Yeah for the reprint!

We’re super excited with the recent announcement by Fantasy Flight Games to reprint Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation.

Not only is this one of our favorite 2-player games, but one of our favorite board games period!

It rocks!

And you’ll soon be able to get a copy as well.

We’ve heard from a number of people that have seen our video and written review that they haven’t been able to buy a copy of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation anywhere. It’s been one of those unfortunate situations where a fantastic board game has gone out of print.

Updated components and clarity on the board.

So we couldn’t be happier to see it coming back to market.

In fact, the first person I made aware of the news was a good neighbor friend that I had over to play Lord of Rings: The Confrontation one weekend. A couple of plays that day just weren’t enough and he’s been aching to play it ever since. It almost goes without saying that he’s very excited to hear the news as well.

See for yourself in Trevor’s video review of Lord of the Rings the Confrontation.
(It was actually the 22nd game we reviewed – such a long time ago…)

Smaller character stands but the same great game!

You can also read a bit more on our full review of the game here.

While there aren’t changes to the game play, there are changes to the board game components. For example,

• The rulebook contains additional clarifications.
• Includes bridge-sized cards, as well as scaled down character stands and tiles, with new character cards to serve as reminders of character abilities.
• The game board now has visual reminders, such as character limit indicators and darker mountain borders.
• It features cool new artwork for variant game Fellowship characters, as well as for several cards.

Great artwork to augment the great play.

Plans are for it to hit stores in Q3 this year.

Are we going to rush out and buy a copy of the new version?
No. We’ve already got one.

But that doesn’t stop us from being super excited for everyone else out there that will now be able to get this great board game to play with their friends and family!

And if, I mean, WHEN our neighbor buys a copy of the new version we’ll have our chance to take on the battle with the new Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Already looking forward to it!

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The post Lord of the Rings The Confrontation is back! was written by The Board Game Family.

More Dominion – yeah!

Dominion Cornucopia is the 5th expansion for the incredibly popular Dominion card game and continues to add more diversity to the game. In fact, Cornucopia likes to reward players for having diversity in their decks.

If you need a quick review of Dominion (or haven’t heard of Dominion), then first check out our video review of Dominion to see how to play.

What’s the draw for Dominion Cornucopia?
The draw is that it’s Dominion of course.

In our review of Dominion Seaside we were pretty clear that once you get playing Dominion and add an expansion, there’ll be no stopping in wanting to pick up more expansions. It’s not because the base game is lacking anything. It’s simply because it’s fun to keep trying new cards.

Like the other Dominion expansions, Cornucopia doesn’t change the method of play at all. Players are still working to build up their deck of cards to be able to buy victory points and win the game. So the elements of fun come down to what all the different cards let you do.

New addition – Prizes

13 new Kingdom Cards and 5 Prizes

• Trusty Steed
• Diadem
• Followers
• Bag of Gold
• Princess

Check out the cool Prizes.

And these Prizes are pretty nice. Click on the picture of the Prizes to read what each card offers.

The only downside to the Tournament and Prizes is that it’s dependent on having a Province in your hand at the time you play the Tournament – which typically means that it will come up in the 2nd half or later in the game. So you won’t get much time to use your Prize. Of course, that’s also addressed by having you place the newly acquired Prize on the top of your deck, so you’ll get it in your hand on the next draw. (Unless you’ve got some other cards in your hand that are letting you draw more cards right away – cool combos.)

The new Kingdom Cards
The 13 new Kingdom cards add even more variety to Dominion. And many of the new cards reward players for having a variety of cards in their deck. So rather than just zero in on a couple of card types in the supply to build your strategy around, players will want to buy many different card types.

Here are a few examples:

Keep adding variety to Dominion.

• Fairgrounds: This is a Victory card that provides 2 victory points for every 5 differently named cards in your deck at the end of the game. So if you’ve got 15 differently named cards in your deck, each Fairgrounds card will provide 6 victory points – as much as a Province! And it only costs 6 Treasure to buy.
• Harvest: Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck and discard them. Gain +1 Treasure per differently named card. So if all 4 of those cards are different, there’s +4 Treasure to use on a Buy that turn.
• Menagerie: +1 Action, plus Reveal your hand – if there aren’t any duplicate cards in your hand, you get +3 cards. If there are duplicate cards, you only get +1 card. Cool benefit for keeping a variety of cards in your deck.

Our Favorite Cornucopia Kingdom Cards
There are 2 Attack cards in Cornucopia that we love adding to our deck – Jester and Young Witch.

