My first review will be of a game that was only for pre-order at Spiel and my copy arrived this week just in time for a games session.  The game is called ‘Village’ by Eggertspiele and Pegasus Spiel which I thoroughly enjoyed – a tight and clever eurogame with a great looking thematic board.  Your villagers (meeple) start to die off as time passes so you have to consider that in their placement as well as collecting resources, using limited placements, and trying to score points.

Meanwhile, I have put some more games for sale on eBay and will be adding plenty more over the next couple of weeks.  The current games (http://search.ebay.co.uk/?sass=eisley&ht=-1) include:

• Friedmann Friese’s Friday
• Haste Bock (Shear Panic)
• Hart an der Grenze
• Garibaldi

Until then, I wish you a Happy New Year and I look forwards to reviewing more games for you next year.

James.

• D&D: Castle Ravenloft
• Ghost Stories: Jean-claude Van Rice expansion card
• 7 Wonders expansion: Manneken Pis, Brussels
• Amun Re
• San Marco
• Dungeon Bowl
• An unpunched copy of MB Games’ Shogun (before it got renamed… twice)
• The much sought after Lord of the Rings Risk expansion (Gondor & Mordor)
• and a lot, lot more

So, if you’re looking for a bargain, check out my board games for sale on eBay: http://search.ebay.co.uk/?sass=eisley&ht=-1

I shall be adding over 40 more in the next week too.

Time hasn’t allowed me to recently but new reviews will be posted soon when I will be covering lots more Spiel releases.

James.

THE GAME
During the game, players need food to feed their clans so they can expand into new territories.  Food is gained by clans in areas using tools and knowledge.  Food comes in various forms and each token of each type is worth different amounts of food  (crops=1, berries=2, fish=3, bears=3, mammoths=4).  The board is a landscape of hex zones each with a food type in the centre and split into 3 areas.

Turn order is critical during the game and is based on who has the most clans tribes on the board (ties split by the player with the highest numbered technology card).  In most cases, whilst being most advanced, being first is usually the worst position.

Each round, a series of phases takes place.  First, players buy new technology cards: tools that let you hunt food, and knowledge which gives you various abilities.  Next to the board are 8 technology cards each with a tech rating number – the higher the rating, the more advanced the tech.  The 4 cards with the lowest tech ratings are the ones that are available for purchase.

The food board with cute pieces showing what total food is available for the players' hunts this turns, as well as showing how many clans each player has on the board and player order.

The first player in turn order selects one of the 4 lower cards and then, in reverse turn order, players say if they want to buy it for its marked price in food.  If no-one else buys it the player that selected it must buy it.  Once a player has bought a technology, they drop out of this process for this round and a new card is added to the 8, with the lowest 4 tech ratings now being for purchase.  This process keeps happening until all players have bought one technology.  Then, players without the fire knowledge must discard 1/3 of their food as it rots.

Next, players gain food by hunting.  For example, a player with a fishing tool, and with at least 1 clan member in an area next to a lake, can take some fish.  The more clan members a player has next to lakes (players can only have 1 of their clans per area), the more fish they can collect.  Also, more advanced fishing technology cards can earn more fish depending upon how many fish are available.  However, there is a limited amount of each food type available each turn so some players can end up not being able to gather the food their tech would usually allow.  Players then feed their clans, costing 1 food per clan, or unfed clan members are removed.

Then, in reverse player order, players can add up to 5 clan members to the board adjacent to their existing clans.  Placing new clans costs food (the more added in a turn, the more expensive they are) and these cost more food if placing clans in areas where there are other players’ clans.

Finally, players update the turn order, replenish the food board, and the highest tech card is put underneath the draw pile.  Turns continue like this until any 1 player has clans in 13 or more areas, at which point the round is played to the end and the player with clans in the most areas (not necessarily the player that triggered game end) wins.

THOUGHTS
Power Grid: The First Sparks is a very tight, economic game where players must match their technologies with their clan placement, opponents’ clan placement and tools, and available food to make progress and expand.  This makes it rich in interesting and tough decisions with tension whenever any other player is deciding what to do in case they make things harder for you.

Player order is absolutely critical.  Being first player is usually worst because you hunt last (so many food types may not be available) and you expand last (which is often more expansive because other players have already expended).  First player does get to pick which tech is up for sale first but only until they buy a tech card.  I think this system works really well as it’s a great balancing mechanism so that the player who is doing best has it hardest, and vice versa.  It’s good to be part of the pack, or just behind it, so you can get the benefits of being last but can then go for the win at the right time.

I really like the tech card buying process.  It manages to create a natural evolution of tech as well as giving lots to think about tactically.  Selecting which tech to put up for sale is a very interesting decision as you need to consider who else may buy it before you get a chance to; however, you shouldn’t put something up for sale that you don’t want at all (if no-one does either) because you’ll be forced to buy it.

The technologies create interesting mixtures and there’s lots of thinking to do about which mix would be best based on your current clan placement and potential spread.  Finding technologies that work in harmony with your tactics is important especially because you’re limited to a maximum of 3 tools.

Whilst simple, The First Sparks can be brutal if turn order means you don’t get much food and you’re not able to get tech that works for you.  Also, other players placement can make it too expensive to expand, and/or deny you the tech you really need too.  So, don’t be fooled by the cute food tokens, this can be a harsh and unforgiving game – but that’s why it’s satisfying.

The one negative I found was the currency which is (mentally) fiddly because each type of food is worth different amounts.  My maths is excellent but it’s just not immediately apparent which is higher: 3 bears, 1 mammoth and 2 berries, or 4 crops, 3 fish and 1 bear.  As a result, you can’t quickly see how much players earned (to get a sense of how well/badly they/you are doing), or how much you own for spending on clan spreading or feeding.  Calculating the cost of placing clans is a bit fiddly too which is compounded by not being able to quickly assess how much food you have (because that’s two calculations going on at once).  Also, you can’t be sure of your exact expansion cost until it’s your turn.  As a result, I don’t think I planned very accurately like I would usually try to do in a game that requires it such as this.

There is one last item I must mention and that is the list of Achievements the game comes with.  These are a series of situations you can recognise as having achieved by recording them on the list.  Some items are more about recording events (like who won the first game each year, the first time a player wasn’t able to feed their clans), but others are more linked to gameplay like players that won without ever having a spear, or simply having 4+ knowledge cards, etc.  I think this is a brilliant idea as video games have had achievements for some years (primarily since Xbox Live started using them) and are now on all other platforms (including iPhone versions of board games).  I use them a lot in my work where I create game systems for advertising agencies too as they’re a great way to add other objectives and rewards which are additional to the game.  Whilst purely a bit of fun, including achievements in an actual physical board game is a superb idea.

