printed. There’s a big glossy rulebook that’s well laid out with plenty of illustrations, as well as a first game guide designed to ease you in. Pay close attention to it (more on this later). Alpenglow also comes with a couple of token trays to hold a lot of the many, many tokens and counters this game requires, and I guarantee you will be thankful for them. There is a fair bit to set up before starting a game, and having these trays makes both that set up and the storage afterwards a good deal easier.
Those little ski lift pieces? They could have been done as cardboard sticks. Cut a corner, drop the price a tad. But they’d be crap. They’d get worn out too rapidly, would look tatty after a handful of games. But no, they’re little sticks of wood/plastic and I love the feel of them. There’s something about good playing pieces that makes me want to play that little bit more, makes me keen to get them on the board. Because I’ll tell you what, they look good on the board.
I want to dig in a little more on the actual look of the game once it’s on the table. It’s unique presentation-wise, certainly in comparison to anything I’ve played up to this point. The ski slope side in particular initially appeared very abstract… until you start laying down the stick-like ski lift
playing pieces. They’re perfect. Once they’re in place the abstract feel fades away, particularly in the brief moments when the skiers are actually on that side of the board.
Bear with me on this one, I just want to see if this lands: the left side reminds me of a Commodore 64’s 8 bit representation of a skiing game, and the right looks like one of those Kairosoft mobile phone simulations, Hot Springs Story but for the skiing lifestyle. Did anybody get any of that? Whether or not you did, trust me, this one’s a looker and it will definitely draw people in.
How to ski… I mean, play
You’ve got two seasons, each consisting of five turns, to get your act together. You're looking to earn the most Victory Points, which you'll gain for getting skiers to the slopes, completing secret goals, constructing new facilities and buildings, and getting those vital chair lifts out on the mountain.
Printed on the right side of the board is a recommended configuration of seven buildings to start the game with, surrounded by a further sixteen lots you can build on. You don't have to use this recommendation: you can simply cover them over with a different combo of buildings and start from there (plenty of variety already built into the game, then). Each player starts the season by placing down an orthogonal route of five bus stops across five village locations. Each location comes with its own skiers awaiting pick up and bonuses - these riders are eager for your slopes, but they're colour coded and yes, i will make a difference.
As the game goes on, you'll want to place new buildings and facilities in the village so that you can benefit from the potential bonuses. However, because everyone uses the village, all other players can benefit from the buidings you choose to place - and you can benefit from theirs.
On the left hand side are the snowy peaks of the ski slopes themselves, a collection of hexagons desperate for some multi-coloured ski-lifts to criss-cross their way to the top. You'll be beginning to see where some of the tension lies: you've got work to do on both sides of the board, and you'll have to balance your decisions carefully.
Onto the players four actions. First, pick one of your bus stops and collect the skiers waiting there. Next you'll play a run card from your hand. There's loads of different ski runs in different colours. Each card will give you a hexagonal slope tile to add to the slopes, and also an action to follow. Third up is a choice between building/upgrading a chair lift, or placing a new building in the village. Bear in mind that more chair lifts with more capacity are vital to get those skiers up the slopes and increase your VP, but that village expansion is also vital, as they'll allow you to collect additional skiers, attain more VP, and even get an extra action should another player use one of your buildings as a bus stop. Finally, at the end of your turn, you'll open your ski slopes and get those ski enthusiasts on their way.
Oh yeah, you’re going to be busy.
Let’s call this section: Don’t Do What I Do
It’s getting to a point where this is going to be a standard part of every single review I do. Honestly, you’d think I’d learn this very basic lesson by now, and yet here we are, same old nonsense. I’m getting a tad worried that some form of board game police are going to turn up one day and say, we’ve had enough now, it’s getting ridiculous, you’re out of the hobby, and off they’ll trot with my board gaming licence and a pair of scissors.
What did I stuff up this time? Well, you get the rulebook, right? You also get a quick start guide. I didn’t read the quick start guide properly before diving in with a two player game. We picked whatever colours we wanted, then tried to follow the quick start sheets. It didn’t go very well. It only made matters that little bit more confusing. Trust me on this, player one needs to be red and follow the correct sheet, player two needs to be yellow and have the exact sheet as well. Same for players three and four if they’re on board.
If you do It correctly, the quick start guides are a great way into the game. They lead you through the first couple of rounds, and then you’re left to it.
I have one teeny tiny explanation for some of the issues I had, and it’s the fact that, while this a great-looking game, the iconography is not the easiest to grasp, and not only was there a lot of looking up what things meant as we got started, this continued quite a lot throughout our first few games. Not a deal-breaker – if you buy a new game then you’ll usually have to put some effort in to get the most out of it - but worth bearing in mind. Have a little patience with Alpenglow and it will soon show you the best of itself. These last comments feel like we’re drifting into…
How Well Does Alpenglow Play?
Very well indeed, my friends.
Bear in mind we’re in the medium-to-heavyweight arena here, and there is the bare minimum of luck involved in whether or not you win. It’s down to your decisions and whether or not you can take advantage of the buildings that your opponents bring to the village. It’s tremendous fun in the latter half of the game to watch as the engine you’ve built starts to pay off.
I found that, despite the slightly fiddly amount of set up needed (much helped by those essential token trays), I was drawn back to this game again and again. The uniqueness of the setting alone is enough of a draw so that Alpenglow has become a regular to the table, helped by the addition of a solo mode – a mode which wasn’t in the initial plans for the game but has been implemented well. It is better with human competition, and I wouldn’t recommend purchasing Alpenglow to play solely solo (haha), but it’s a nice option to have available. Again, I like seeing this game on my table (which it dominates) and it’s a chill game to pass some alone time with. I love the dual nature of the huge game board – it’s like having a permanent interactive map on the bottom screen of a DS while you’re busy laying your ski lifts on the top screen. Or something. Stop looking at me like that.
We found it plays best with three or four players – something of a sweet spot when it comes to turn length, as a result of decision making causing an occasional delay with some players. It’s not quite analysis paralysis, more fear of missing out on a good combo. I have to say, though, the ski-lift side of the board looks better the more people are playing. It’s still a lot of fun at two players, but the level of tactical deftness you require to win increases with that extra player. There’s an element of Ticket To Rideness about Alpenglow at two players, by which I mean you can be quite happy playing along on your section of the board and never really cross paths with your opponent. It’s still fun, but more competition brings spice.
Replayability? We’ve got that in spades. The starting configuration of both sides of the board can be changed to suit your tastes, there’s all kinds of options to buy when filling out the village, the run deck is a good size, but more importantly the fundamentals of the game work perfectly. Balancing the various aspects of resort management provides a deeply satisfying challenge: you need money to build and upgrade, but you need to earn victory points to win the game. You may think you know exactly what you intend to do… until an opponent places a new building in the village that could improve your strategy, or they take advantage of one you just placed, which gives them an unexpected advantage.
It’s simply never the same game twice.
Alpenglow, then, comes strongly recommended. It’s a great game that looks fantastic and feels good to play in every possible way.
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