• Jester: +2 Treasure and each other player discards the top card of their deck. If it’s a Victory card, they get a Curse. If it’s any other card, they gain a copy of that card or you do – your choice. So cool! So if they turn over a Gold, you bet I’ll choose to gain a Gold. If they turn over a Curse, even better, now they’re getting another!
• Young Witch: It’s similar to the Witch in the base game but just a bit different. Players get to draw +2 Cards from their deck, but then they also have to discard 2 cards. Of course a lot of times, discarding 2 cards isn’t that bad, so playing the Young Witch is still a good way to cycle through your deck. In addition, during set up another Kingdom card is added to the supply that serves as a “Bane” card. If other players have that card in their hand when a Young Witch is played, they can reveal it to block the Curse.

We use the Cornucopia box for all our Dominion cards.

Because there are so many Dominion expansions (with more still to come) we’ll suggest another way to go about getting expansions for Dominion – Have your friends buy some!

That way, when you get together, everyone can bring the sets they have and you can randomize from all the expansions you have amongst you. So we’ll bring our base game, Seaside, and Cornucopia and my buddies will bring Intrigue, Prosperity, and Hinterlands. (None of them have picked up a copy of Alchemy – smart move. But we’re still looking forward to adding Dark Ages.)

And we’re all set for a lot of fun!

(We also like that the size of the Cornucopia box is great for storing the 3 Dominion games we own with still more room to spare.)

Dominion Games:

• Original (base)
• Intrigue (base)
• Seaside (expansion)
• Alchemy (expansion)
• Prosperity (expansion)
• Cornucopia (expansion)
• Hinterlands (expansion)
• Dark Ages (expansion)
• Many more to still come

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The post Dominion Cornucopia expansion review was written by The Board Game Family.

Ready to save the world…again.

Pandemic is one of the first board games we reviewed because it’s such a great family board game. It was the first cooperative board game we ever played and was an instant hit in our family.

From its original release in 2008, Pandemic has taken the gaming world by storm. Tons of cooperative board games have been created since then trying to duplicate the success of Pandemic. And every time a new cooperative board game hits the game shelves, they’re immediately compared to Pandemic. Not a bad position to be in.

Earlier this year, Z-Man Games released a new edition of Pandemic to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of the game. And while we haven’t yet tried the new edition, we have seen it in the game aisles of big box retailers. Way to go Pandemic!

The box color teases what’s to come.

But that’s enough about the base game Pandemic because we want to talk about Pandemic: On the Brink – the expansion we bought that we hardly play without any more.

What’s the draw of Pandemic: On the Brink?
Pandemic: On the Brink adds a lot of stuff: A 5th player, 6 new roles, 8 new special events, new components, petri dishes, and 3 challenges – like the bio-terrorist (a favorite). But the coolest thing is that it’s not an all or nothing proposition – you can choose whatever elements you’d like to add in or leave out. And combinations of the new elements means there’s a lot of replayability.

This doesn’t mean we were tired of playing just the base game. But rather it means we’ve simply added new ways to enjoy Pandemic.

New Roles

New roles with more special abilities.

The 6 new roles added to the game are: Containment Specialist, Epidemiologist, Field Operative, Archivist, Troubleshooter, and Generalist. Mixing these in with the original roles and randomly dealing them to the players means that there are a lot more combinations of abilities to discover.

In the base game, there were 5 roles for 4 players which means that you’re going to have most of the abilities at your disposal. Having a total of 11 roles to select from means there’s a lot more to figure out how to work well together with your fellow players. Keeps the game interesting.

Special Events
Likewise the base game includes 5 Special Events cards that were always in the Player card deck. With On the Brink, you now add those 5 to the additional 8 and randomly select 2 per player to be shuffled into the Player card deck. So again, you don’t know what you’re going to get each time. You can hope for certain ones, but there’s no guarantees.

Some of the new Special Events are: Borrowed Time, Mobile Hospital, Rapid Vaccine Deployment, and Special Orders

Now on to the Challenges.

Challenge 1: Virulent Strain
The Virulent Strain challenge is where one of the diseases you’re trying to cure will suddenly go out of control. The reason is because you replace the standard Epidemic cards with these Virulent Stain Epidemic cards that each have something twisted to offer.

Like the other new cards, these are randomly selected and mixed in with the Player card deck. So now when you turn over an Epidemic card, in addition to the standard effects of an epidemic, each of these cards gives additional instructions of what will happen to the disease with the virulent strain. And some of those effects continue even after the card is played!

Challenge 2: Mutation

The Mutation disease with 12 cubes. Love the petri dishes!