Overall, I enjoyed playing The First Sparks as it packs lots of thinking and interaction into a relatively short game.

COMPARED TO ORIGINAL POWER GRID
For those who have played Power Grid, what’s it like in comparison?  The First Sparks is very similar but is faster and simpler to play.  The key difference is that there’s no auction when buying cards – you either purchase or not.  I liked this a lot as it made things faster and it meant that players in competition over a specific tech didn’t end up paying higher prices than those who are not (plus other players can’t purely risk a bid in order to push a price up).

I didn’t find I was able to plan ahead as much as in Power Grid.  I’m not quite sure why as the same elements are there; in fact, they’re a bit simpler because all resources are the same currency (not separate coal, oil, radioactive), and there’s no limit to the number of players in each area.  I think this was mainly down to calculating the total food (mentioned earlier) and not being certain of your income.

If you like Power Grid, The First Sparks gives you a faster, simpler version but without being completely identical.  It’ll be personal preference whether you do or do not need both games in your collection.

James.

[Played with 4 players]

Players take turns taking, discarding and placing cards.  One their turn a player can:

• Play 1 card from their hand in front of them face-down (taking a replacement card from the draw deck)
• Draw 2 cards (both from the draw deck or 1 from the draw deck and 1 from the discard pile)
• Discard: any 1 card, or 3+ cards that are the same, or 5+ cards that are all different
• Escape

To escape, a player needs to reveal face-down cards in front of them that show the equipment showing on the dice, plus runaway cards whose totals equal or exceed the runaway dice score plus the number of surveillance points the player currently has (which I’ll explain in a moment).  If they meet or exceed the requirements one of their POWs escapes, the alarm is raised and roll call takes place.

During roll call, most cards in your hand are a bad thing as this is equipment you’ve been caught with (which have values 0-4) and cards face-down in front of you count as zero.  However, there is one type of card which is the opposite to this (worth zero in hand but 4 points when face-down).  All players add up the surveillance totals of cards they’ve been caught with and all players who did not escape that round subtract 3 points for each POW still inside the camp.  Players then gain (or lose if negative) that many surveillance points.  The more surveillance points you have, the more runaway total you need to escape.

Stalag 17 is a very simple game but, unfortunately, that’s its problem – it’s too simple so there aren’t any real decisions to make and little tension.  I can see what gameplay Stalag 17 is trying to achieve – Do you think another player is about to escape so you should try to ditch cards from your hand?  Is it worth taking 2 cards at a time to maximise finding useful ones, or to progress slower so you don’t have too many in hand?  Should you escape now with a high amount of surveillance points in hand, or get rid of some first but risking another player escaping before you?

However, this gameplay doesn’t materialise for two core reasons.  First, you have almost no information about whether other players are near to escape or not, so there’s nothing to help inform your decisions.  You can see how many cards they have face-down but that doesn’t tell you much – just if they have enough cards for it to be possible.  Second, the luck of the card draw totally outweighs any control you have – if you don’t draw the cards that contribute towards the escape requirements, there’s nothing you can do to improve your chances of escape. Also, there’s almost nothing you can do to help you discard cards too – you can choose to collect various cards to try and discard multiples but you can’t plan because it’s all on the luck of the draw.  Random card drawing is fine in games but only if you then have different ways to utilise the cards.

As a result, you don’t really have any decisions to make that are interesting enough and the game feels more like a solo race over which you have little control.  One of the cards (counts as any piece of equipment but scores 4 points if laid down and zero points in hand) does have a decision to it because it’s a useful card to have face-down but is a penalty if you don’t escape.  Sadly, this is the only card like that and the others are straightforwards – having them face-down is best.

As more prisoners escape, more dice are added to the escape plan requirements.  However, as you don’t gain any abilities during the game, this just makes later rounds the same but they take longer.

Physically, the artwork is decent and the finish on the cards is nice, but I do find the cards a bit floppy and the dice a bit grubby looking.  Also, the ratio of box to game components is disappointing as they could have fitted in a box 1/4 the size with room to spare.  I’m fine with publishers wanting shelf presence, but there’s a limit and it just means it takes up a lot of room on my shelves for no reason.

I’ve seen that there are some extra rules have been released in Spanish.  Using Google translator I got a basic understanding of them; for example, one rule lets an extra player escape with another player, another lets a player be an informant once per game allowing them to discard surveillance points rather than free a POW when escaping, etc.  However, I can’t see any of the new rules fixing the issues I have with the game.

There seem to be lots of ways Stalag 17 could have offered more decisions and player control.  When playing, I wanted to be able to use my cards in multiple ways (like spend cards to alter a dice roll, or use sets of cards as other cards, or require sets of cards (pairs, etc.) to escape rather than specific values).  I thought it might be fun to have to announce you’re escaping next turn giving players a warning, but you may be bluffing (for which you got a penalty) but also may have humorously caused other players to ditch cards they now still need.  I wanted to see more information about players’ cards so I could make more informed decisions even if at the cost of an action.

In the end, it’s a shame as Stalag 17′s premise sounds like it could be a tense, push-your-luck filler and the publisher has released good games.  I like Stalag 17′s theme but it just doesn’t have enough gameplay or tension even for a light game for me, and both groups I have played it with felt similarly.  I like light filler games and card games so long as I have some decisions to make so I am playing the game, not it playing without me.

James.

[Played with 3 and 4 players]

To score PPs, players need to hire performers (which costs cash) and give them the enough equipment, costume, etc. (represented by colour cubes) so that they can give great performances.  Each performer can give a 1-, 2- or 3-star performance; however, each performer needs a specific colour cube for each level of performance – so a 3-star performance requires 3 cubes of the exact colours.  Each of the 5 types of performer give different benefits (gaining cubes, generating cash, reducing salaries, etc.) and the better the performance, the better the ability.  Instead of delivering their 3-star performance benefit though, the player can flip that performer’s card which earns PPs (and reduces their salary each round) but means they player can not use their ability any longer.

Each round, players first take turns placing their 3 action markers to select which actions they will get to execute and then the actions get executed.  Five of the actions are to gain 1 specific coloured cube, but only 1 player can use each of these and players can’t use more than one of these actions each turn.  Some other actions can be used by multiple players; however, some get executed in order of when they were claimed – this is important because there are only 5 performers and 4 personnel to pick from each round, so other players who picked the relevant hiring action before you may take the ones you wanted.

As a result, placing action makers is often a tricky (and enjoyable) decision as you work out what you need to do, what’s most important to you, and what you think is most important to other players too.

As well as gaining performers and personnel (which give benefits like exchanging cubes, generating cash, etc.) and cubes, there are two other actions: ticket sales and investments.  The ticket sales action generates you instant cash and you’re going to need it as performers need paying after performances or you lose PPs.  The more you use ticket sales action each round, the more cash you get each action.  The investment cards cost 1 cash each but give you extra one-off abilities like gaining cubes, extra PPs for great 3-star performances, etc.

