Board Game Reviews by Josh

FlickFleet Preview

2018-11-08T14:08:00.001-08:00

Well. Let's see if I can remember how to do this. It's been two years since I've written anything here, but when Jackson Pope, the nice designer of FlickFleet reached out to the wider community asking for reviewers that like dexterity games, my name came up. (Apparently I haven't done a good enough job convincing everyone else in the world, and thus new reviewers, that dexterity games are truly the greatest kind of game there is. (Well. I mean, I guess if you consider sports to be dexterity games, then I'm in the vast majority of the population as a whole in thinking that dexterity games are the best.)) And then I started hearing things like "new dexterity game" and "flick pieces for movement" and all of the normal things that immediately gather my attention. So here I am. Wow, that was a long winded way to say, "Hi, I'm back for now, but don't expect this to be a regular thing."

So, what is FlickFleet? It's a game. There's flicking and stuff. The end. Free game acquired. Obligation fulfilled. *Boom*

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A tricked out Destroyer lives up to its name

Ok, fine. FlickFleet is a new dexterity game about sci-fi spaceship combat. There are several kinds of ships, but they basically take 2 forms - the ones that have a board where you have to track stuff on the side, and the ones that don't. The ones that don't have a board associated with them are called fighters, and they start off with three pieces that fit together, and you track everything about them based on how many pieces remain. When they get to activate, you can move them by flicking them, and then you can attack by setting a die on top of them and flicking it towards your opponent's ships. You get to shoot once per remaining section, and one type rolls a ten-sided die, the other rolls a six-sided die. The second kind of ship is a capital ship, and there are a few different types of them. Each of them has a board to track actions, and they can fire (some of them can do this in two ways and thus can use two actions for it), some can launch fighters, they can repair hull damage and/or shields, and they can move. They also don't always get hit when you hit them with a die, because what face the die ends up on determines if they're hit. A six-sided die always hits, but the ten-sided one only hits on 1-6 (unless you had shields, in which case you're also hit on 7-10, because apparently shields are easier to hit). Players alternate taking turns activating ships until all of them have activated, then they start over. And they keep doing this until everyone dies. Wait, that's not right. Only your opponent has to die. If you died too, then you played too long. Sometimes there's a different ending based on the scenario, but for the most part, it's a 'til death kind of situation.

Okay, so I've said there's flicking of ships and dice. Is there anything different about this one, or is it basically just a clone of all the other flicking games? Well, there are a few differences that I can point out compared to your standard flicking game. First, there is the dice flicking element. The only other game I know of that has dice flicking is Tumblin Dice, but that one is (at least pretends to be) a bit more strategic about it. In FlickFleet, the dice flicking is meant to be a bit more random; basically, it's meant to be a combination of flicking and die rolling in a single element, where the die roll affects the outcome of the attack. (That's at least my opinion on it.) Another difference between FlickFleet and other dexterity games is that there is a strategic component to it in action selection for your (capital) ships. Deploying fighters at the right time, and balancing when to move, attack, and heal can affect the outcome of the game (though this element isn't as crucial as being good at the dexterity element of it, as you probably would have assumed).

A heated battle in the works.

There are a couple other things I also want to point out before I get into the "who would enjoy it" part of the post. First, you actually have to have some control with your flicking in this game, which I find as a pleasant added challenge. Specifically, if you flick your ship off the edge of the board, it just flat out dies. So, don't do that. But, when you are flicking a die at a ship, if the die goes off the edge of the board, then it's a "wild shot" and misses completely. So, you shouldn't just blast it as hard as you can, like you might be tempted to do in some other games like PitchCar or Catacombs. Second, FlickFleet has a handful of scenarios (four in the prototype that was sent to me, but I think they're planning to expand that online after launch). The scenarios let you have a little bit of variety in how you play. They don't really change the crux of the game, but they add enough variance that it doesn't feel like you're doing the exact same thing each time, and they can also affect how you approach the strategic element of the game, which is nice.

So, for the part you actually care about. Who would enjoy FlickFleet?

Flicking fans that want to add a random factor into the game. Specifically, if you enjoy dexterity, but want the ability to blame the game if you lose, then this game gives you that scapegoat option by blaming the die flicks. ("Well, if I hadn't kept hitting you with 9's, I would have clearly won!")
Dexterity fans that like to be able to customize their game from play to play. You can customize the setup with scenarios and with building custom fleets (there is a costing system provided for figuring out how to balance the number of ships in each fleet).
People who want decision flexibility in their turns beyond only moving and/or attacking. (I've played a game where I decided to never spend an action on movement, because I just fired my weapons the entire game. And I won. Take that however you would like. For added clarity, it was during a scenario where there was a black hole pulling the ships towards the center of the board after each turn, so I was slowly moving - just not using actions for it.)
Dexterity fans in general. Let's be honest. This is who the game is meant for.

Getting ready to shoot. This "should" be an easy shot.

Who should avoid it?

People who hate dexterity games. But, if you hate dexterity games (the best genre of games as we've discussed earlier), did you really get this far in the post?
People who want instant setup of their dexterity games. This one takes a couple minutes to find the pieces and get the fleets prepared. That's the cost of the customizability. (Basically, the setup is more like Catacombs, where you have to grab all the pieces you'll need for the scenario you're playing, and not like Crokinole, where you put the board on the table and immediately start playing.)
People who want the person who is better at dexterity games to win every time. If you are just plain better at flicking than your opponent, then yeah, you'll win most of your games of FlickFleet. But if you hit them with a 7-10 every time you flick the die, you'll lose.
People who believe "when it's dead, it's dead" about destroying their opponent. Since I only briefly mentioned this earlier, I should elaborate now. The capital ships have shields. One of the actions you can take with them is to repair your shields. This can lead to situations where a ship keeps healing all of it's damage, and their opponent feels like they can't finish it off. More specifically, it can also lead to situations where their opponent can't finish it off (if they are only firing a single shot each round; just concede, my friend). Not everyone will love the ability to repair the shields. Though, frankly, its easy enough to create a scenario where there's some kind of "spatial anomaly" that prevents shields from being repaired, if you really hate shields coming back.

Overall, I enjoyed my plays of FlickFleet. That shouldn't surprise anyone. If I find a lot of dexterity gamers in my gaming group, then I could see it continuing to hit the table, but for people that aren't partial to dexterity games, I typically go with goofier ones like Coconuts when I occasionally convince them to dip their toe in the beautiful waters of dexterity. So my continued play of it will depend pretty heavily on who I am playing with.

If FlickFleet sounds like something you'd like, then check it out on Kickstarter.

I would like to thank Jackson Pope of Eurydice Games for sending me a preview copy of FlickFleet.

Ice Cool Review

2016-09-16T05:39:00.003-07:00

Every now and again, a new game comes along that looks a bit different and draws me back in to say a few words about it. Most recently, that game was Ice Cool.

In Ice Cool, players take charge of a penguin in a game of tag. Each round, one player plays the role of "catcher" and the other players are "runners." The catcher's goal is to hit each of the other players' penguins. The runners, meanwhile, are trying to successfully collect 3 fish by going through 3 doorframes on the board (and they collect a fish card every time they successfully go through a doorframe with one of their fish on it). Once the catcher has hit all of his opponents' penguins, or a runner has caught all 3 of their own fish, the round is over. At this point, the catcher takes a fish card for every runner that he successfully ran in to, plus one for being the catcher. Then, a new round is started with another player taking the role of catcher. Whoever has the most points worth of fish cards (each card ranges from one to three) at the end of the game wins.

The penguins are weighted on the bottom

Clearly, the best part of Ice Cool is the wonky penguins. The penguins aren't weighted like a "normal" flicking thing. I've played PitchCar, Catacombs, Crokinole, Bisikle, and basically every other flicking game that I can get my hands on, and this is the biggest difference between Ice Cool and those games - the penguins are not symmetrical. What this means is that you can (try to) intentionally make the penguin do odd things - like jump over a part of the board, or make an arced shot to go around obstacles. Now, I am not very good at this, but I have done it often enough to envision someone getting very good with these trick shots.

The next pro that I have for Ice Cool (aside from it being a dexterity game, and thus great fun by default) is that the one-point fish cards aren't complete disappointments. In most games where you get a random score card for doing well, the lowest card sucks, and you just stare at it in irritation when you collect it. In Ice Cool, there's a minor bonus prize for collecting ones - at the end of your turn, you can flip over two cards of value one to get another flick. (You don't lose the points, either.) I'd still rather collect three point cards, but the extra flick can definitely be very valuable. (Though, it's still annoying when you collect them as the catcher at the end of the final round.)

Box in a Box picture

I would have to say that my biggest complaint with Ice Cool is something that only ever existed in my mind. When I heard about the game, and saw pictures of it, one of the pictures I saw was the "Box in a Box" picture. Now, what this picture is trying to communicate is that inside the box, there are several sub-pieces that fit together. (In fact, you take these out and form the playing area, with walls and such.) However, in my mind, I saw the picture and thought, "oh my gosh - how awesome is that! A flicking game where the playing surface isn't completely flat, but has different angles and stuff!" That's not a thing - the playing surface is flat. So, whereas I was horribly disappointed with this, it's not likely something that will bother anyone else!

Does my personally being very bad at making jump shots land where I want count as a con? No? Oh.

Overall, I give Ice Cool a 8.0/10. It's not going to replace PitchCar for me, but it does have enough of a difference to it that I can see myself coming back to it (not to mention that it's much lighter and faster to set up).