The Mutation challenge adds another disease to the mix. But not only do players now have a 5th disease to deal with, the mutation disease will also act in strange ways. There are 3 Mutation Event cards that also get mixed into the Player card deck and will pop up at unexpected times to cause more chaos.

An added challenge to the mutation disease is that there are only 12 purple cubes (instead of 24 like the other diseases). And yes, you can lose the game if you run out of purple cubes to place on the board. Ouch!

Challenge 3: Bio-Terrorist

Bio-terrorist is ready to wreck havoc!

The Bio-Terrorist challenge the highlight of the game for our boys. Not only do they want to play with the bio-terrorist every time, but they also fight over who gets to be the bio-terrorist.

The bio-terrorist turns Pandemic into a semi-cooperative game rather than a straight cooperative game because now it’s 1 player working against the rest of the players.

The bio-terrorist takes the black pawn but doesn’t place it on the board. It only comes on the board once the bio-terrorist is spotted. That player also gets a special pad to track their actions throughout the game – which is necessary because they move and act secretly.

The bio-terrorist has special actions that they use throughout the game to move around, draw cards, infect cities, and sabotage research stations.

They can also be captured.
Of course, they can also escape.

There’s a lot going on and chasing after the bio-terrorist while also trying to cure diseases is a tough proposition. The good thing is that the bio-terrorist only gets 2 actions on their turn. The bad thing is that player also gets to take a turn after each other player takes a turn (Player 1, Bio-terrorist, Player 2, Bio-terrorist, Player 3, Bio-terrorist…). As such, he/she’s all over the place wrecking havoc and hard to nail down.

That’s how we fit it all in one box.

It’s pretty obvious why the boys love being the bio-terrorist so much – subverting everything else going on in the game. They cackle maniacally and love it.

Final Verdict
The Pandemic: On the Brink expansion is a “must have” in our book.
If you haven’t yet played Pandemic, don’t wait any longer – go grab a copy today. And once you get the hang of how to play it, then grab a copy of On the Brink and mix it up even more.

Great stuff!

Summary of Added Components
8 Role cards
8 Special Event cards
3 Mutation Event cards
2 Mutation cards
8 Virulent Strain cards
12 Pawns (replaces the originals plus the new roles)
12 Purple disease cubes
1 Purple cure marker
1 Purple status tile
1 Epidemic card (for Legendary difficulty)
1 Reference card (for 5th player)
1 Bio-Terrorist Location pad
4 Blank cards (make your own roles and special events)
6 Petri Dishes!

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The post Pandemic: On the Brink expansion review was written by The Board Game Family.

We caught a video segment today about board games from one of our family’s favorite internet sensations: Rhett and Link

They’ve talked about board games before on their YouTube show, “Good Mythical Morning”. But this recent video clip from “The Mythical Show” is called “Most Complicated Board Game Ever” and it’s just begging to be watched.

It’s quite the board game and culture mashup.
We challenge you to see how many different board games you can recognize in this video.

Of course, we also looked to see which board games referenced in the video are ones that we’ve done reviews of.
We found 6:

• Settlers of Catan
• Castle Panic
• Pandemic
• Lord of the Rings
• Dominion
• Risk

More about Rhett and Link
Rhett & Link are the comedy duo consisting of life-long best friends, Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal. And we get a kick out of their material. They been doing videos and songs for years, but their popularity has taken off in the last year.

They’ve written close to 100 original comedy songs, over 500 web videos, and have been featured on Conan, CNN, BBC, NPR, TV Guide, E! News, TMZ, The Jay Leno Show, Lopez Tonight, Last Call with Carson Daly, and Ellen.

For some daily hilarity, our boys highly recommend you subscribe to the Rhett and Link YouTube channel.

Check out their funny songs (like “Rub Some Bacon on It“, “I Am a Thoughtful Guy“, or “Epic Rap Battle of Manliness“), snippets of all sorts of topics, Google translations epic fails, seasons of daily “Good Mythical Morning“, or their latest series “The Mythical Show“.

Just in case you’re curious, a few of our other favorite YouTube channels are:

• The Piano Guys
• Lindsey Stirling
• Kid History & Kid Snippets
• StudioC

Nice refresher break.

Now we’ll get back to our previously scheduled series of board game expansion reviews…

The post Most Complicated Board Game was written by The Board Game Family.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day!!

With today being Mother’s Day in the US, there have been numerous of articles about mothers over the last few days.

Two in particular caught my attention.
The first was written by two of our favorite authors on the topic of families, Linda and Richard Eyre, titled “Really celebrating Mother’s Day“.