Each turn, new performers and personnel fill in the gaps of those already hired (and any remaining get slightly cheaper).  After 5-7 turns, the round ends and each player’s show takes place.  Players use the abilities of their performers (any performers without any cubes at all walk out although only after being paid off too).

Other ways to earn PPs come from end of game bonuses such as having more than 8+ performers, having one of each type of performer, etc.  Also, each player has a location tile each each round which will award extra PPs if the player has the types of performers stated on the location – players pass these clockwise during the game so you can see what performers will be liked by your next audiences beforehand.

Overall, Drum Roll is primarily a worker placement game combined with an efficiency engine too.  Cash is very tight and gaining cubes (especially of the right colour) is always tense and slower than you’d like.  You can’t re-assign a cube once it is assigned to a performer (even if they get fired or walk out) but then you can’t delay assigning them for too long because you can only assign 2 cubes to your performers each turn (so you can’t collect a load and then assign them in one go once you know the optimal allocation).  This all combines to make a tight game of hard graft where every decision feels like it counts.  As a result, I found it very enjoyable (although I think it could be quite unforgiving if you make one bad choice or what you really need is not available).

Claiming actions offers some good tension as you usually want to be first on several actions at once and often you must bear the stress as another player thinks about hiring the performer you want.  Claiming actions is the main player interaction as the performances are all separate but this felt like enough interaction especially as resources and decisions feel to tight to allow any further direct interaction.

The benefits from performer abilities feel quite small in isolation so it’s a game of combining lots of small gains to make progress, as well as finding abilities that compliment each other to generate synergy.  For example, a performer may generate you a green cube, but you could then use an agent to convert it to a red cube which you can then turn into a green and blue cube using an agent.  However, each of these personnel costs you salary each round so you need to choose wisely.

Whilst the game is relatively simple there are quite a few things to think about and balance as you need to balance cubes with cash, where to place cubes, when to flip performers, etc.  Plus, you need to work out how (and when) to convert your cube and money machine into PPs (and that’s tricky too).  You often need to alter your plans based on what’s available as the type of performers you want may not be available, or the performer or cube may have been taken by another player this turn.

I wasn’t sure about the circus theme to start with but it works really well and the artwork looks great so I actually liked the theme.  The icons used to communicate abilities seem complex to start but, once you understand the game, they do a good job of communicating a lot of different things.

Players new to boardgames may struggle with the interwoven details, especially as I think it could be an unforgiving game, so don’t be fooled by the circus theme that this is light or young.  I really enjoyed playing Drum Roll.  You’re always thinking making lots of tricky decisions with limited resources and constantly feeling like you’re going to run out of time or money (or both) before you can accomplish your plan.

James.

[Played with 4 players]

The game is played over several rounds – scoring occurs after each round and the player with the most victory points (VPs) wins.  Each round 31 double-sided tiles are mixed up in a bag and then dumped onto the table and spread out.  The tiles show fur, claws, axes, meat, fire and animals.  Some tiles have question marks on them and these will only get turned over to reveal their actual value when scoring starts.

On your turn, you can either (a) take some (or all) of the tiles in the centre (if any remain), or (b) you can take all of another player’s tiles but you must put one of them back in the middle.  Players take turns in clockwise order but you skip your turn if you have tiles in front of you.  If you’re the only player without tiles and you take tiles from the middle, you must take all of the tiles and this ends the round.

Before you claim any tiles, you can play any of the action cards you have in your hand.  Some are executed immediately allowing you to peek at the question mark tiles, turn some tiles over, or force players to put their tiles back in the middle.  Other cards are scoring cards which are played face-down and only get revealed when scoring – some of these only give you their extra bonus if you have the most tusk tiles, fur tiles, etc. so placing them can be a gamble as you may not end up with the tiles you need to trigger it.

Once everyone has tiles, scoring is based on the 6 different tile types:

• Axes: Player takes one axe card per axe tile
• Fur: On-going total of fur tiles – Player with the most gets VPs and player with the fewest gets minus VPs
• Tusks: Worth 2 VP each
• Fire: Player with least fire tiles loses 5 VPs
• Meat: VPs based on relative amount of meat tiles – 1st scores 8 VPs, 2nd scores 5VPs, 3rd scores 2 VPs
• Animals: Player takes a matching animal tile – VPs at end of game based on number of different animals collected

Overall, Mammut is a great game delivering constant player interaction, lots of funny moments and a surprisingly good-humouredly evil game.

It works well for two reasons: the dividing of the tiles and the scoring system (which is why I explained the scoring in detail above).  The dividing mechanic is like an active version of ‘you cut, I choose’ which has been included in good games like San Marco and A Piece of Cake but these games don’t have the back-and-forth.  The back-and-forth aspect creates lots of cajoling by other players to take someone else’s tiles rather than theirs and fake indignation when you take a player’s tiles – it’s amazing how people get attached to their group of tiles.

Also, knowing another players may take your tiles means you need to balance (a) taking enough tiles so that you’ll score well, with (b) taking few enough tiles to make other groups appeal so no-one takes your group.

The other aspect that makes the game work is the scoring.  I really admire how each of the scoring methods has a different structure: on-going total, proportional amount, relative amount, last place, group collection.  The reason why this is important is that it makes the mix of tiles in a group very important and you usually want ‘just a few more’ tiles.  Also, it makes comparing the different groups very interesting too which is key to the enjoyment of the game.  As the game progresses, each player starts to view the tile groups in slightly different ways based on their current scoring cards, their on-going total of fur tiles, their position on the current collection of animals, etc. and I always like this in games.

The production is excellent (as with most Queen Games).  Even the box inner is cool with one part showing outside a cave and the other inside a cave with the divider showing the cave entrance.  As the tiles are double-sided the 31 tiles being split are unlikely to have the exact same mix.

Taking around 30-40 minutes, Mammut is an excellent light, fast, humorous and short game.  Thoroughly enjoyable, especially if you like humourous screwage gameplay.

James.

[Played with 3 players]

In the middle of the table are 9 decks of cards – levels 1, 2 & 3 in colours red, white and yellow.  The cards are buildings and characters – buildings can be activated to use their abilities; whereas, characters have effects when buildings are placed or triggered in the same row/column as the character card.  For example a character card may earn a player cash when they activate a white building.  Whilst you can build over placed cards, as your town can only be 3×3 in size, it is plain from the start that you need to find a good balance between buildings and characters and place them so they have synergy.