I would like to thank Brain Games for providing me with a review copy of Ice Cool.

Imperial Settlers Solo Campaign Review

2016-03-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

I've started playing solo games a bit more regularly lately. So, when I first heard people talking about Imperial Settlers, I heard that it had a solo mode - but also a solo campaign mode (note that the link is to Portal Games' dropbox where they uploaded the rules for the campaign). I was intrigued, so I went to check it out. This review will focus on that mode of play, and is going to completely ignore the multiplayer (normal) mode.

(If you've never played Imperial Settlers, read this paragraph, otherwise, you can skip to the next one.) In Imperial Settlers, you play over a series of rounds in order to get the most victory points. You gain these in a few different ways - but typically by building buildings. You start the game with a few cards - some specific to your faction, and some common. Each round, you gain more cards in the Lookout phase, you collect resources in the Production phase, you "do stuff" in the Action phase, and then you discard any excess resources and reset your buildings in the Cleanup Phase. Most of the "doing stuff" consists of playing or activating cards. With most cards, you can play them in a few different ways - as buildings, as "Deals," or you can "Raze" them. There are good and bad aspects, strategically, of each way to play a card, and you balance this as you play the game. That's really where the strategy lies. After a few rounds, if you have enough victory points, you win the game!

Tracking the solo campaign

So, the solo game of Imperial Settlers adds a "Virtual Player Attack" after the Cleanup Phase. This is done by flipping cards from a special deck, and matching the Raze icons on your buildings - if a building matches, then it is destroyed. At the end of the set number of rounds, if you have built more buildings than the Virtual Player (who gets everything they Raze, along with some in the Lookout Phase), then you win. The campaign strings together several of these games (and makes them shorter - you play 4 rounds in the campaign instead of 5). To start each game (after the first), you have an Event occur. The Events typically shift some of the rules of the game - emphasizing Production buildings, making Food more scarce, punishing you for using Raze tokens, etc. If you win a game, you add a Province to your kingdom. This Province typically gives you a bonus, but also requires you to pay for it in goods during the game, as well as with victory points after the game. Finally, the solo campaign mode adds Achievements - these allow you to get permanent bonuses to help offset the Events and the cost of your Provinces. There is no "end goal" for the campaign - you simply build your empire and see how well you can do.

The first thing that I like about the solo campaign is that it makes your victory points matter. In most solo games that I play, typically once I beat it, there's no real reason to play again. And, for that matter, if I just played the basic solo rules for Imperial Settlers, it would fall into this same category (well, you might play solo with each faction, but that's about it). However, with the campaign, it suddenly is different if I win with 10 VPs instead of winning with 95. With 95 VPs, I can buy some nice Achievements - whereas with 10 VPs, I might not even be able to pay the Control Cost of my Provinces. This has changed the game for me - instead of "phoning it in" late in the game, since I know I've already won, I am trying to maximize my VP output until the very last play.

The next pro that I have for the solo campaign can probably be said for Imperial Settlers as a whole - the factions play very differently. As an example, the first campaign I started was with the Barbarians. They are very straightforward - they get VPs primarily by building tons of buildings, but they can also activate some buildings to trade goods for points. The next campaign I played was with the Atlanteans. The Atlanteans don't get VPs from their faction specific buildings (other factions get 2 VP per faction specific building), but they get a lot of "technology" tokens, which improve common buildings. This meant that I had to build a ton of common buildings (they also only win if they have more common buildings than the virtual player - instead of buildings of any type). Building all of these buildings meant that I got buildings Razed by the virtual player almost every turn - but the technology tokens caused me to generate huge piles of resources to help offset those losses (and to feed into buildings to generate VPs).

A growing Japanese empire

Though I've really been enjoying the solo campaign, there are a few points that I have been annoyed with while playing it. First, I feel like the "hard games" I've played have been due to the (poor) luck of the draw. With some of the Provinces, you have to pay an upkeep cost every round. So, for instance, if you've won 5 games, you may have to pay 1 Worker, 2 Stone, and 2 Wood at the end of each round to pay for your Provinces. However, if you start a game by not drawing any Production buildings, then there's a good chance that you won't be able to pay this cost - and there's nothing that you could do about it. (This is worse with the Atlanteans, as many of their faction cards provide technology tokens instead of normal goods, so it reduces the chance that you will be able to get the goods a Province needs by making a Deal.) Granted, the Achievements should help you offset the costs of your Provinces, but regardless of what Achievements you have, there will be some times that a bad draw can derail your empire.

The next con that I had for the solo campaign is that there is a lot of upkeep in different places, and so it is very easy to "cheat" without realizing it. It's one thing to inadvertently cheat in a multiplayer game - when you realize it, you point it out to your opponents, and you collectively decide how to handle it. But, when you inadvertently cheat in a solo game, it's much more frustrating (in my opinion), because you don't know if you "really" would have won the game. I know that there have been several games where I cheated by forgetting to pay the upkeep, not remembering what the upkeep cost was, or forgetting the event. At the same time, I've also forgotten things that would help me like abilities that a Province provided. When you have built a large empire in Imperial Settlers (like 10+ Production buildings, along with Features and Actions), it's hard enough to track what all you produce, without having to also reference other sheets. As you play, you get better at tracking all of this, but it's still quite a bit. (I know of some efforts within the player community to try to convert the various aspects of the campaign mode into cards that can be printed off - well designed cards should help with this, but as far as I know, there is nothing official yet in this regard.)

Before the wrap up, you may have noticed in the pictures that I played this with both expansions. Here's a quick rundown of what the expansions add to the solo campaign, so that you can decide if you want them.

New Virtual Player cards (shown with their faction decks)

Why Can't We Be Friends:
This expansion focuses mostly on the multiplayer game (though you could shuffle in the new buildings if you'd like). However, for the solo mode, it adds 2 cards that represent the Virtual Player, and this causes your Virtual Player to play a bit differently. One Virtual Player attacks 3 times instead of 2, and the other gets more locations - so both make the game harder. These are nice, but I don't consider them critical.

Atlanteans:
The Atlanteans expansion adds... well... the Atlanteans. They are another playable faction that can be included in solo or multiplayer. It also adds a corresponding Virtual Player card that you can use for them in games where you're not playing as them. They play quite differently from the other factions, so if you enjoy going through the campaign with all of the different factions, then you might want to pick this one up so that you can play through with a 5th faction. However, you are probably safe holding off on this one until you've played the campaign a couple of times to make sure that you enjoy it first.

Overall, I give the solo campaign mode for Imperial Settlers an 8.5. I really enjoy it, and I think that I'll play through it more in the future. It hasn't dethroned my favorite solo game, but it is definitely in the upper echelon for me.

I would like to thank Portal Games for providing me with a review copy of Imperial Settlers along with its expansions.

Between Two Cities Review

2015-11-23T06:07:00.002-08:00

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't really written many reviews recently. Yet, after trying Between Two Cities, I decided that I wanted to explore the game some more - including fleshing out my thoughts in writing. (So, here we are!)

In Between Two Cities, you create two (4x4) cities - one with the player on your left, and another with the player on your right. The game is played in three rounds - the first and third round are drafting, and the middle round is simply picking a (larger) tile. Each time that you select a tile, you select two tiles, and everyone reveals their tiles at the same time. Once revealed, you can place either of your tiles in either one of your cities (but one tile must go in each city). Each type of tile has certain ways of maximizing its score, and at the end of the game, your total score is the point value of your lower scoring city. So, the challenge of the game is to balance your two cities so that they both do well - even if it means preventing one of your cities from becoming amazing, in order to allow them both to be great.

The first thing that I like about Between Two Cities is the partnership element of the game. It really has a very unique feel in that you are working with other players all game. (You don't have your own city.) However, this is a double-edged sword. Because, though you're working with two people, each of those players is also working with someone else, and there will be times when they will make a decision that hurts your city, because they feel like it is more important to help their other city. This causes a very strange balance in the game - especially since you are drafting tiles and passing the remaining tiles to one of your partners. Since you know what they are receiving, you can select and place accordingly. But, just because they take the tile that you want them to draft does not mean that they'll actually place it in the city that you both share!

Placement in the second round is a bit more constrained

The next pro that I've found for Between Two Cities is that the simultaneous play keeps the game very engaging. Many games scale linearly in time with the number of players - which often translates into sitting around waiting while other players take their turns. However, in Between Two Cities, you are selecting and placing your tiles at the same time. Yes, there will be times when one player takes longer than the others, but ultimately, there is very little down time in the game. You truly feel like you're participating the entire time.

The third thing that I really enjoyed about Between Two Cities was eluded to earlier - I like that when drafting, you are passing your unselected tiles to one of your partners. This knowledge (and foreknowledge) of what tiles are available and can be selected really makes the decision of what to select a bit more intriguing. Obviously, this is still only limited knowledge, in that you don't know what you will draw in future rounds, or what tiles will be passed to you. Yet, this small bit of additional knowledge makes the game feel more strategic.

One thing that I will point out about Between Two Cities that's a bit different from other drafting games is that there isn't really any "hate drafting." What I mean is that there aren't really opportunities to select tiles simply to prevent other people from getting them. There are a couple reasons for this. First, everything that you draft has to go in your city; so if you draft something that's not useful, you're hurting yourself more than your opponent. Secondly, you only select three times in each of the drafting rounds, so the tiles simply don't go that far around the table. It is drafting, but is a much more abbreviated draft than in a game like 7 Wonders.