What caught my attention? Well, their intro says it all “Along with expressing appreciation to our own moms, let’s consider how much our whole society, our whole economy and our whole world should celebrate the irreplaceable role of mothers everywhere.”

Go mom!

On the macro level, they mention a number of things we can celebrate about mothers including:

• A celebration of the deepest form of unconditional love.
• A celebration of the most selfless commitment.
• A celebration of the most complete sacrifice.
• A celebration of the choice of responsibility over personal options and freedom.

One of the items they also mention is:

• A celebration of the most underappreciated people on the planet.

“The bottom line is that mothers contribute more to the ongoing viability of our economy, our society and our world than all other roles combined. The one role that this planet cannot survive without is becoming less relished, less assumed, less desired!”

We can’t agree more.

Love our mom!

That’s why this second article that gave me pause – “Mom’s value in dollars dropped again, annual reckoning says”

Using wage data from Bureau of Labor Statistics they try to put a dollar amount on what it would cost to hire someone to do mom’s work. The good news is they include a ton of tasks that moms do on a regular basis from cook, chauffeur, and teacher, to nurse, personal care aide, and yard maintenance worker. They factor in the amount of time mom’s spend on different tasks and then calculate their total value in dollars based on the wages of those professions.

And in doing so, they conclude that the value in dollars of a mom has dropped again.

The glaring problem however is that none of these professions cover the real value of a mom. It’s a nice try, but you simply can’t put a monetary value on mothers!

Mothers are priceless!

The post Mothers are Priceless was written by The Board Game Family.

A little expansion, but with a ton of new heroes and monsters.

We’re still hooked on Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition.

And while we may not be playing it as regularly as we did in January after we first got the game and posted a video review on it, it’s still set up on a table in our basement – just begging us to play. In fact, Caleb really does beg to play it regularly, “when can we  finish our campaign?”

The trouble is, since Trevor, Jaden, and Caleb are playing the heroes and I’m playing the overlord in our current Descent campaign, we all need to be around to play. (Actually we did play proxy for Jaden one time when we couldn’t wait any longer.)

Huge stack of playable Heroes.

But with a teenager that has a job, boys in rehearsals and doing school plays, homework and school schedules, scout camps, and dad out of town on work here and there (also getting up to speed on a new job), it’s a tough proposition to all be around to sit down and play.

Of course, that also means we can get other games to the table (as opposed to January where it was practically ALL Descent) since other games don’t require the same 4 players to play.

However, before our Descent campaign play slowed a bit, we did buy a copy of the Descent: Journeys in the Dark Conversion Kit. And we’re so glad we did!

25 more Monster types!

What’s the Draw of the Descent: Journeys in the Dark Conversion Kit?
Simple – More heroes and more monsters!!
48 Heroes and 25 Monsters to be exact!

Well, to be really exact, the Descent 2nd Edition Conversion Kit doesn’t come with any figures/miniatures, but rather just the cards for the heroes and monsters. But that’s fine by us.

What the Conversion Kit does is take all of the heroes and monsters from all the 1st edition Descent games and makes them playable with the new Descent 2nd Edition game. And since we don’t have any of the original Descent games or expansions, we say SWEET!

Made some tuckboxes for all the different cards.

As you can see in our original review and video, Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition comes with 8 Heroes and 9 Monster types. So adding 48 new Heroes and 25 new Monster types is a huge addition!

It’s a great way for us to expand our game play with new characters without having to have bought all the previous Descent games.

Stand-in Figures needed
The only drawback is that we need to use stand-in figures. But we’re okay with that. We found a list showing the size of the monsters from all the 1st edition games and can use the figures we have in Descent 2nd Edition to represent those monsters.

The Ettin figure gets to stand in for Giant, Golem, or Troll.

For example, the Crypt Dragon is the same dimension as the Shadow Dragon (2nd edition), so we just use the Shadow Dragon figure on the board and the new card for Crypt Dragon to know it’s stats and special powers.

Sure there are some monsters that don’t have a closely represented figure, so we lose some of the visual pleasure there, but we enjoy it nonetheless.

On the hero side, we only have 8 figures to choose from when selecting from the huge stack of hero sheets. But the boys don’t mind that much. If their figure has a sword, then they’re good to go. They’ll battle on.

Of course, we could seek out original Descent 1st edition miniatures. Or we could buy a bunch of other miniatures that may be similar. But why spend hundreds of dollars on miniatures when stand-in representatives will do just fine for us.