On a turn, a player can choose to place a card from their hand into their town (paying any costs).  Then, a player must take an action.  Most actions require using citizens – each player starts with 2 citizens of each colour (red, white & yellow) but they can also use other players’ citizens if they pay 2 coins for each one to the owning player.  When used, citizens are laid down next to the owning players plaza card (or placed on the player’s town cards).

Possible actions are:

Activate a Building: Place a citizen that matches the building’s colour onto your building.  (If a player uses another player’s citizens for this, the citizen still belongs to the owner.)
Draw a Card: Use a number of citizens (all the same colour as the card) equal to the level of the card.  Either take 2 face-down cards and place the unchosen card face-up on the deck, or take the face-up card.
Gain Cash: Use citizens of the same colour to gain 2 cash for each.
Fight an Event: See below
Gather Citizens: Place all your citizens back onto your plaza ready for further use.

Event cards are an interesting game mechanic.  There are always 3 event cards in play.  Each of the 9 card decks contains a town crier card and, when one of these is drawn, all of the events take place (plus some players can trigger the events with their buildings too).  Events usually have negative effects (using citizens, losing money, etc.) but some actually earn cash for the players with most resources.  Each time they are triggered, their effects increase too.  As an action (and sometimes by activating buildings), a player can choose to defeat an event at a cost (which often increases when it is more powerful).  Whilst removing an event may benefit other players too, you get to remove the one that most annoys you (or benefits an opponent); however, you also get to keep the event card and use its other side which allows you to ignore the effects of a single event once later in the game (and is worth 1PP too).

The game end is triggered when 2 players have filled their 3×3 city including two level 3 cards (prestige buildings), or one player has done this and 5+ town criers have occurred.  Players only score PPs at the end of the game.  Players earn PPs for the cards in their town; however, most points are scored from the prestige buildings (level 3 cards).  Prestige buildings say how PPs are earned (e.g. PPs for having white cards in your town, for each full set of coloured citizens, etc.); however, apart from one card, all players can earn these PPs but the prestige building’s owner earns more than those who do not own the prestige building.

Overall, I really enjoyed Tournay.  It required some thinking to get things flowing in the right order – having ready citizens, having enough cash, placing character cards in locations and order that worked with your buildings, etc.  It was a bit confusing to start with as we learned what capabilities buildings and characters could have and what worked well together too.

Even though the first game was fun to play, I am expecting the next games to be even better because of knowing how the game mechanics work and fit together (like Troyes).  I don’t usually like spending a game just learning it so I can play properly the next time, but Tournay is still very playable first time (although experienced players are likely to beat new players if mixed in the same game).

Turns are very short and simple so downtime is minimal and you always feel like you’re involved.  Player interaction is medium – the building race feels very competitive; however, there aren’t many ways to directly effect other players and using each other’s citizens can upset players’ plans, but these are not huge effects.  I didn’t find this an issue (especially as someone affecting you directly could really mess up your carefully balanced plan) but player interaction can be increased by using the expansion cards that come with the game.

It’s important to work out how to combine cards in your town so they work well together.  However, you need to keep in mind that you want to earn PPs so you want to find the prestige buildings that maximise your points.  Also, you can try to react to the prestige cards other players have played so you can maximise your ways to earn extra PPs.

I’m not great at planning long-term strategy and I liked how Tournay allowed me to create shorter plans to execute and then re-group after that to work out what to do next.  You definitely need to plan short- to medium-term though in order to get the cash, citizens and card types to gel together and pay out their benefits.

Events can really affect you when they increase in their effect and can even get out of hand too, especially if another player triggers them on purpose (rather than their occurrence just being left to the town crier cards).  Then again, the positive ones can really benefit you a lot if they have many coins on them and you’re the one reaping the reward.

The rules are only four pages long which is good but the summary card which explains the various icons on the cards is not the greatest and has a couple of errors too.  The icons on the cards are actually well-designed as they need to explain a great deal, but it does take a bit of time to decipher what they mean to start with.  The graphical style is quite stark and very gothic, which I don’t mind, but it could put some players off which would be a shame.

Tournay is a game with lots of interesting decisions, tight resources and feels different to other games.  Tournay finished number 1 on the player-voted Fairplay list at Spiel in Essen and I can see why it appealed to so many gamers.

James.

[Played with 4 players]

Interested in Troyes too?  Read the review.

On their turn, a player rolls the 7 special dice in a way similar to Yahtzee as a player can use 2 re-rolls to re-roll as many or as few dice as they wish (apart from dragon results which are instantly locked).  When the player stops rolling, they record how many of the 6 different results they scored.  The round ends when all players have had a turn and each of the different results is evaluated.  The players with the most of each result get a benefit.  For example, the player with the most defence results is immune to damage, the players with second most defence results heals 1 damage, and anyone else with defence results gets nothing.  As well as defence, the different results also deal with finding treasure, looting other players, attacking the dragon, running, and being attacked by the dragon (you don’t want this final type of result).

Running is an important element.  Those nearest the dragon are usually (but not always) most likely to get attacked by the dragon so getting away from the dragon is good, plus moving towards the exit gives a player a bonus like a free treasure.  As well as allocating dice (which I’ll describe more in a moment), there are lots of smaller decisions to make too such as using cards to alter actions and using treasures to boost your abilities.

The winner is the player who has the most victory points (VPs) as the end of the game and game end can be caused in several ways.  Most VPs are scored the same no matter what, but some are calculated slightly differently depending on what caused the game to end: if a player reaches the exit, the player who escapes wins outright; if the dragon is slain, the characters nearest the exit gets minus VPs; if a player is slain, players nearest the exit get bonus VPs.  So, there’s lots to balance: Head to the exit or not, gain VPs via treasure, gain VPs by injuring the dragon, rob players, gain treasure, etc.

Overall, I really enjoyed Dragon Rampage.  The clever element is that whilst it is a dice game, the outcome of each round is based on the amounts of each result a player has recorded relative to other players, and not purely the actual amounts of each result.  For example, if red player got 5 axes, blue got 2 axes and green got 1 axe – then red gets the 1st benefit, blue gets 2nd benefit and green gets nothing.  So, a player can use lots of one result to secure a main benefit but it’s always at the cost of not having many dice with which to try and secure other benefits.  This is a great balance and you have the choice of less chance across lots of categories, or focussing to have better chances in only one or two categories.

Of course, the dice you roll will determine what’s possible so you need to react to the results too and find a way to make them work for you.  Also, players roll and allocate all their dice before the next player does, so the first player in a round has no idea what other players will roll but has the benefit that they will win ties (as ties are broken in player order).  Players that go last know exactly what amounts of each result they need but lose ties so often need to work that little bit harder to qualify for benefits.

The different game ends make for interesting decisions too.  Our game had an exciting end as I was trying to manage running for the exit, trying to block other players from finishing off the dragon so I didn’t get negative VPs (which I had damaged a lot myself before running for the exit) and trying to get another player killed (to try and end the game so I’d score bonus VPs for being near the exit).  This sort of choice in a game is always entertaining.