Factories make you want more factories!

The main "con" that I have for Between Two Cities I go back and forth with my feelings on. What's the con? It's really annoying when I can't draw what I want! As an example, one tile type, factories, is worth a lot of points if you have the most of them - and worth far less if you don't have the most. So, if you're drafting factories, you want to draft a lot of factories. If you draft a bunch of factories in round one and then don't draw any factories in round three, it can be quite annoying, and make the game feel a bit luck oriented. Yet, I've never seen a "perfect" city be built (I calculated up that I think 69 is the top possible score). What instead tends to happen is that each city has one specific type of tile that it scores most of its points with. And so, what you are able to do with your backup tiles tends to be the difference between winning and losing in the game. So, with all that said, it is still frustrating to not draw what you want - and there is admittedly an element of luck in the tiles drawn; yet there is still strategy involved in how to handle these situations (as with all drafting games).

Overall, I give Between Two Cities a 9.0/10. I have enjoyed the games of it that I've played so far, and I expect that I'll be playing it many more times. With the speed of setup, explanation, and play - along with the nice 3-7 player count - I see it being easy to get to the table.

I would like to thank Stonemaier Games for providing me with a review copy of Between Two Cities.

AquaSphere Review

2015-05-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

AquaSphere - mid play

Thanks to my friend Kurt for this guest review of AquaSphere. If you like Kurt's opinions, check out his new video series on solo games.

First off, let me come clean with this -- I’m not a fan of Stefan Feld games in general. Even if I like a game of his, they don’t leave me thinking about them afterwards in terms of what I learned and want to do next time. But I played AquaSphere at the same convention where I tried a bunch of other new games and was surprised to find myself … thinking about it afterwards. In fact, I ended up getting a copy because my gut told me there were several plays here, and I’m glad I did. I mention this context as emphasis that this review is an endorsement of a Feld game from someone who’s usually not a Feld fan, so take that for what it’s worth.

AquaSphere is mechanically well designed and thematically disconnected, but that’s pretty much par for the course with Feld, isn’t it? The multiple ways to get points but limited actions gives it some heft without being too much of a brain burner. It’s really quite simple once you get past your first learning game as there’s an illusion of abundance of choice due to the two interrelated boards and all the actions, but you can really only program three (or so) actions a turn, so for some people the first play may be a “head wrapper” but the light should go on pretty quickly especially with an adept teacher. And I don’t mind the lame thematic connection to my actions. I know when I’m playing a Feld game it’s about the mechanisms, and I find them engaging enough here to not care why octopods are invading and why I should want to “clean” them.

I’m clearly entertained by games where you chain actions together in ways that pay off relative to what other players are doing. This one reminds me of two other action chaining games I quite like, Kanban and Tzolkin: the Mayan Calendar, for how you coordinate your actions against the pull of not just “what’s good” but “when’s good.” You're working on your own priorities in a shared space with others to beat them to bonus thingies and also time your actions in such a way that you bump their pieces out and end up with your pieces in the right spots at the end of the round. It’s a quintessential action puzzle game.

The thrust of the play is programming versus acting. You have two separate boards (that appear garish to the neophyte) that work interrelatedly. On the Headquarters board, you will move your scientist pawn to program your bots with certain actions from the seven available. Then you move your scientist dude on the Lab board using “time” to get around and poop, er, drop a bot to then instantly take the action it was programmed for. So, 1) program bot, 2) move scientist (or not), 2a) take action with programmed bot. Repeat until you have to pass. It’s actually pretty simple.

Headquarters board

Of course, since this is a Feld game, this aforementioned process is put in a blender. The seven actions available in the game are randomly aligned each turn on the Headquarters board in such a way that you can only move to (and thus program) any three of them, and they’re on sort of a track such that some are on one side or the other and you have to commit to one side at some point meaning you can’t necessarily do what you want in order. You might want to do A-B-C (in that order) but can only get to C-A-D/E (in that order) or some such other suboptimal configuration. What’s the best puzzle you can configure for this turn?

You essentially have a load-then-fire process which provides a surprising amount of player interaction via the signaling of everyone’s motives in the form of their programmed actions. If I can see you have a bot ready to do something that I want to do, I will have to consider my turn carefully. What’s the point of programming something that you’re about to do on your turn anyway? More player interaction happens in the placing of bots on the board in a Highlander, “There can be only one!”, way. When you drop a bot, you displace any previous ones there, which is a way of scoring VPs for yourself and taking them away from others. (Ooh, maybe this should’ve been themed as such with the bots being the heads of other immortals?) Less direct interaction happens in the race to get particular bonus power cards or lab extensions.

And what are these actions that you’re going to all this trouble to program? Without going into a full blown rules explanation, you’re either acquiring bonus power cards or lab extensions that help your ability to do stuff in the game or you’re actually doing that stuff. Bonus power cards are pretty self-evident. Lab extensions serve to increase your capacity for stuff but also may have letters A-F on them.

Collecting lab extensions with letters is worth points in the standard triangular scoring sequence that applies to all collected stuff in the game. Furthermore, the game squeezes you by requiring your scientist pawn to use time markers to get around the undersea lab. You may have the bot programmed the way you want and the opportunity staring you in the face, but not have enough time to get to that side of the board and take the action. So some of your actions are simply spent acquiring more time which always feels suboptimal to me considering you can only program three actions per turn. Part of the challenge then is finding other ways of getting time such as via bonus power cards.

Now, let’s take a look at the depth of strategy in the game. I would say the game is heavily tilted towards tactics but is not without strategy. Your strategy may be to go for the A-F lab extension bonus or the placing submarines bonus or something else in concert with a bonus power card. Between the “action blender” and the interference of other players, you will focus each turn more on what you can do versus what you would like to do, but there is some player agency towards an overall strategy, and the bonus power cards and lab extensions you collect will contribute towards that focus (or you’re not playing well).

Personal pod after multiple improvements

The more I play the game, the more I find myself able to look above the fog created by the game and more carefully consider my opponents’ actions relative to mine. As I said above, you only get to program three bots a turn and you’d like to place them after other people to knock them out and not vice-versa, but if you’re early in turn order that’s a bit more difficult. Plus, more bots on the game board means more points for you in the end of round scoring, so you look for bonus power cards that give extra programming actions. Being able to place the last bot of the round is a very powerful move, and you can make that happen with some crafty planning. Moreover, once a round you may spend three time markers to program a bot. It sounds expensive, and it is, but after a handful of plays I learned how to make this happen a couple of times in a game and found it to be a very powerful workaround that opens the game up considerably.

And therein lies the fun of the game: cutting off Mr. Feld’s restraints each turn (action blender, time markers) to execute actions that fit into the framework of your strategy while outmaneuvering your opponents to move before (to get stuff before they do) or after (to knock their bot out and place yours). It’s all a series of mini action puzzles that you’re trying to put together for yourself each turn while cutting off the heads of other immortals as they try to configure theirs. So what’s not to like?

No game is perfect, and what I don’t like about this one is the fiddliness involved, especially setting up and resetting between turns. I probably have felt this more prominently due to the fact I have taught new players in all my plays so far so I’m the one setting up the game and directing how to reset the board between turns. You have to reset the game before you play and then essentially set it up all over again between turns. It grows a little tiresome though it’s certainly manageable.

Also, we seem to forget in every game to give points for placing submarines and taking bonus power cards. Most probably because it’s counter-intuitive to get points for doing things that are already helping you (I take a bonus power card AND I get VPs? Huh?). But it’s Feld after all, and he’s not ashamed to give points willy nilly. He doesn’t care, and to prove it, he gives three points to people who walk by and watch the game for five seconds or more. Don’t believe me? It’s in the rule book. Probably.

All in all, I enjoy this one the more I play it. At first it felt like you could only focus on fighting the action blender but I’ve come to appreciate how you wrangle the game and combat other players at the same time. The variable setups ensure each game plays out differently, and a review of the game forums reveals that more experienced players find the scoring avenues are equal. I find myself thinking about those avenues and how I could’ve managed my bonus power cards in better concert with my actions. I look forward to more time under the sea answering those questions.

Board Game Reviews by Josh would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing a review copy of AquaSphere.

Coconuts Review

2015-02-13T05:35:00.003-08:00

So, I heard that there was a game where you each have a monkey catapult and you shoot coconuts. I was sold. I thought about that being the extent of my review, but since I was given a copy from the publisher, I figured I should say a few more things about the game.

In Coconuts, each player is given two cards, a pile of rubber coconuts, and a plastic monkey catapult. At the start of any player's turn, someone can play one of the cards from their hand (but once a card is played, it's out of the game). When it is your turn, you take a coconut and attempt to shoot it into one of the cups on the table. If you make it in a cup (that you hadn't already claimed), then you get to take that cup and place it in front of you. If you claim a red cup, you get to take another shot. Once a player has six cups in front of him, he is the winner. Alternately, if the players run out of coconuts by shooting them all into cups (after you shoot your initial pile of coconuts, you can use any of the ones still in play), then the player who has the most coconuts in the cups that they control wins.

