Vinyl is a set collection game in which 2-5 players test their skills as music producers by founding band of different genres from their musicians. A vocalist and a guitarist have come together? They will make a splendid country band! But what about adding a fiddler into the mix and playing folk music? Or maybe we should wait for a drummer to host rock’n’roll parties? Vynyl puts players into such dilemmas.

A player’s turn is quite short: they move one of the 3 action markers to one of the unoccupied slices of a vinyl, executing the actions depicted on both the slice and the marker. With these actions, players may draw musician cards from two decks (one containing 4 types of basic musicians, one containing the 3 special types) or choose from the common pool; draw or play dissonance cards to gain some extra advantages; or found bands for victory points. To form a band, players must discard the required musician cards from their hand and take the proper band card from the pool. Each band has a compulsory requirement but the value of each band can be increased by discarding some extra musicians. Surplus musicians can also be turned into victory points by kickstarting their solo career.

The game ends when the band deck depletes – its thickness can be adjusted based on the desired length of the game. At the end of the game, bonus points can be gained for the most solo careers, the most dissonance cards played or if someone has a monopoly over a certain music genre. Those who wish for some extra replayability may draw from the 12 playable characters that provide a special ability for the player.

Strengths

• a popular, yet underrepresented topic among board games: music
• easy to teach
• the short player turns result in low amount of waiting time for each player
• high potential for possible add-ons (new musicians, bands, dissonances, some minor changes in game mechanisms etc.)
• unique worker relocation mechanism
• language independent (except the dissonance cards)
• only a board, 3 tokens, 10 wooden cubes (2 in 5 colors) and cards are needed for production

Designer’s note

Though I am not a musician, I am quite interested in music as a topic. Still, I haven’t really found any board games related to this theme. This is why I developed Vinyl, placing the focus on simplicity and a polished interface. However, the game holds potential for some add-on modules that may make complexity adjustable concerning the players’ taste.
Dissonance cards slightly increase the luck factor and stir the gameplay but they are intentionally focus on boosting the flow of the game and not hindering it, as well as gaining advantage and not harassing a single opponent.