Many treasures give you special abilities but I liked how each player (all different characters) have their own set of cards they can use (once earned) which are specific to their character and give various special abilities too – so each player has slightly different options.  Player interaction is high due to players allocating their results (as well as occasional stealing).  Also, there isn’t much downtime as you’re always watching to see what other players do with their dice (and may have cards you want to play on another player’s turn too).

A few of the physical elements of Dragon Rampage could be improved.  The dice themselves are a bit tricky to read sometimes.  Also, I’m not a fan of lots of text describing rules on game boards (even if, in this case, it’s the player boards and not the main game board) as I prefer icons to communicate these things.  However, these are minor items.

It’s a little bit more expensive than I would like (I can see how a cheaper, smaller version could be produced) which is the only thing that stopped me buying a copy at Spiel, but it is a game that I definitely want to play again and I expect I will buy a copy of at some point.

James.

[Played with 3 players - This worked really well and I expect it to work even better with 4 and 5 players]

A beautiful photo at Carcassonne by Andy (or the demonstration version of Carcassonne has got out of hand)

Following on from my Alhambra at the Alhambra post, just this week my friend Andy visited Carcassonne and he took Carcassonne the game with him.  He didn’t know of my Alhambra visit but, instead, was inspired by my photo of meeple at the world’s highest pass (5,416 m / 17,769 feet).

Here is one of his photos which is an absolutely superb shot.  Is it just me thinking, “I wonder if that city’s actually finished?” and “That’s a lot of players sharing one road.”

You’ll note how Andy has all 5 colours of meeple from Carcassonne in his photo whereas my photo of multiple meeple in the Himalayas only has 4 colours.  The reason for that is that one of the meeple fell down a gap between the stones on the large cairn where I took the photo as I set them up.  I heard it fall way into the 4-foot high pile of stones so I knew he was a goner.  They say never leave a man on the mountain, but he was totally unreachable.

So, a meeple remains at the top of Thorung-La in Nepal, the cairn of stones is actually now a meeple burial mound, and trekkers visiting the summit are unwitting pilgrims.  It’s really going to screw with the archaeologists minds when they find it.

In Meltdown 2020, players are trying to evacuate their meeple from the area where reactors are starting to meltdown.  Each player starts with 3 vehicles which each have a speed (spaces it can move) and a capacity (max number of meeple it can carry simultaneously).  The vehicles are a bus (spd:2 cap:4), car (spd:3 cap:3) and a helicopter (spd:4 cap 2).

The board is made of large tiles laid out randomly.  Meeple and vehicles start on marked spaces and, across the board, are reactors that may meltdown.  The winner (as this is not a co-operative game) is the player who rescues the most of their people (the most healthy survivors breaks ties).

The game is very simple.  Each turn has 3 phases: all the payers move their bus, then all players move their car, then all players move their helicopter.  Vehicles can pick-up and drop-off people as they move, can pass through other meeple/vehicles, but can not end their turn in the same space as any opponent’s vehicle.  Meeple that are transported to one of the 2 airfields are airlifted to safety.

After both the buses and the cars move, an eight-sided dice is rolled. On 1-7, the matching numbered reactor gains a meltdown marker.  After the helicopters move, the dice is also rolled but the matching number reactor has a meltdown marker removed.

At the end of a round, any meeple near enough to reactors that are melting down will suffer from radiation – the closer they are, the more radiation they pick up (which can kill them completely) – and the more meltdown markers on a reactor, the further away the radiation effects are felt.  If a reactor gets 5 meltdown markers, the game ends as the country is wiped out.

That’s it.  As I mentioned, it’s a simple game which plays quickly.  I think Meltdown 2020 would work well for a family audience, but for me as an experienced gamer, it was just too light.  Don’t get me wrong, I like simple, fast, fun games, so I don’t need a game to be complex, but I found Meltdown 2020 just didn’t have enough decisions to make and no real pressure so that I didn’t feel I was involved.

One main element that definitely affected our game was that our dice rolls for removing meltdown markers kept coinciding with markers we had already placed, so leaving only a few meltdown markers in play.  However, even though I recognise our lack of meltdowns may be unusual, the key issue for me is that the game doesn’t offer enough decisions.  Plus, it seems down to luck who won because it was the few meeple that happened to be near the meltdown markers (who got affected by radiation) which determined the winner.  Also, players can keep rescuing meeple even if other players are finished, so the time pressure didn’t exist for us and careful use of movement was unimportant.

It’s a shame because it feels like the current game is just the basic game, and a fuller, more satisfying (advanced) game is lurking within with the addition of a few extra rules.  For example, starting with some meltdowns, or not removing meltdowns for the first turns, so pressure is present from the beginning.  These would need a little more finesse (like no reactor can have more than 3 meltdowns in the first rounds) so bad luck doesn’t add too many meltdowns too quickly.

However, luck would still play a major factor in determining the winner because it’s luck if your meeple are near a reactor that is melting down.  If players could see which reactor was going to meltdown next (i.e. dice rolled one turn in advance) then this would give players more control and add some decisions – players may think about throwing meeple out of their car and turning it around to go rescue others who are about to get irradiated.

Other ideas strike me too: Allow the players to move opponents’ meeple when driving by.  Identical card decks for each player that add or subtract from a vehicle’s speed.  Have the game end when one player has removed all their meeple so players decide whether to grab one meeple and get out, or risk grabbing more.  Airlift deadlines, movement blocking, airlift capacity, etc. – there seem to be so many things that could make this a richer game.

Outside of the gameplay, I love the look of wooden meltdown markers with the radiation symbols.   However, I was a bit disappointed with the artwork on the tiles which are pastel shades a bit like map regions as this could have been more interesting without reducing clarity.

Overall, I really want to like Meltdown 2020.  Maybe the designer (who created the excellent Powerboats) intended to create a game for families or younger audiences.  I think it will have an audience that enjoys it; however, as it stands, it’s not deep enough for me.

James.

[Played with 3 players]

Playing Alhambra at the Alhambra

Some years ago, I visited the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.  It seemed only right that I took the game Alhambra with me and managed to play a game of Alhambra at the Alhambra itself.  The photo proving this is below – it’s not a beautiful photo to be honest but it’s the only proof photo we took.

Since then I have been wanting to play more games named after a location whilst at the location (especially Escape From Colditz – yeah, not a great game these days but still…)  I missed the opportunity to play Rome in Rome when there a few years ago (rookie error not to have taken that with me) and I didn’t own Pompeii when I went there either.  So, many opportunities (Manhattan, San Francisco, the list is very long…) but I didn’t have the idea when I visited those.