Packing tip: Tiles go in first.

Too much to choose from?
With so many heroes, making a choice of what hero to select is a little overwhelming. But the boys were undaunted. They pour over the new characters, compare stats and abilities, and find ones that they think will work well together to head off into another campaign.

And I must say that they’ve chosen very wisely. I think they picked the best of the best. Watching them work together and string their movement and actions off of each other looks like a very well oiled machine. And I as the overlord have been pummeled.

Packing tip: Don’t use the insert as it came.

I’ve been having a lot of fun trying different monster combinations just to see what they can do. But sometimes I don’t get to experiment much before these powerful heroes wipe me off the board.

Lots of fun!

However, we’ve decided that for our next campaign we’re going to put some randomization in their hero selection so they won’t just keep choosing the same super-powered heroes. For example, we might have each hero player choose a class, then randomly pick 3 or 4 hero cards that fit that class and then they have to choose one of those to play. This way, there’s still come choice, but from a limited selection.

Packing tip: Place the insert in upside-down.

Fitting it in the box
On the plus side, not having additional figures means that we can still fit everything in the game box. All the components that come in Descent 2nd Edition fill up the game box pretty well on their own.

We found a good way to keep all the components organized nicely in the game box and thought we’d share some photos.

The insert that came in the game is a good one to help with some division of the components, but the way it was set up meant that most of the items would need to be placed under sides of the insert. What we’ve done is turn the insert upside-down to hold the components in a more visible manner.

Packing tip: Monsters, cards, items are all easy to get to.

First we put all the tiles in the bottom of the box.

Then we add the insert upside-down. We put all the monsters on one side and the cards on the other. You’ll notice that we also found a template for creating tuckboxes to hold the cards. It’s a great way to store the cards that looks pretty cool too. In a number of the tuckboxes there is plenty of extra space, but they stack nicely in the box without the cards sliding around.

We place all the little cardboard tokens and all the hero sheets in baggies and place them under the middle section of the insert (that we’ve cut so we can fold it back to peer inside).

Packing tip: Room for the Rules and Quest Guide on the top. All set.

Sure the insert needs to come out to get to the tiles, but it’s easy to lift out with most of the items in it and set it to the side.

Of course, since the game is constantly set up in some fashion on the table, the game components haven’t spent a lot of time in the game box anyway. But they’ve got their places when we need to clear off the table.

Final thoughts
The Descent 2nd Edition Conversion Kit is a simple addition to the game that adds a ton of characters and we love it!

Summary of Added Components
48 Hero sheets
50 Monster cards (25 Act I, 25 Act II)
3 Familiar cards
No Figures/Miniatures

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The post Descent 2nd Edition Conversion Kit review was written by The Board Game Family.

Expand your 7 Wonders civilization.

One of mom’s favorite games is 7 Wonders. In fact, she placed it 2nd on her recent list of Top 12 Family Board Games.

So is it any wonder that we’d pick up a copy of an expansion for 7 Wonders?

If mom loves a game, we’re definitely going to get it out often. Because when choosing what game to play, you need to select one that the players will enjoy. So if we want mom to sit down and play, then we need to pick one she’ll enjoy. And 7 Wonders is that kind of game.

When it came time to choose an expansion for 7 Wonders, we had two choices: Leaders or Cities.
After looking at what each added to the game, dad decided to buy a copy of 7 Wonders: Cities.

What’s the draw for 7 Wonders: Cities?
The biggest draw for 7 Wonders: Cities was the addition of a few elements that looked like they’d add some cool twists to the game, namely Debt and Diplomacy. And they show up on some of the 27 new Black Age cards (9 per Age).

New wonders, new cards, new tokens = more decisions.

The debt comes into account after players have played their cards and settled the purchasing of resources from neighbors. So whereas they may have been fine up front, once they pay a neighbor and are down coins for that purchase, then they’re hit with resolving this symbol.

And if a player is out of coin and is forced to pay coin, that player will have to take a Debt token for each unpaid coin. And that’s not good because Debt tokens are negative victory points at the end of the game. Whereas at the end of the game players can score 1 VP for each 3 coin they have, if they go below zero and into Debt, that’s a straight 1 for 1 in the hole on the VP scale.

But on the other hand, if a player is forced to pay 2 coin and they have 2 coin they could pay, but would rather take on Debt, they can choose to do so. This may help if they really need those 2 coin to buy something later that will offset the negative VP and give them an upside.

The key point is that this element of Debt adds a great wrinkle to the game to watch out for and make decisions around. Nice.

Debt and Diplomacy tokens.