The awesome monkey catapult

So, if this isn't your first one of my reviews to read, you're probably aware that I'm in love with dexterity games. But, what makes a good dexterity game is generally that it is ridiculous. Coconuts knocks that criteria out of the park. Not only do you have monkey catapults (yes, I've legitimately used that phrase twice in this review now), but you also have odd shaped rubber coconuts (that look very similar to peanut M&M's). The coconuts themselves add a lot to the game, as they are not all the exact same size, and they're also not round. They are shaped like coconuts, so one side goes to a bit of a point while the other side is round. This causes them to fly strangely and to bounce oddly. It also helps balance the playing field between a person who has played several games and a beginning player. The person who has played a lot will probably be a little bit better, but the new player will still feel like they have a chance to win.

Another necessity for a good dexterity game is that the components are high quality and will last, as these games get a lot more wear than a standard board game would. (After all, you're hurtling some of the components through the air.) I can't speak to the longevity of the components, as I haven't stress tested them, but everything in Coconuts seems very well constructed. The cups are a thick plastic, the coconuts are a high quality rubber (or plastic - but it feels rubbery), and the monkeys also seem sturdy. The only piece that I can envision breaking is the spring in the monkey (that makes it a catapult). But even with that, I haven't had any problems whatsoever with my copy of the game, and I think that it would last for quite a long time.

Those coconuts will be lost... it's just a matter of time.

There are a couple of (incredibly minor) things that I will list as cons for Coconuts. First, the cards are basically useless. At least half of the time that I play the game, I don't bother with them. Since they are each one use, they can basically be used to increase the chances that a player will miss their shot. But, in my experience, there's a really good chance they were going to miss that shot anyway. And some of the cards, like the one that lets you blow on their coconut as their shot is in the air, are even more useless. The cards don't detract from the game, but they seem to be an unnecessary addition just to make the game have "more" to it.

The second "con" is that you're going to lose coconuts. Be ready to play backstop when you're playing this game, as you'll need to make sure that you catch all of the flying coconuts that your opponents shoot. Also, they'll wind up rolling under tables, bookshelves, etc. This is going to happen to you. It might be better to play at your house if you want to ensure that your game stays complete. (They did include some extra coconuts in the game, though - apparently at least some play testing went into this! I think that you can also buy replacement coconuts, as when they sent me a review copy, they sent me a separate bag of extra coconuts right off the bat.)

Overall, I give Coconuts a 9.0/10. It's a great dexterity game that draws people in to watch it and that everyone who sees it wants to play. I envision it getting played for years to come.

If you want to read about more awesome dexterity games, check out PitchCar, Riff Raff, and Toc Toc Woodman.

I would like to thank Mayday Games for providing a review copy of Coconuts.

Captains of Industry Review

2015-01-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

After really enjoying a different TMG title designed by Michael Keller, I decided that I should check out his other TMG title - Captains of Industry.

In Captains of Industry, the players manipulate the supply, demand, and price of various goods in order to gain the most Market Share (Victory Points). There are a few actions that you can perform: build a facility, expand a facility, run a facility, perform research, draw Captain cards, and build real estate. Building, expanding, or running a facility all produce goods of a certain type, and allow you to adjust the price of your goods of that type. Building real estate adds demand for a couple of types (you get to choose which) and increases your income. Researching can help in a variety of ways, and any time that you research or buy a Captain card, you can adjust all of your prices in the markets. At the end of a variable number of rounds, an Age will end, and then the game purchases enough resources to match it's demand (if they are available), and the rest of the resources go to waste. At the end of the third Age, the person with the most Market Share (from selling goods) is the winner.

The first pro that I have for Captains of Industry is that I think it's very interesting that you are both making the demand and fulfilling it. (Specifically, you have the option of making demand - you can also focus on manufacturing, and hope that you're able to make the right kind of goods.) Any time that you build real estate, you get to place a demand card. These demand cards, and their placement, determine the importance of each resource. So, in order to play Captains of Industry well, you have to ensure that you are able to produce goods efficiently, but also you have to make sure that you build places to sell them. After all, if you are able to produce 10 corn on a turn, but there is no demand for corn, then you have not only wasted your current turn, but you've also wasted all of the previous turns that you spent building up your corn factory (or "Farm" if you will).

An ever changing consumables market

A couple of other pros that I have for the game are that I enjoyed how interactive the game was between the players, and also how different the game can play based on the group that you play with. It seems like there can be quite a bit of "group think" in this game. For example, one of the games I played viewed Research as critical. Because of this, everyone produced a lot of Research, which caused the market to be flooded with very inexpensive Research. Obviously, this meant that everyone had any of the technologies on the tech tree that they wanted. In another game, most players didn't produce Research, and it made it so that Research was very scarce, and whenever a player did produce Research, it was purchased immediately at almost any price. (Which was great for the player producing it, as you get a Market Share (VP) for each of your goods that is purchased by either another player or the bank.) I enjoyed that the game gave me very different experiences, and I also liked the interactions that can be caused by players being interdependent - you most likely are depending on other players to produce some of the resources you need, so that you can do what you want on your turn. (After all, even if you are able to produce everything you need, it will take several turns of production to produce everything you want, and other players may buy those goods from you in the meantime.) As someone who can produce goods, you sometimes have to decide if you want to produce goods that you know will get bought, thus giving you money and victory points but helping another player, or if you want to do something else.

Something interesting that I found for the game, that I'm not sure about my feelings on, is how drastic pricing could be utilized in the game. Specifically, if certain goods are regularly running out on the board, then you may have a hard time purchasing them. In this situation, you are allowed to buy goods from the bank, but only if you start your turn with a good that could have been bought by another player. This causes players to occasionally set their goods at the maximum possible price to dissuade others from buying them - thus ensuring (hopefully) that they can at least buy missing goods from the bank. Alternately, when an Age is about to end, a player early in turn order may use his turn to adjust his prices to be all 0, to ensure that nobody can undercut his price, thus guaranteeing that at least some of his goods will get bought by the bank - for Market Share, if not for money. (It can be debated whether this is the best move, but either way, it has been utilized to some extent in the games I've played.)

Very nice components - though you may run out of markers

One thing that I want to point out about Captains of Industry that is neither good nor bad, but something to be aware of, is that the game encourages cut-throat play. Specifically, if a player has not done the 0 move that I mentioned in the previous paragraph, then a player that goes later in the turn order can adjust prices on their turn to undercut their opponent, causing the game to buy all of their goods before they buy any of their opponent's goods. And, if their supply is high enough, it will completely shut their opponents out. This costs your opponents both Market Share and money. I have seen this move cost a player 6 VP and $42 in one move. I'm certain that as you play more, players will balance this some by pricing their goods lower to encourage their opponents to undercut someone else, but either way, the drastic nature of taking all of the demand from your opponent can be harsh.

Another thing that I haven't decided my feelings on is the variable Age end. The game starts with a "Progress Deck" of 6 City cards and 4 Country cards. At the end of each round, 1-4 of these cards are drawn, depending on how frequently real estate has been purchased. Any City cards are set aside, and any Country cards are shuffled back in the deck. Once all 6 City cards have been drawn, the Age ends. (Yes, theoretically, the game can never end - but all of my games ended, so I can't speak much to that.) What this can cause is an extra round in which none of the players have a very good move. Specifically, if at the start of a round, there are 5 cards in the deck, and you're going to draw 4 of them, then there is an 80% chance that the Age will end. So, you make your best "this is my last move this Age" action. You don't set up for the next turn in the Age, because you're not going to get one (you assume). So, if the deck does turn up all Country cards, thus giving you another round in that Age, then it's a round that nobody had really expected, and so it is basically just a duplicate of the previous one.

The only real con that I had for Captains of Industry was the Captain cards. Specifically, I felt like they weren't balanced very well. There are some Captain cards that can be worth 6 points - if you have a factory that is the biggest one in the game. However, there are several of these cards, representing each of the different factory types. And, if you get multiples of them, then most of them are junk, since you obviously can't have the largest factory in the game in two different types, and in fact, two different types can't be your biggest factory, either. Yet, there are other Captain cards that might give you 10 points for something you were going to do anyway (like Research). What's worse, you may draw a Captain card late in the game for something that you've already done (Research, not build Factories, build Real Estate) that can drastically swing the score - of course, you're much more likely to draw one that is completely useless to you. I like that the Captain cards suggest a strategic path to take, and I like that you have to discard one at the end of each Age, thus sometimes making tough choices, but the overall execution of Captain cards left me disappointed.

Overall, I give Captains of Industry an 8.0/10. It is a good game, and I enjoyed my plays of it (though they sometimes left me mentally exhausted afterwards). However, I'm not sure how often I will play it going forward - especially as the cut-throat characteristics of the game will limit the number of people that I can play it with.

If Captains of Industry sounds interesting, you should also check out City Hall, Furstenfeld, and Power Grid.

I would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing me with a review copy of Captains of Industry.

Good Cop Bad Cop: Bombers and Traitors Preview

2015-01-23T06:47:00.001-08:00

This post is not a review, but a preview for a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Final art, components, and rules are all subject to change.

Good Cop Bad Cop is a social deduction game that pits straight officers against crooked cops in a battle of bluffing and wits.

To begin the game, each player is given 3 Integrity Cards. These cards will be one of 4 things:

An Honest cop
A Crooked cop
The Agent
The Kingpin

If you have a leader card (either the Agent or the Kingpin), you are automatically a member of that faction. If you don't have a leader, then you are a member of the faction that you have two or more of.

Once the Integrity cards have been distributed, the game can begin. One a player's turn, they have a few options.

They can Investigate, by peeking at any one face-down Integrity card.

They can Equip by drawing an Equipment card and also turning one of their own Integrity cards face-up.