Anyway, it’s a goal I now have.  Thinking of which, I need to borrow a copy of London and get that one done as I’m there all the time.  I haven’t decided where I stand on games with names that include a location – I’m not sure if they count – for example, Letters From Whitechapel if played in Whitechapel, or Looting London played in London.

Have you played a game at its real location?

The 40 cards consist of wizards, warriors and dwarves with different values on them.  Each player is dealt 3 of each, plus one artefact card making a hand of 10 cards.  Players will assault 4 towers (one per round) and the player with most victory points (VPs) at the end wins.

Each tower has 3 levels played in order and each level has a random treasure and monster placed on it.  For each level, players play a total of 3 cards and the player with the highest combined value of cards gets the treasure (VPs) and the player with the lowest gets the monster (negative VPs).   A couple of the cards have special abilities: one wizard’s value is only the same as the most powerful wizard played by another player, and the artefact card doubles your weakest card.

Each level is played slightly differently.  On level 1, players simultaneously play 1 card at a time from their hands three times to make their total.  On level 2, players simultaneously play 2 cards and then 1 card.  On level 3, players play all 3 cards simultaneously.  This leaves each player with 1 card and these earn their owners 3, 2 and 1 gold based on the highest card values (gold being worth 1 VP each too).

Some treasures are cursed (so worth negative VPs) and some have other effects like cancelling 1 monster’s negative VPs, etc.  Plus, at game end, some treasures and monsters earn (or lose) even more points if a player has multiples.

On its own this already seemed like it would be a fun game.  However, there is an extra twist which I think is very clever.  After each round, the cards do not get collected, shuffled and re-dealt; instead, players simply pass their hand of used cards to the next player clockwise.  This means that during the game players will use the same hands as each other.  This happens no matter how many players are playing as there are always 4 hands of cards dealt.  So, with fewer than 4 players, 1 or 2 hands sit out each round.

Overall, Tschak! is a fun filler which offers a clever and simple card-game mechanic.  I really like the principle that all players will take turns playing with the same sets of cards but these will be different each game too.

Whilst players play with the same hands each round, the rounds play out differently as players make different decisions on what cards to play together (which is influenced by the fact that the treasures/monsters that can be earned are different each time randomly selected each level).

I found it very interesting deciding which cards to use to try and win (or intentionally lose) levels, and this decision-making process is also affected when you see what other cards players have laid down during levels 1 and 2 when you have a chance to react to what they played.

The game plays quickly and there’s no downtime as players are always involved.  As the game is published by Gameworks it is no surprise (and very pleasing) that the artwork is lovely and the box has moulded compartments for the different components.  The designer of Tschak! also designed Condotierre, Lascaux and Water Lily so I was pleased to see Tschak! lived up to those standards.

Tschak! is an excellent, fun filler with plenty of those groaningly entertaining moments when you see another player played the card you hoped/thought/bet they wouldn’t.

James.

[Played with 3 players]

GAMEPLAY
Players are trying to score victory points (VPs) by fulfilling the people’s demands and furthering Roman power.  Each turn, a player gets to perform one of the 6 actions: building, shipping, forum, senate, military, and Trajan.  So, the overview is simple, but the mechanics and choices are what really deliver a great game.

Determining the Action to Take
On their turn, players can not simply choose any action they wish.  Instead, each player’s player board shows 6 pots each relating to one specific action.  In these pots are 12 coloured pieces (6 coloured pairs).  On their turn, a player takes all of the pieces from any one pot and distributes them one at a time into the next pots going clockwise from where they took the pieces from.  (This distribution game mechanic is widely known from the game Mancala – a traditional game in Africa and some parts of Asia dating back as far as 600 AD). The player can choose which colour is dropped off in which pot (I’ll explain why that’s relevant shortly).  The pot where the final piece is placed is called the ‘target pot’ and it is the action associated with that target pot that the player gets to perform.

Therefore, the player needs to manipulate their coloured pieces so they can perform the actions they want to.  If you can’t immediately trigger the action you want, you need to work out how to manipulate the pieces so you can (and, hopefully, either work out how to trigger actions useful to you whilst doing so, or work out how to best use the actions your movements will cause).

But why the different colour pieces?  Well, next to some of the pots are Trajan tiles which each show 2 colours as well as some other benefits.  If the target pot contains coloured pieces that match the colours on the Trajan tile next to it, the player completes the tile and gets the VPs and any special action shown on it too.

Choices Within Each Action
The 6 actions are relatively simple but most offer several options within them.  For example, when shipping you can either take 2 face-down commodity cards, or 1 of the 2 face-up commodity cards, or lay commodity cards down from your hand (which can earn VPs at game end), or spend commodity cards to earn immediate VPs.  Another example, is the military action where you can either gain a legionnaire, move your leader (potentially gaining a resource/extra action tile), move a legionnaire to your leader’s location (potentially gaining VPs).

Not all actions have options but all require some level of decision-making to be made as you need to choose the benefit from that action that will combine well with your other choices to maximise your VPs.  This may sound like it’s complicated but they’re not and they add that extra bit of gameplay depth but without causing long delays or confusion.

The mancala is the main part of the player's board with other locations to store resource tiles, building tiles, completed Trajan tiles, etc. Note if I move the white piece from pot III, I would place it in pot IV gaining the senate action as well as completing the Trajan tile on IV too.

Player Interaction and the People’s Demands
There are lots of ways to score VPs but other players can still get in your way.  Player interaction is interesting as it takes the form of various races to secure items such as tiles in the forum and military areas, tiles in the building area, votes from several areas to win bonus tiles in the senate, and so on.

One very important race is that for resources as, each quarter of the game, the people make demands and players suffer minus VPs if they can’t fulfil these.  Each time a player takes their turn, they move the time marker along its circuit a number of steps equal to how many pieces that were moved on the mancala.  Each circuit of the time track is a game round and 4 rounds make a quarter of the game.

After each of the first 3 rounds in a quarter, 1 required resource is revealed so what’s being demanded isn’t a total surprise.  On the 4th game round of a quarter, the players must pay the demand (no new demand is added that round).   The negative VPs can be quite serious so players try to get the resources required which creates additional short-term goals and (entertainingly) there are often not enough resources to go around.  Resource tiles get used up when fulfilling demand, but some Trajan tiles give you a permanent resource – these were very popular in our game.

Game End
There are some extra VPs to be earned at the game end too, e.g. sets of the same building.  Plus, each player starts the game with a bonus tile which shows how that player can earn extra VPs at game end.  So, each player even has their own slightly different perspective to the game and players can potentially gain more of these bonus tiles during the game too.  Our game of 4 experienced gamers (all playing Trajan for the first time) was very close.