Diplomacy
Just when you think it’s all nastiness with Debt coming into play, enter Diplomacy. Diplomacy is all about friendliness (or so you’d think).

Some of the new Age cards include a Diplomacy symbol. When those cards are played, that player takes a Diplomacy token and places it on their board. At the end of the Age when military might is compared between neighbors, they abstain from the conflict. And when they sit out the conflict, it means their two neighbors now battle each other instead.

Another cool twist to the game!

The catch is that at the end of the Age during the conflict, the player has to discard their token and sit out the conflict. So if they end up having more military might than their neighbors, they can’t decide to enter the conflict anyway. They have to sit it out peacefully.

It’s especially fun when you can play a diplomacy card as the last card in an Age and surprise your neighbors.

Not all cards in play
Another cool element of these additional black Age cards is that they are randomly added into play.

Whereas with the base game, the cards are separated at the beginning based on the number of players. If you’re playing with just 5 players, any cards with a “6+” or “7+” at the bottom are left out.

While that still occurs for the standard cards, the black cards don’t have numbers at the bottom. Instead, you add into each Age deck only as many black cards as there are players. So if there are 5 players, 5 random black cards will be added to each corresponding Age.

Likewise, the 3 new Guild cards are added to the game, but the number of Guild cards to add in the 3rd Age doesn’t change. So you never really know what to expect. It could end up that Diplomacy cards don’t make the cut and never come into play.

It all adds to the mixture of making each game play differently than the last. Just enough to keep it all interesting!

Final Verdict
All of the new cards in the Cities expansion have Mask symbols at the bottom. This makes it very easy to identify the Cities cards. So if you’d like to play a game without the expansion, it’s simple to do. Just leave them out.

Of course, in our family more often then not we’re going to have the Cities cards in the mix.

The Mask symbol is a great one for this expansion because the cards that are added do feel very sneaky at times. Great for new flavor to the game.

But we mostly like the Cities expansion because of the added variety that these new elements add and the additional decisions that need to be made.

(As we haven’t played the 7 Wonders: Leaders expansion yet, we haven’t played with the 6 new Leader cards that come with Cities either. But we know we’ve got that option should we get a copy of Leaders.)

Summary of Added components:
2 Wonder boards and cards (Byzantium, Petra)
9 Age I, Age II, and Age III cards
3 Guild cards
6 Leader cards
31 Debt tokens
3 Diplomacy tokens
1 score pad

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The post 7 Wonders Cities expansion review was written by The Board Game Family.

It’s a much smaller box, but contains Power.

King of Tokyo is a great party game and our copy has been used a TON. We’ve played it numerous times as a family, we play it regularly at Guys Game Night, and we’ve lent it out to neighbors and friends for some of their family gatherings.

So when we heard iello was working on an expansion for King of Tokyo, we quickly added it to our wish list.

(Need a refresher on the original game – check out Trevor’s Video Review of King of Tokyo.)

What’s the draw of King of Tokyo: Power Up?
The biggest draw is simply that we love the original game and were happy to add more bells and whistles. While King of Tokyo: Power Up! isn’t a huge expansion for the game, it adds an element to keep the game fresh.

What’s in the box?

I say “an element” because the biggest addition to the game is the set of Evolution cards that each character monster receives. Another monster is also added to the game, Pandakai, but that’s not a real reason to pick up the expansion because still only 6 players can play the game. (Which is just great for us with our family of 6.) So it’s really all about the Evolution cards.

Monster Evolution cards
Evolution cards are simply ways for the monsters in the game to Power Up. These cards give special abilities to the monsters just like the standard deck of power cards do in the base game. However, the Evolution cards are specific to the particular monsters.

The new components.

At the start of the game, each player receives a set of 8 Evolution cards that are specific to their monster. At the end of a player’s turn, if they have rolled 3 hearts (even while in Tokyo), they can take their top Evolution card from their stack. It will either be a Temporary Evolution (use only once) or a Permanent Evolution (continual use) and they can keep it secret until they choose to play it.

The evolution cards add twists to the game like the deck of power cards. The two big differences are in the way the cards are gained (roll 3 hearts vs. spend energy cubes) and that they’re unique per monster. Some will be very helpful in attacking, others in defense, and others in scoring victory points (or taking away from opponents).

Here are some examples:

Great new monster powers!