They can Arm, by picking up one of the available Gun cards and also flipping one of their Integrity cards face-up.

The last option a player has on her turn is to fire a Gun card she is holding.

Then, after a player takes one of the preceding actions, she can aim her Gun card at another player if she has one.

If a player is shot and she is not the Agent or the Kingpin, they must flip up all of their Integrity cards and they are eliminated from the game. The first time an Agent or Kingpin is shot, they must take a wounded token and draw an equipment card. If an Agent or Kingpin has a Wounded token and are shot, the game ends and the opposing team wins.

Those are the rules for the base game. Good Cop Bad Cop is an eminently simple game, that is one of the best conduits for emergent game play and story telling I have ever seen. The framework is so simple, that it simultaneously stays out of the players' way while also facilitating a supremely fun game experience.

What the Traitors and Bombers expansion adds to the game are...Traitors and Bombers. In the corner of many of the cop cards are either knife icons, bomb icons, or both. If a player ever has a hand made up of all 3 bombs or all 3 knives, they are either a bomber or a traitor, respectively.
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Bombers will win if they either get shot or shoot either the Agent or the Kingpin, while Traitors will win if they survive the death of either the Agent or Kingpin.

The Bombers and Traitors expansion definitely keeps with the base game's philosophy "less is more," and is a fantastic addition to the game.

I strongly recommend backing this campaign, as it is a great way to not only support a small publisher, but also to get your hands on a great game that has been harder to get a hold of!

Go back it now!

Paperback Review

2015-01-09T06:40:00.003-08:00

A little while back, I heard about a new word game that was also a deck builder. This definitely piqued my interest (though I often don't like word games). That game is Paperback.

In Paperback, each player starts with a deck of 10 cards. Five of the cards are wilds (worth Fame points, but no money for buying other cards), and the other five are the letters R, S, T, L, and N. Each turn, a player uses their cards to form a word. (There is also a "Common" card that they can include in their word.) Each card used in the word is worth a certain amount of money, and the active player can use that money to buy more card(s) - like any deck builder. The more expensive cards tend to be less common letters (like X, Q, B, etc.), but are worth more when played, and often have neat abilities. Additionally, if the word that you play is long enough, then you will earn the displayed Common card, which is worth five Fame points. Once two Fame card piles have run out, or the Common card pile is exhausted, the game is over and the player with the most Fame wins.

Basic setup - J and K are very expensive

The first pro that I have for Paperback is that I really enjoy the breakdown of the cards that are available for purchase. The less expensive cards are often double letters - like "ER" (which have to be used together in your word), or common letters that are easy to play but worth a smidge more money than your basic letters. The more expensive cards generally are much harder to play, but they give you enough money that it is worth including them in a word, even if that word will be much shorter. And, since they are more expensive, you will have less of them in your deck. Thus your deck will naturally have a breakdown of a few hard letters and many more common ones. This makes the game play very smoothly, and keeps you from spending too much time trying to come up with a lot of words that include both a J and an F in them.

The second pro that I have for Paperback is that I really enjoy the double letters. Whereas this is a very simple addition to the genre (and, for that matter, this might not be the first word game to include this), I think that it's a nice little twist. These cards are especially good if you're strategy is to make very long words in order to claim the Common cards. However, they also severely limit your ability to make words, as you will be amazed at how often you will want to split those letters apart - even when they are letters that you initially thought would always go well together, like "NG" and "ER." Conversely, Fame cards give you a lot more freedom, since they are wilds - which I think is another nice touch. They don't contribute towards the total value of your word, so in that way you are "cluttering" up your deck with them, but ultimately, your deck will need more vowels, and the Fame cards will save you.

Spelling Paperback can be very valuable

The final pro that I will mention for Paperback is that I appreciate how many variants there are. For example, one of the variant Common cards is a spacebar - thus it lets you play two words instead of one. There are also variants that are theme based - so whoever plays a card with that theme (such as Pirates) gets to take the theme card, which is a five Fame bonus. But, if another person plays a themed word after you, then they will steal it. However, my favorite variant is the co-operative (or solo) mode. In co-op, the Fame cards are set up in a pyramid, and you can only buy the cards that are showing. Each turn that you don't buy a Fame card, you put a marker on one of the exposed cards. If a card ever gets 5 tokens on it, then you all lose.

Assuming that you don't have an aversion to word games, then there is only one real con that I have discovered in Paperback. The game can really stall as people stare at their cards. For a long time. Each time it is their turn. There are a couple of variants that can help with this - one is the "Bounty" variant, in which you can ask for help, and if you use someone else's help, they get a point towards a future card purchase. There is also the Timed Bounty, in which each person has a set amount of time, and if they don't come up with a word in that time, they automatically have to offer a Bounty. The problem I've found with these variants, though, is that you aren't really incentivized to help the other player, as it will likely help them far more than it will help you. (Aside from making the game move along, which is a bonus in itself.)

Overall, I would give Paperback an 8.5. I have really enjoyed my plays of it, and I can think of several more people that I plan to introduce it to. Even if you don't like most word games, this one might be one worth checking out.

If Paperback sounds interesting, you might also check out Train of Thought and Fictionaire.

I would like to thank Tim Fowers for providing me with a review copy of Paperback.

Jim's 10 Favorite Board Games of All Time!!! (and a giveaway!!)

2014-12-16T05:00:00.001-08:00

Jim's Top Ten Games of all Time!!!

I love lists AND I love ranking things, so it was only a matter of time until I got to work on this post. One thing I do want to make clear is that these are not what I think are the best games of all time, but rather my personal favorite games of all time. This distinction may be small, but I think worth mentioning.

Without further ado, please enjoy this list of my favorite games! (Followed by a game giveaway!!)

10. London

This was one of the first games I played that involved building up a tableau and I fell in love with it almost immediately. I really enjoy having to balance building up on the board, with building up your tableau, with not taking too many poverty tokens. Knowing how many piles of cards to have in your tableau and when its OK to build over a card are awesome decision points.

9. Pandemic: The Cure

This is the newest game on the list by a couple years. If you read my recent review of this game, you'll know already that the original Pandemic has a very special place in my gamer heart, as the first modern game to really captivate me. Pandemic: The Cure has all the fun, puzzlyness, cooperation, and heartache of the original - but it adds dice! If I had to only keep one of the two games, I think I would choose The Cure over original Pandemic. But only if you forced me to choose. =)

8. Navegador

One of my favorite designers is definitely Mac Gerdts. I haven't played everything he has put out, but everything I have tried, I have really really enjoyed. Navegador was the first of his that I've played. I really enjoy working within the confines of Mac's evil/glorious rondel - doing what I can to bend its inflexibility to my will better than my opponents. I like that there are several directions for players to go in pursuit of victory, and I like even more that those different paths to victory not only feel different, but are all pretty viable.

7. Lords of Vegas

Just like many of the games on this list, I don't get to play Lords of Vegas as much as I would like (in fact, I own the expansion, Up!, and haven't gotten to play it yet!). This is even more true for Lords of Vegas, since it really isn't worth playing with only 2 players (which is how I play most of my games). Lords of Vegas has a lot that I really like about board games. I really like the stock market aspect, as well as the acquisition of property. The risk/reward present in Lords of Vegas is so much fun, going for hostile takeovers and paying double to develop properties that might just go to someone else when the card comes up. There are things in Lords of Vegas I don't like, but I always have a great time when playing it.

6. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

Stratego was one of those "classic" games that I played when I was younger that I remember really enjoying. The concept of having your units be secret from your opponent was just so great. I really like the Lord of the Rings movies, so The Confrontation is a perfect fit for me. The game is pretty abstract, but still feels pretty thematic. One of my favorite things in games is when the "Vizzini effect" comes into play. I know that you know I might play this card, but you know that I know that you know that, so maybe I should play this card...etc. Many games can create similar situations, but none do it better than Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation.

5. Airlines Europe

This is definitely my favorite "gateway game." I like Ticket to Ride, but I find this one just so much more interesting (and really not nearly as mean as TtR can be). I really like games with stock market mechanisms, and Airlines Europe implements a stock market-ish system really well, and is really simple to play and teach.

4. Star Wars: The Card Game

I love Star Wars. When I heard that FFG got the license for Star Wars card and RPG games I immediately got very excited. I love this game. I love how much it feels like Star Wars, I love how gorgeous the art is, and most of all I love how the game plays. The only thing I don't love about this game is that my wife doesn't care for it. I don't get to play this game very often, but that just makes the times when I can play that much more special. This entry in my list also hold the honor of being the most likely to be replaced within the next few weeks - by another FFG game in fact...=P

3. Bohnanza

I love to laugh. I don't think I've ever played a game of Bohnanza that didn't involve me getting out of breath from laughing too much at least once. This is another game that I can bring out with really any group of people who want to play a game, and it is 99% guaranteed to be a great time. I like playing it with close friends the best, but this is a great game for people who don't already know each other to play - its remarkable how quickly you can get to know someone while planting and trading beans.

2. Agricola

Uwe Rosenberg is my favorite designer of all time. That, despite the fact that I have acquired, given up on, traded, and reacquired Agricola no less than 3 times. Yes - the copy of Agricola I currently own is my third. It took me a few plays to warm to the game, but I absolutely love it now. I love how the base game is mostly the same from session to session, but the cards you draft can change so much about how you go about pursuing the best farm. Agricola is one of those games that I am always willing to play, no matter what.