OPINION
Trajan may appear complicated when first looking at it but it’s actually relatively simple.  The options within, or small extra facet to, each element adds extra depth which combine to deliver a satisfying and cohesive experience.  Most turns are simple and the game moves at a good pace with little downtime.

I really like that the mancala system delivers a great game-driving mechanic but doesn’t over-power the rest of the game at all.  I found I thought more about what actions I wanted to take and how I could make the mancala work for me, but there were also times when I had to figure out what I could do with the actions that my current mancala position would allow me to.

The part of Trajan I enjoyed most though was that it consisted of multiple medium-term plans – you could plan some goals and try and make them happen but could change them and react to events at any time.  Most games are either tactical turn-by-turn planning, or having a single long-term plan to execute throughout the whole game; whereas, Trajan allows you to make lots of short- to medium-term plans as you go (but creating good combinations of these will maximise your VPs).  This felt very different to most other games to me and I really liked the strategic agility so I could plan and execute but without the fear of indelibly messing up early on.

I didn’t think too far ahead with mancala movement – probably 3 turns at most – but I didn’t feel I really needed to.  Also, I didn’t stress too much about which colour piece was placed in which pot apart from obvious requirements to complete Trajan tiles.  This could have been a source for analysis paralysis and was nice to see it didn’t need to be.  Also, I liked how players can never be completely sure how long a round will last – you just need to act as quickly as you can.

So, Trajan delivered a game that I felt was challenging, interesting and contained meaningful decisions.  I felt I needed to have strategies but I was able to recover from problems, but without being so forgiving choices weren’t important.

During Spiel, I was asked several times what my favourite game of the show was.  This year I’ve struggled slightly to pick the games that were clearly above the rest (Last Will was one that did stand out for me).  However, Trajan is definitely in the category of my favourite games of Spiel 2011.  I was interested in Trajan primarily because I have enjoyed other games by Stefan Feld.  So, I picked up a copy as soon as Spiel opened because there was no pre-order system.  Having now played the game, I’m extremely glad that I did.

James.

[Played with 4 players]

Each round consists of several steps.  First, players take turns selecting their place on the actions chart – a player’s position on the chart determines the number of workers (errand boys) they will place (1 or 2), the number of actions they will spend (playing cards and spending money) and the number of cards they will take from the decks (giving them options on how to spend money or other abilities), plus it determines the order of play for that turn too.  This multi-dimensional choice is an excruciatingly interesting decision to make, especially as only one player can select each of the mixture of options.  (It’s a bit like the initial choice of what time to get up in Fresco but even harder to select.)

Second, players place their 1 or 2 errand boys to gain one of the face-up cards on the board, alter house prices, gain an extra slot for a card on their player board, or spend an extra £2.  First-come, first-served so player order is important here.

Third, players use their actions.  Most cards require actions to play.  Some cards are one-use, whereas others can be played onto the player’s player board (costing an action to do so) but these can then be activated every turn.  Cards played are either ways to spend money (have a party, go for a carriage ride) and the amounts spent can be enhanced with other cards (take a friend with you to dinner); however, some cards give you advantages like extra actions, extra cards, etc.  Each player has a limited amount of slots on their player board for cards so players must consider what they have on their player board (and can try to gain extra slots too).

Property cards are interesting – players must start with a property (and can get more).  Players buy them but can not end the game if they own a property so players must still sell them later.  Most properties devalue if not maintained which is a good thing, but you can lose/spend more money each turn by spending cash on them to maintain them (but this costs an action).

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game.  There’re plenty of meaningful decisions to make as well as decent player interaction when trying to secure special actions with your workers.  It’s critical to balance expanding your capabilities (extra player board slots for cards, gaining extra actions, gaining helpers to increase the costs of some cards) against expanding your opportunities to spend money against actually spending money.

Picking the mix of workers, actions and cards is really entertaining as it’s crucial to being able to maximise your spending that round.  It’s really important to have enough actions during a turn but you need cards requiring actions and opportunities to spend money to use them well too.

The methods of spending money are humorous and varied, such as taking a long cruise which can be made even more expensive by taking your horse with you, or going for dinner and making it cost more by having a couple of chefs and taking a friend.  Hosting a ball (a card) allows you to spend more money if you spend multiple actions.  Having a party (a card) allows you to depreciate a property by several steps because of the partying damage.

The game’s artwork is excellent and very fitting too.  The game plays 2-5 and some elements of the game scale based on the number of players which is something I always appreciate.

Last Will is a game that ticks the boxes for me.  Very enjoyable with lots of choices, decisions and balances.  The game mechanics make it feel different to other games too, rather than just being a worker placement, or card-play, game with a unique theme.

James.

[Played with 3 players]

Thanks to everyone who entered.  Also, thanks to Zev at Z-Man Games who provided the copy of the game for the competition.  The photo shows me and Zev when he gave the prize copy of the game to me at Spiel early on Thursday morning.

A review of the game will be posted soon and you can read my preview of Dark Minions for details in the meantime.

James.

So, if you want to see what I’m playing as well as read my comments on the latest new releases at Spiel, follow my twitter @Metagames

On their turn, a player can choose to attempt to accomplish one of the 6 situations in the museum currently available.  The player rolls 6 special dice (showing results like investigations, peril, etc.) and tries to get enough results that match any of the tasks on the card.  For example, one situation card may show 2 tasks: one requiring 2 lore scrolls, and another requiring 1 peril plus 2 investigations plus 1 terror.  If a player completes one of the tasks, they set the dice needed to do so aside and can roll the remaining dice again to try to complete more tasks on the situation card.  If the player doesn’t complete any of the remaining tasks on a roll, they discard a dice and re-roll their remaining dice again until they complete all tasks or fail.  Players can use special items, spells, allies, etc. that they’ve gained along the way to roll a few better dice, plus the player may use clue tokens to re-roll any of their dice before seeing if they have completed a task.

If a player manages to complete all the tasks on a card, they get the benefits listed and a new situation is drawn to take its place.  Also, they can spend any collected cards and monsters to gain equipment.  However, the player will suffer the negative effects of a card if they do not accomplish all of the tasks – which can result in losing stamina, health, equipment to having a monster appear or even and a dreaded doom token being added.  Any failed situation card can be attempted by another player but they must start it from scratch.

As with Arkham Horror, the Great Old One (hopefully slowly) accumulates doom tokens and will awake if they gain enough of them.  Every 4 turns, the clock strikes and a new mythos card enters play which can have bad immediate effects as well as on-going effects until a new card replaces it.  If a player reaches zero sanity or stamina then they are dead and can start a new character, although this does add a doom token.  If the Great Old One awakens, the players must battle it which is often a very hard task.