• Primal Bellow – Discard this Evolution to make all other Monsters lose 2 VP
• Heat Vision – Monsters you attack lose 1 VP
• Mothership Support – Once on your turn you can spend 1 Energy to heal damage even while in Tokyo
• Decoy Bunny – Discard this Evolution to take no damage this turn
• Prince with 1000 Enemies – Discard this Evolution to reroll a die belonging to another player
• High Tide – Discard this Evolution to count each Heart as 2 Heart for your turn
• Claws of Steel – Deal 1 extra damage on a turn in which you dealt 3 or more damage
• Yin & Yang – After you finish rolling you can flip all dice to the opposite side

Does it add to the fun?
After having played with the Evolution cards in the Power Up! expansion, it’s pretty clear that we’re going to include them every time we play.

One of the main reasons is that they’re easy to acquire and seem to be gained sooner in the game than buying power cards. There are also variant rules where players can start with a random Evolution. We like special abilities, so getting them earlier in the game is fabulous.

We’ve also found that the King of Tokyo: Power Up! expansion extends the time it takes to play the game. Adding more special abilities has a way of keeping players alive longer as they deflect more blows and such. Also having more cards in front of each player, means there’s more to keep track of. But in our eyes, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Sure King of Tokyo is supposed to be just a light, quick dice rolling good time. So it shouldn’t draw out too long. But we don’t mind when it plays longer because we don’t seem to notice the time go by anyway.

Because it’s a blast.
Just when someone lands a special destructive blow that’s sure to knock out Cyber Bunny, he throws out his Decoy Bunny and sustains no damage.

The only downside to King of Tokyo is player elimination. The first monsters to get knocked out won’t have much to do. And the Power Up expansion won’t help solve that problem. But we’ve find that even though players get knocked out, they’re still plenty invested in cheering on the other monsters and the king of the hill battle continues with plenty cheers and laughter.

So if you’ve got King of Tokyo, the Power Up! expansion is a great addition to the game.

If you don’t have King of Tokyo, what are you waiting for?

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The post King of Tokyo: Power Up! expansion review was written by The Board Game Family.

A mini game box with just 12 tiles.

Our 3rd, and last, Carcassonne expansion board game review is for the mini-expansion: Carcassonne The River.

And since it’s a mini-expansion, this will be a mini-review because there isn’t a lot to say about it.

However, just because it’s mini doesn’t mean it isn’t great – because we play with the River every time we play!

What does Carcassonne The River add?
Carcassonne The River adds just 12 land tiles to the Carcassonne board game. The distinction however is that each of these 12 tiles have a river flowing through the rest of the terrain – through a field, next to a city, or under a road.

The 12 river tiles.

Simple enough.

As you can see, the addition of the river as starting tiles doesn’t add any additional rules to the basic game.

Doesn’t the countryside look beautiful with a river?

So why do we like Carcassonne The River?
The main reason we play with The River every time is because it opens up the countryside quite a bit. It can also make good sized farms. Because farm areas will extend around the spring and lake, we’ll typically try to play some early farmers to gain an advantage in that part of the game.

One of the big draws to Carcassonne is the fun of building a cool countryside as the game progresses. And let’s face it, having a cool river flowing through the middle of the land creates a more beautified landscape.

Easy to store the expansions we have in the original box.

Even though we play with the river tiles every time, we keep those tiles in a separate baggie from the other land tiles. That way, it’s very easy to grab them to start the game, then draw from the bag (that came in the Carcassonne Traders & Builders expansion) the rest of the game.

What do we do with the game boxes from the expansions?
Use them as gift boxes. They’re a great size for wrapping presents. The only catch we’ve found is that we should only wrap our own family presents in them. Because when we give gifts to our friends wrapped in an expansion box, they think we’re giving them a game expansion (of which they don’t have the original) and we have to tell them to open the box to get to their real gift. Kind of awkward.

Not that we’re opposed to giving friends board games as gifts – we’ll just save our expansions boxes for gifts amongst ourselves.

Oh, and because Carcassonne The River is a mini-expansion of only 12 tiles, it’s very inexpensive as well.

Other Carcassonne expansions
We haven’t played any of the other many Carcassonne expansions that have been published, but here’s a list and the year published for a number of the expansions:

• Carcassonne – 2000
• Carcassonne Inns & Cathedrals – 2002
• Carcassonne Traders & Builders – 2003
• Carcassonne The Princess & the Dragon – 2005
• Carcassonne The Tower – 2006
• Carcassonne Abbey & Mayor – 2007
• Carcassonne Catapult – 2008
• Carcassonne Wheel of Fortune – 2009
• Carcassonne Bridge, Castles & Bazaars – 2010

Mini Expansions:

• Carcassonne The River – 2001
• Carcassonne King & Scout – 2003
• The Count of Carcassonne – 2004
• Carcassonne The River II – 2005

There are also a lot of Carcassonne related games with a similar system like Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers, Carcassonne The Castle, Carcassonne The City, New World: A Carcassonne Game and many more.