1. War of the Ring

War of the Ring is a thematic masterpiece. Middle Earth absolutely comes alive on my table whenever I get to play it. I certainly don't get to play it very often, but whenever I do, the experience is always epic, and always so much fun. I get to experience one of my favorite stories of all time - but I also get to change it and manipulate it in different ways to see what would happen. War of the Ring is my favorite game of all time because it is simultaneously very strategic and solidly story based, but also keeps those exciting moments and randomness and chance with the card draws, die rolls, and chit pulls. Every single game of this leaves me in awe of both the design and of Tolkien's masterpiece itself.

There you have it! My 10 favorite games of all time!

One of the most interesting thing I find about this list is that even though one of my favorite things about games is playing and learning new ones, most of the games on this list are more than 2 years old. That's not much time in the grand scheme of things, but for a cultist of the "new," a lot of games get released in 2 years.

I think what this says is that while I really like exploring brand new game spaces, its takes a lot for a new release to be good enough for it to supplant any of the games on this list. I am always searching for great new experiences in games, and even though I've played many games I've really liked in the past few years, almost none have been fun enough for me to add them to this list.

Now, as I promised, a game giveaway!! One of the best new games I've gotten to play this year is Imperial Settlers, from Portal Games. So, to celebrate my list, the holidays, the end of the year, my awesome readers, and the fact that Imperial Settlers is awesome, I'm going to be giving a new copy of it away to one of you!

The Rafflecopter thingy is down below - I know some people don't like using Rafflecopter, but just know that there is only 1 mandatory entry - please leave a comment on this post that includes both your favorite game on my list above as well as your favorite game that is not on my list.

Remember that leaving a comment on this post is a requirement for entering!! You MUST do so in order to qualify for the prize!!

You can earn extra entries every day from now until the contest is over - Sunday, December 22 at midnight EST!!!

Please note: I will put $15 towards shipping, which will fully cover you if you live in the US. International readers are more than welcome to enter, but know you'll have to help me out with shipping.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pandemic: Contagion and Pandemic: The Cure Reviews

2014-12-04T04:55:00.001-08:00

Today, dear readers, you are in for a treat! Not one, but TWO reviews for the price of one! (Still free.) I'm going to take a look at two new games in the "Pandemic-verse," - Pandemic: Contagion and Pandemic: The Cure.

Pandemic has a special place in my gamer heart. It is the first modern board game I played (I had already tried Carcassonne and Catan at this point) that really captured my imagination and made me think, "Wow - we can do this with a board game?? What else is out there??"

Pandemic is the game that is responsible for me doing new things with old friends, meeting great new friends, having an owned games list over 200 (and a previously owned game list approaching 1000), and for writing these silly game reviews.

When I heard on the Dice Tower that a Pandemic dice game was in the works, I was definitely interested. I obviously love Pandemic, but I also really enjoy cooperative games and dice games in general. I was also excited when I heard about Pandemic: Contagion - the idea of playing as diseases sounded neat, and I wanted to see what Z-Man would do with that concept.

The first thing I should mention about Pandemic: Contagion is that it is a stand-alone competitive game. It has Pandemic branding, but aesthetics is pretty much where the similarities end. In fact, Contagion is not designed by Pandemic's designer, Matt Leacock. Contagion was designed by Carey Grayson.

As I mentioned, in Pandemic: Contagion, players are diseases, trying to infect and kill off as much of humanity as possible. Countries are represented by cards, which players will be placing their cubes onto - each cube represents that disease infecting 1,000,000 of that location's population.

On a turn, a player will have two actions available. Players can draw cards (Incubate), infect a location card, or mutate their disease. Cards are the currency of the game, and come in 6 suits - one matching each continent in the game. In order to infect a new city, a player must discard two cards matching the color of the city, but to spread an infection where a player already has her disease present only costs 1 matching card.

Mutating your disease means discarding cards in order to move up on 1 of 3 tracks. The first two tracks dictate how many cards a player draws and how many cubes she places each time she takes an Incubate or Infect action, respectively. The last track, the Resistance track, symbolizes how resistant a player's disease is to the effects of humanity's medical and epidemiology communities. Each round, a new event card will be revealed. If the effect is negative, being higher up on the resistance track means a disease will be less affected by the event.

Players will score points by having the most or second most disease cubes in a city when the total number of disease cubes meets or exceeds the total population of the city.

Play continues in this way until either the event deck runs out or when there are only two city cards left. All remaining cities are scored and the player with the most points wins!

Pandemic: Contagion is not a bad game. It is also, unfortunately, not a good game. I really like when games have upgrade tracks that each player can move up to individualize how they will play the game. I was hoping that this is where the interesting decisions in Contagion would be. Unfortunately, Pandemic: Contagion does not have anything interesting here. Not much changes from game to game, and although I haven't played the game over 10 times, I would feel pretty confident in saying players should always upgrade their Incubation ability, then their Infection rate, and then their Resistance level, if they feel like it. In all of the games of this I've played, the first few rounds consisted of everyone taking the same exact turn - Incubation action then grade Incubation track.

The game starts to get interesting once a few players decide to stop upgrading and get infecting the board. But even then, the game doesn't have much to offer. There are some interesting decisions to make when infecting, since the player who places the cube that triggers a scoring gets a one-time special action, but that's about it. Even the once a round global events deck is rather boring.

Pandemic: Contagion is a very simple card game with a neat theme. It is inoffensive enough, but I found myself bored while playing it. I can't recommend it. 5.5/10.

Jim would like to thank Z-Man Games for providing him a review copy of Pandemic: Contagion.

Pandemic: The Cure has a lot more in common with its big sister than Contagion. The Cure is cooperative, and it was also designed by Matt Leacock, the designer or the original Pandemic. In Pandemic: The Cure, players are a team of specialists, working together to cure 4 diseases ravaging humanity worldwide, before either the number of outbreaks or the number of infected become overwhelming.

The world map is represented by 6 tiles, arranged in a circle. Each tiles has a continent on it and is assigned a number from 1-6. Players can move their pawns to adjacent tiles by using a boat die result, or to any tile by using an airplane result.

Much like the original, players will all win if they can cure all 4 diseases. In The Cure, they do this by collecting samples of the disease, and finding a cure by rolling the samples and getting a result of at least a 13 or higher.

Disease cubes in The Cure are actually 6 sided dice. At the end of each player's turn, a number of cubes are drawn from a bag and rolled. These disease cubes are placed onto the continent tile that has the number matching each cube's die result. Any cross symbols are moved to the CDC tile as resources the players can use whenever they wish.

On a player's turn, she will roll all of her available dice. Any Biohazard results must be kept and will advance the Infection Rate. The player can take actions according to her die results, or she may reroll her dice. In fact, she may continue rerolling as long as she has not used all of her available dice.

Aside from the Biohazard symbol, the player dice also have the basic actions of Fly (move anywhere), Sail (move to an adjacent location), Treat (take a disease cube from your location and place it into the Treatment Center), and Collect Sample (take a disease cube from the Treatment Center and put it onto your role card, with the Collect Sample die on top).

Each player's dice will also have special symbols on them, depending on their role. Some roles are better at moving, some are better at treating and curing, while others have special faces that are unique to their role.

At the end of any turn which a player has enough samples, they can attempt to find a cure for a disease. To do this, they roll all the disease cubes they have collected, and if the result is a 13 or higher, a cure for that disease has been found! If players find a cure for all four diseases, they win! If either the Infection Rate or the Outbreaks markers reach the end of their tracks, or if there are no disease cubes left in the bag and more need to be drawn, the game ends and the players all lose.

I think the biggest gripe I have with Pandemic: The Cure is that depending on how the dice get rolled, the players could either have a cakewalk or have their butts handed to them. This is not too much of a con, since this was also true for the original Pandemic - I've certainly experienced both the "cakewalk" and "butt-handed-to-me" varieties of that game as well.

One of my favorite parts of this game is (unsurprisingly) the dice. First, the disease dice are not simple D6 dice with a cross on one side. They are weighted very differently - the red dice, for instance, do not have 2, 3, or 5 sides. This means that certain diseases will mostly affect certain continents, which makes outbreaks more common. Another thing I like about the disease dice is that because they all have a cross side, each time a player draws disease dice from the bag, there's always hope that at least a couple of them will come up as crosses, which can be spent by the players during the game to pay for communal event cards (which all have positive effects).

Thirdly, I really like the player dice. It is really neat that the dice for each role have custom sides, but I also really like the press your luck mechanism of players being able to roll as much as they wish, but all bad results must be kept. It really adds a lot of excitement to each turn and to each roll.

While Pandemic: The Cure is a bit shorter than the original, I would say that it retains much of the feel of the "full game." The Cure even simulates the collection of cards in Pandemic by forcing players to temporarily give up dice while they are looking for a cure.

I really like Pandemic: The Cure, and would be hard pressed if asked which game I would rather keep, original Pandemic or The Cure. Fortunately, I don't have to make such a ridiculous decision. =) I'd rate Pandemic: The Cure 8.5/10.

Cahoots! Proceeds Going to Charity

2014-11-27T07:14:00.001-08:00

In honor of the holidays, all of the proceeds I earn from Cahoots! sales through the end of the year will go towards clean water projects via Compassion International. (Obviously, this only includes proceeds I earn - not the share that Apple takes, nor the share due to the game's designer.) So, please take this opportunity to check out a game that I think is great, and support a great cause!