Overall, Elder Sign is Arkham Horror The Dice Game.  Whilst it is dice-rolling, there are still a lot of tactical decisions to be made like which tasks to attempt, when to use equipment, which situations need to be defeated first based on their rewards and penalties, etc.

There are loads of situation cards so the game plays differently each time.  Also, the Great Old Ones all have different effects on each game too, plus there are lots of different investigators with different mixes of skills too.  So, the game’s replayability feels good.

The mix of situations and working out which ones to attempt is an interesting challenge especially as some situations need their tasks to be completed in a specific order and some situations are more suited to certain characters than others.  Purely attempting the easier situations only gains you the smaller rewards so can waste time; however, you need some of the smaller rewards like clues and items so you can achieve the more difficult situations.  Also, monsters (which are tasks with requirements that get added to situations) enter play during the game and make some situations much harder so situations can change over time.

After playing Elder sign a few times, I really like it.  It’s fun, you know what risks you’re taking and feel you have some control over the results even though it’s dice-based. I haven’t seen the group I played with cheer so much for any other game apart from Arkham Horror itself when certain results were rolled.

The key downside to Elder Sign is the rules which, when you start playing you realise, are too brief and can be confusing.   This is compounded by the fact that there aren’t enough examples either.  However, the rules are simple enough once you understand the specific terms being used throughout the rules (which can be a bit like understanding legalese.  Once I was playing the game a bit, and re-read some sections of the rules over and over, it all made sense.  There are still issues with the clarity of some of the timings which need addressing though, but they’re not that important.

I found it plays well solo as well as with multiple players and is one of the very few single-player games that I enjoy playing.  Also, it seems well-balanced as all the games I have played have been fairly close.

UPDATE 7th October 2011: Elder Sign may not be as well-balanced as my early games showed as I played 5 games with 2 characters (one per player) and we won all the games (4 of them with only a few doom tokens on the track so very comfortably indeed).  It’s still a fun and interesting game which I like a lot, but I shall be adding extra diffculties in future games to ensure it remains challenging, such as no buying elder signs with trophies, lower sanity and stamina, some characters will not be used, double mythos cards, etc.  I expect future expansions (it’s FFG so I’m sure expansions are a certainity) will make it more difficult.

James.

[Played with 1, 2 and 5 players]

I am very pleased to announce that this year, I shall be doing the same.  However, I am also very excited to announce that I am running the competition in association with Z-Man Games who will be providing a copy of Dark Minions as the prize (which they are releasing at Spiel).

This competition has not closed.  You can stil read my preview of Dark Minions for details on the game.

James.

On their turn, a player rolls 3 dice which they use to either attack towns, respawn minions from the graveyard, or capture towers.  Attacking towns is the core of the game where a player can allocates dice to the towns (a maximum of one dice per town) allowing them to place that many minions next to the town.  When there are enough total minions from all players next to a town to exceed its defense number, the town falls and the player who allocated the most minions gets the tile, the victory points (VPs) and the skulls printed on the tile.  Also, the player who allocated the second most minions gets 2 VPs, and the player triggering the event gets 1 VP.

One aspect I really like the sound of is that the 1′s on the dice are actually +1′s which can be added other dice results.  I like this because rolling low in games usually penalises a player through sheer bad luck but, in this case, rolling +1 allows a player to make other dice stronger.  This sounds like a subtle but clever mechanic to balance up the luck of the roll.  Also, this idea is taken further by the white dice – a player can choose to roll a white dice instead of their usual dice which can add +1 or +2 (or a skull) which is also a nice idea.

Players start with a couple of re-roll tokens but these are worth VPs at the end so there’s a tough decision whether to use them.  Also, skulls are worth VPs at the end but can be used to get minions back from the graveyard. Capturing enough towers allows players to level up which lets them roll better dice.

The game also comes with an advanced option allowing players to use dice to gain overlords (such as dark wizard, blood elf, minotaur, gargoyle, werewolf, etc.) that give players special powers.

So, Dark Minions is a dice driven game but sounds like it has good tactical elements ensuring there are decisions to be made and plenty of interaction rather than depend upon luck.  Minions will be released by Z-Man Games at Spiel in Essen.

You can read the rules here.

DARK MINIONS COMPETITION

In my annual Spiel games giveaway, and in association with Z-Man Games, I gave away a copy of Dark Minions in October 2011.  This competition has now closed.  Thanks to everyone who entered.

The setting is Bordeaux in 56BC and players are constructing the port town.  The winner is the one with the most prestige points (PPs) which are earned by involvement in building construction, completing a building, merchandise and plot cards,  So, fairly standard sounding stuff so far.  However, the game sounds like it has  some neat game mechanics.

First, each turn players roll 2 dice and use one of the results to move one of their meeple to an unoccupied space on the board which have to one or two building sites next to them.  The player places a cube on the building site and scores a number of points equal to the spaces still left.  If the player places the final cube to complete a building they score PPs equal to the building’s value (and any players next to the district get a plot card which give their owners special abilities).  Not only do I like the sound of the simple but strategic movement system, but I also like how this system encourages players to get building.

If players throw a double, they have fewer movement options but get some extra options instead like using waterways, moving to an occupied space, etc.  Also, any player rolling a total of 7, can take a corruption token (I’m always interested in games that have corruption tokens) in order to place 2 cubes rather than 1 or gain a merchandise card.

When the game ends, players get bonus points for having sets of different merchandise cards and for plot cards to.  Also, players lose PPs equal to the value of the corruption tokens (which are secret until the end and score between zero and 5 corruption each) and the player with the highest corruption loses 5 more PPs.  (Interestingly, the corruption system is almost identical to one I have in one my game design ideas so it’s good to see I’m on the right track.)

So, Burdigala sounds exactly like the sort of game I enjoy and I’m looking forwards to playing it.  It can be pre-ordered for pick-up at Essen for 25 euros by emailing preorder.Burdigala@gmail.com

You can read the Burdigala rules here

KAHMATÉ
In addition to Burdigala, Id&al Editions have released Kahmaté – a fast, rugby game – which will be at Spiel too.  From the rules, the game sounds like a Blood Bowl lite style game with 6 players on each team and first to score wins.  Tackles are resolved by using cards – each player simultaneously selects picks a card from their hand, adding any player bonuses as some players are better at tackling, etc.), and the highest wins.  Each player has the same set of values in their decks and only get used cards back when their hand is empty – which reminds me a bit of Dungeon Twister.  So, Overall, the game sounds like a fun affair and not a rugby sim.  It was nominated as one of the best games of the year in 2008 by trictrac.net and now has an iPhone version too.  I shall be reviewing Kahmaté in the next few weeks before Spiel.

You can pre-order Burdigala & Kahmaté together for pick-up at Spiel in Essen for 40 euros by emailing preorder.Burdigala@gmail.com

You can read the Kahmaté rules here

James.