And a lot more expansions in German…

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The post Carcassonne The River mini expansion review was written by The Board Game Family.

Does this expansion keep adding to the fun of Carcassonne?

Plus everyone gets a pig!

The first thing we liked about Carcassonne Traders & Builders is that it includes pieces for a 6th player. Since the first expansion added pieces for a 6th player to join in the fun, it’s nice to see that the following expansions keep that in mind.

Now on to the new elements…

Traders
The ‘Traders’ portion in the game title relates to the addition of Trade Goods on some of the city tiles. There are 3 different trade goods players can collect – Wine, Grain, and Cloth. At the end of the game, the player with the most Wine tokens will score 10 extra points. The same goes for the player with the most Grain and Cloth tokens. And if players tie for the most of a particular trade good, they each get 10 points.

Trade goods provide more ways to score points.

So sometimes it will be advantageous to complete a city even if you aren’t the player controlling it. Sure that means that someone else will score the points for the city, but getting those trade goods may help you out even more.

It’s a trade-off decision, but we think that’s pretty fitting for it being related to ‘Traders’.

It also makes playing with Inns & Cathedrals a twist too – where players will purposefully extend a city with a cathedral in it so the person controlling that city won’t be able to complete the city and score big points. By adding Traders, completing cities is a good thing and provides more things to consider.

Pigs
If you’ve ever wanted a little wooden pig for your board games, we’ll now you can have one.

Ready for wooden pigs?

Just like other followers, pigs are placed by a player when they place a land tile. And like you might expect from a popular farm animal, they must be placed on a farm/field area. A player can only place a pig on a field area where they already have a farmer (not on the same tile of their farmer of course, but in the same farm area). Like a farmer, the pig stays on the tile for the remainder of the game.

When scoring farmers at the end of the game, the player earns 1 additional point for each of the cities he scores that has a pig in the field with his farmer(s). Of course, the pig only counts if that player owns the field. And for ownership of the field, only the farmers are counted.

Each player only gets one pig, so it’s a risky move, but rewarding when you place it right.

Builders
Like the pigs, Builders are added to a just-played tile and must be placed on a city or road where the player already has followers. But unlike the pig, the Builder doesn’t increasing scoring. Instead, the Builder gives players a chance to play two tiles!

How?
By adding to the city or road that has the builder on it.

If a player has a city or road with a builder on it and they later place a tile that extends that city or road, they then get to draw and place another tile. So while it doesn’t score points directly, the Builder does provide an advantage by getting two turns in a row.

While we like the way the Builder works, it also slows the game down. The rules for Carcassonne indicate on a players turn they draw a tile and then play it to the table. However, because there are lots of options when playing a tile, we’ve implemented the “draw a tile at the end or your turn” rule. That way, players have time to think about where they’re going to play their tile while others are taking their turns. Sure the board, and thus their options, will change some before it gets back to them. But they know what they have to work with and can play their tile more quickly when it’s their turn.

But when we add the Builder in the mix and a player gets to draw and play a tile as a second, immediate turn, it means more thinking time – which will slow the game down a bit.

Simple addition, but we LOVE the bag for drawing tiles!

Enter the cloth bag!

Not only does this eliminate the chance of recognizing certain tiles from different expansions because of the back of the tiles, but it also makes set up a lot simpler. Just toss all the land tiles in the bag and you’re ready to go. Better yet, do like we do and just store all the tiles in the bag. Open the box, give everyone their meeples, draw and play.

Final say
Similar to Carcassonne Inns & Cathedrals we like the new ways to score, new decisions to be made, additional player pieces, and the 24 new land tiles to grow the countryside even further. However, we’re more selective will the elements we decide to play with each game. Between the options, we like the trade goods the best. But that’s what’s so great about these expansions – you can still pick and choose which parts you want to play with. Want to leave the Builders out but keep the Pigs in, go for it. It’s up to you. But you can still enjoy all the cool new land tiles.

Summary of Added Components:
24 new land tiles (9 with wine, 6 with grain, 5 with cloth, and 4 without trade goods)
20 trade good tokens
6 builder meeples/followers (1 in each of the 6 player colors)
6 pigs (1 in each of the 6 player colors)
1 cloth bag

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The post Carcassonne Traders & Builders review was written by The Board Game Family.