Pyramix Review

2014-11-21T04:38:00.001-08:00

Gamewright isn't exactly known for strategy games. They make wonderful, family friendly games with fun themes and simple but entertaining gameplay. Pyramix keeps with the Gamewright tradition of beautiful components with simple, family friendly gameplay.

Pyramix is an abstract strategy game with a light Egyptian theme. Gameplay starts with the cubes being randomly set up on the board in the shape of a pyramid. A player's turn consists only of selecting a cube from the pyramid and adding it to her collection. Cubes can only be taken from the pyramid if they have at least two sides showing, are not touching a serpent cube, and taking the cube will not result in the board being exposed.

The game ends when there are not legal moves left - usually when there is a single layer of cubes laying on top of the board. Players score 1 point for each ankh, 2 points for each crane, 3 points for each Eye of Horus, and 0 points for each serpent. Additionally, if a player has the most ankhs in a color, they will receive all of the remaining cubes that math their color and score those as well.

In this situation, if any player takes the teal crane of ankh,
the next player will be able to take the orange Eye.

The one thing that I don't love about the game is the "dots" feeling that can develop. There will be many times, especially in a two player game, where there is a cube that is two moves away from being able to get taken, so it is in no player's interest to make that first move. The interesting thing about this is because the game happens in 3 dimensions, players will have to keep all of these moves in mind as they spin the board and look for moves that won't set up the next player.

As I said in my introduction, Pyramix is a very simple game. But subtle and interesting strategies present themselves as you play the game. As the game progresses it may become clear to you which color you will have the most ankhs in. This could mean that you might want to take cubes so that other cubes of that color do reach the bottom of the board. If this happens, you'll receive the cube anyhow, so you might as well get a different cube and secure the first cube as well!

Pyramix is a great abstract game. Gamewright has put out another quality product that is attractive, fun, and quite thinky! And with a $20 price point, I think picking up a copy of Pyramix is a no brainer. There is randomness, and this isn't the next chess, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of depth I found in Pyramix. I'd rate it a solid 7.5/10.

New Bedford Kickstarter Preview

2014-11-12T18:59:00.000-08:00

This post is not a review, but a preview for a game that is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Final art, components, and rules are subject to change.

Dice Hate Me Games was one of the first board game publishers to get their start on Kickstarter. They have done quite well for themselves and have a very strong reputation as a great company that puts out consistently great games.

Five of the Town action spaces

Next up from Chris and company is New Bedford. Designed by Nathaniel Levan at Oakleaf Games, New Bedford is a worker placement game set in the titular Massachusetts city during the time of whaling. Players will use their workers to collect resources, build buildings, and go on whaling expeditions.

Play takes place in phases. The first is the Action Phase, where players will take turns placing workers onto the seven starting action spaces, as well as any built buildings, and resolving their effects immediately. Town spaces are not blocked once workers are placed on them, but the player who places on each space first will get a bonus.

Light colored buildings can be used for actions,
while dark colored buildings are worth points at the end of the game.

Players will also be able to build their own buildings. Unlike Town spaces, buildings can only be used once per round. Additionally, the player who builds a building owns it, and can use it on future turns for free, while other players who use the building will have to pay the owner $1. There are also buildings which cannot be used as action spaces, but rather score the owning player points at the end of the game

After all players have place their workers, the Movement Phase will begin. All ships at sea will move 1 space up the whaling track towards the Return space. Then, the Whaling phase begins. Whaling tokens are drawn from the bag equal to the number of ships on the board. These tokens are then drafted by the players, with players who have ship farther out to sea choosing first. Whale tokens chosen this way are placed on the player's board, next to the corresponding ship. Any whale or open sea tokens that are leftover will be returned to the bag at the start of next round's whaling phase.

When a player's ship returns to port during the Movement phase, players will have to pay a "lay." Each whale token paid for, will earn the player points indicated on the token. Players can also choose to (or they may have to if they can't afford lays for all their whales) sell any whales tokens that return to port. When a player sells a whale token, she receives half of the cost of each sold token from the bank. Then, moving in clockwise order from the seller, each player will have the opportunity to purchase the sold tokens for the full cost. Any amount paid goes to the bank, and if a player cannot or chooses not to purchase whale tokens, the next player clockwise will have the opportunity, and so on.

The game continues in this way for 12 rounds. At the end of the game, players receive points for any whale tokens in their possession, any buildings which score points, and for leftover money ($5=1 point).

That's New Bedford! It is a very enjoyable game, with a refreshing mix of familiar mechanisms. The worker placement aspect is fun, since it both removes the tension of being locked out of spots, but retains the tension of having to prioritize placement because the bonuses for being first at a Town space are pretty good. The whaling mechanism is always very exciting, especially as the game goes on and the bag really only has a few whales mingling with a mess of worthless open sea tiles. I especially like the choice of having to either pay for your whales or sell a few for some much needed money. Should I sell for some quick cash, but then risk giving my opponent's the opportunity to score points? And once you've gone through that decision, the next time you're at sea you'll think twice before automatically taking the big 4 point whale (which costs $8 to bring back)! Or maybe you'll spend most of your time in Town, building up a bustling economy, and then waiting at the docks to buy the leftover whales from your overeager opponents with too many whales!

New Bedford does a lot of things right - but the best thing about the game is that it is one of those games that is easy to both learn and teach, but will surprise you with its depth after you dive in for subsequent plays.

If you think New Bedford sounds great, go pledge your support for the game on Kickstarter today!

Argent: The Consortium Review

2014-11-04T05:34:00.002-08:00

Argent: The Consortium is the newest game from Level 99 Games. It was wildly successful on Kickstarter back in January, funding over 450%. In Argent, players use their wizards to earn enough votes from the consortium of a university in order to become the new chancellor.

Argent is primarily a worker placement game, but there are elements of card drafting, set collection, and special player powers also integrated as well.

One of the best things about Argent is that there are 5 different kinds or workers (wizards) that each have a different ability either before or after they are placed. The red wizards, for instance, have the ability to knock other wizards off of placement spots, take the spot for themselves, and send the injured wizard to the infirmary.

Players' turns consist of taking a single action, which can consist of placing a wizard, playing a card, casting a spell, or passing. Worker spaces don't trigger until the end of the round. Once the round ends, the tiles that comprise the board trigger one after the other. All tiles have several spaces for wizards, and while the best ones are at the top of the tile and trigger first at the end of each round, these spots also require a badge - of which players only start with one.

There are three types of cards in the game. Spell cards, which players will acquire and then be able to activate once per round for a special ability, supporter cards, which will sometimes grant a special ability, and vault cards, which are a mix - treasures stay in play and can be activated once per round and consumables are played and discarded.

As I mentioned above, the goal of the game is to attract the most votes from the members of the consortium. The trick here is that the members of the consortium all start the game face down and secret. Players have to use their wizards to earn marks in order to gain information about what each voter is looking for - some will vote for the player with the most supporters from a certain school of magic or the player with the most money at the end of the game, etc.

The game ends after 5 rounds. End the end of the fifth round, the consortium cards are revealed, and rewarded to whoever meets the voters criteria.

Argent: The Consortium does a lot of things differently from many worker placement games. First is the fact that players' turns do not always involve placing a worker. Adding card play into the mix changes the normal prioritization of worker placement games - not only do players need to decide which spots they need to take first, they also need to time snatching up those spots with resources or abilities they might need by taking an entire turn to play a card.

One thing that fell a little short for me is the hidden scoring conditions. Before my first couple plays, I was really excited about this concept. I really liked acquired marks so that I could get information about final scoring that my opponents didn't have and give me a direction to go in. The problem I have with this part of the game is two fold. First, there are 12 consortium votes available each round - but it was very rare in any of my playthroughs to see any players who had not placed out all or nearly all of their marks. The problem is that there are so many voters available that the variation of which voters are available each game is not very big. For the most part, players will want to try to get the most of everything, and need to find the consortium voters who are looking for specific color spells and supporters. I guess since my expectations for this mechanism were so high, I got to be a little let down after the fifth time I marked the "most gold" voter - not super exciting.

Another thing that I didn't love about Argent is the feeling that, even though the game adds a lot of really interesting twists to the worker placement genre, at its core, Argent's basic gameplay of "place a wizard, get resources," is still pretty stock worker placement. The different wizard's special powers didn't come into play nearly as often as I would have liked, and their abilities are not super exciting anyway.

Although those two factors didn't hit for me, I did have a great time playing Argent. The theme is great, and the twists the gameplay does offer are fun to play around with.

In addition, one of my favorite mechanical twists Argent throws in is the end of round trigger. In each game, there are a number of Bell Tower cards which grant a one-time bonus. Players can take one of these as their entire turn, but once the last card is taken, the round ends immediately. So players also share control over how long each round will last. Do you take the Bell Tower card with the resource you really need before the resolution phase? It's the second-to-last one there...will you have enough turns before the last one is taken to get everything done you need to get done?

Argent: The Consortium isn't going to set the worker placement genre on fire, but it is a very solid game, and one that I would recommend checking out! 7.5/10.

Jim would like to thank Level 99 Games for providing him with a review copy of Argent: The Consortium.

Thunder Alley Review

2014-10-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

I am not a stock car racing fan. I know almost nothing about stock car racing, and have never really given an effort to learning about it. This is what I brought with me before sitting down to play Thunder Alley - my expectations were not super high.

In Thunder Alley, players are put in command of a team of stock cars, and will score points according to the place each of their team's cars are in when the race ends (the round after at least 1 car crosses the finish line). Basically, players want as many of their team's cars as close to the front of the pack as possible by the end of the race.

The biggest thing I kept hearing about Thunder Alley is that it is a racing game without dice. Indeed, Thunder Alley's action is "driven" (hehe) entirely by cards. Each round, players will be given a hand of cards, and a player's turn consists simply of choosing one of her hand cards, choosing which of their still unactivated cars to use it on, and executing the actions indicated by the numbers and the text.

There are 4 basic types of movement in Thunder Alley:

Solo movement - a single activated car moves by itself
Draft movement - an activated car and all linked cars in front of and behind it move together
Lead movement - an activated car and all linked cars behind it move together
Pursuit movement - an activated car and all linked cars in front of it move together

Links between cars are created when cars are in the same lane, and are immediately adjacent to each other. A link could theoretically exist among all of the cars in a race, if they were all lined up in the same lane and there were no empty spaces separating any of them.

The movement cards in Thunder Alley are sometimes simply one of the four movement types listed above with a numerical value, and sometimes they involve a slight twist - like only being able to move towards the outside/inside wall this turn. Most of the cards with higher movement values will also include a damage icon.

There are two main types of damage in the game - temporary and permanent. As the names' suggest, temporary wear can be repaired, while permanent wear cannot. After receiving 3 wear tokens of any type, a car will suffer a penalty to its movement. And after taking 6 wear tokens a car will be removed from the race altogether. So managing wear tokens gets more and more important as the race goes on.

Players take turns playing cards and executing movement until everyone has activated each of their team's cars. Once all cars have been activated an event card is revealed, which could result in some of the cars receiving extra wear tokens, or a yellow caution flag, or even a premature end of the race due to rain.

In between rounds players will have the option of pitting their cars. Doing so will allow the player to remove all temporary wear tokens from the pitting car, but will require the car to not only move back 5 spaces, but will also cause the car to suffer a movement penalty on their next turn.

The race will end once at least one car finishes the required number of laps. Any cars that cross the finish line are awarded the highest value trophy token available. After all the cars have been activated, for the round the game will end, and any cars that haven't crossed the finish line will be awarded trophy tokens according to their current place.

Thunder Alley has a theme I don't care about, more randomness than I usually care for, and fairly boring (though very nice looking) components. All that being said - I have had a great time playing this game.

The strategy of the game is fairly clear - keep your cars on the inside lane and grouped with other cars as much as possible - but playing the game is a lot of fun. The chaos of not knowing what the other players are going to do, coupled with the excitement of the temporary alliances and rivalries that are formed as players move other teams' cars either purposely or inadvertently make for a really great experience.

As I mentioned, there is a good amount of randomness in the game - I had at least one round a game where I had drawn a full hand of cards that I simply did not want. This, while frustrating, is mitigated by the fact that since multiple cars are usually moved each turn, player's cars may actually be moved more on other players' turns than on their own.

Thunder Alley is a great racing game, and the team aspect of the whole thing really sets it apart from any other racing game I've played. It is by far my favorite of the genre. I give it an 8.0/10.

Jim would like to thank GMT Games for providing him with a copy of Thunder Alley for review.

Peptide Kickstarter Preview

2014-10-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

Genius Games is an independent publisher that had recent Kickstarter success with their first title, Linkage. That game was about DNA transcription. The game currently on Kickstarter, Peptide, is about using RNA to build proteins. Sensing a theme here?

Peptide is a set collection card game that also combines elements of card drafting and action selection in interesting ways.

There are 3 main types of cards in the game. Organelle cards are drafted by players and used to take actions. RNA cards are collected by players through the use of Organelle cards, and are used in order to create the Amino Acid cards (which are worth points).

The meat of the game is in the Organelle cards. To start each round, 2 cards per each player is flipped face up in the middle of the table. Then, to start, each player will select one card from the middle of the table for themselves. This will continue until each player has taken 2 cards.

After the draft, players will resolve the actions of their chosen Organelle cards. These actions include things like drawing Amino Acid cards, gaining ATP energy tokens, drawing RNA cards, matching RNA cards to an Amino Acid card, scoring completed Amino Acid cards and flipping it over and adding it to the player's Peptide chain.

That is pretty much it for gameplay. The game is very simple and flows very well. It has opportunities for some great choices and definitely has educational value! I really like how the different Organelles do different things, and the way the cards are laid out on the table are a great (rough) visual representation of what goes on during this process.

Right now, Genius Games reminds me of Academy Games. Their two games are lighter than Academy Games' stuff, but Peptide, just like Linkage, is one of those rare games that is fun, but also sneaks actual learning in as well.

If you think Peptide would make a good addition to your collection - or your classroom - go ahead and back it now!!

Super Show Preview

2014-10-14T06:22:00.001-07:00

The prototype came in a Chinese food takeout box

As an avid wrestling fan, when I saw The SuperShow on Kickstarter, I was immediately curious! (Disclaimers: I own several hundred professional wrestling DVDs, and have played several games about pro wrestling, including Wrasslin', WWE Topps Attax, the WCW Nitro card game, and a few others. I am almost undoubtedly the target audience for this game.)

Now that I've gotten the disclaimers out of the way, let's get into the game itself, and try to figure out who would enjoy it. I think that when considering this game, the first question you should ask yourself is, "Do I enjoy professional wrestling?" Followed by the second question, "Do the friends that I play games with also enjoy professional wrestling?" If you answered a resounding no to either of these questions, then this probably isn't the game for you. However, if you answered, "of course!," then you should definitely keep reading.

The game is rather straightforward - in order to defeat your opponent, you must perform your finishing move, and then pin him for the 1-2-3. (This is modern day pro wrestling - we're not letting you win with a cheap roll-up.) In SuperShow, there are three types of cards - leads, follow ups, and finishers. On your turn you draw a card, and then you can play a single card. There is no requirement to play a lead, but to play a follow up, you must have a lead in play, and to play a finisher, you must have a follow up in play. ("In play" means you've already hit this move.) Each of your cards has additional text to go along with the type - some of these let you draw cards or fish them out of your discard pile (these are both really helpful since you'll only have 3 finishers in your deck). Other cards, however, can be played out of turn as "Stops" - if your opponent tries to hit specific types of moves, then you can Stop them to prevent that move from landing.

Now that you know the basic flow of playing cards, there is another concept in the game - where you roll against your opponent. At the start of the round, both players roll a die to see which stat they compare - and the person with the higher stat starts the round. (There is a six-sided die that correlates to the six stats on your card. If you roll "Power," and your Power is 6, then you compare that to what I rolled - say, "Technique," where my Technique might be a 7; and so I would go first.) This rolling mechanic also occurs after you hit your finishing move. If I land a finisher, then I roll a die to see how well I executed it (some finishers give you bonuses to certain stats so that this roll will be higher). Then the person who is pinned (because you pin people after you hit finishers - in the game just like in real life) gets three rolls to equal or exceed the number that their opponent rolled. If they successfully roll high enough, then they kick out - the board gets cleared, and the "Crowd Meter" goes up by 1 (this number is added to the finisher roll so that as the game progresses, each finisher is more likely to avoid getting kicked out of). If they don't kick out, then they lost the match!

Since this game is still in what I consider prototype form (I don't have the final version, since it is still on Kickstarter), my goal in this preview is to help you understand the gameplay so that you can figure out if you will like it, and also clarify who I think will and will not enjoy it. Now that we've covered the gameplay, here's some other stuff you should know.

The two wrestlers that came in my 2-player box

First, what's in the box! This is a bit tricky, as there are several backer levels (and I did not get the standard level for this preview.) However, I believe this is what you receive in a basic 2-player game (the $25 level):

Two wrestlers - a wrestler consists of 4 unique cards - the wrestler itself, and three unique finishers that get shuffled into your deck.
Two standard 27 card decks - each of these decks is the same from what I can tell (at least for now - they have teased that they might change this with the expansion, which is available at another level). I also think that if the designers are smart, they will make rules that allow you to customize these decks or, in the future, give each wrestler a slightly different deck so that they feel a bit more unique.
Two custom dice - these dice have the six different stats depicted on them for the rolls that I described earlier.
Six Crowd Meter cards - these allow you to track how many finishers have been hit (and kicked out of).
Two Kickstarter promo wrestlers - consisting of 4 unique cards like with your normal wrestlers.

Now, the crux of this preview - is the SuperShow something that you might enjoy?

People that will enjoy the SuperShow:

Each of the cards has the move drawn correctly, which is nice!

Wrestling fans - especially indie wrestling fans, as the wrestlers in the game have much more of an indie feel, and the game isn't licensed. However, if you are a wrestling fan, you will probably really appreciate the artwork - I think that this game may have the best art of any of the wrestling games that I've played. (Aside from possibly Raw Deal, which used images from actual WWE programming.)
Players who are looking for quick, fairly random games - games I have played have occasionally ended in three turns (lead, follow up, finisher - and they didn't kick out), and have sometimes lasted quite a long time, as 2-3 finishers have been kicked out of.
People who enjoy playing in tournaments for fun without worrying as much about whether they win (the randomness will cause you to lose sometimes, even if you are "better at the game" than your opponent). I can see game store owners that enjoy wrestling having old wrestling matches playing in the background as they have a SuperShow tournament running, with the winner getting the "championship belt." (Yes, I believe that they have promotional championship belt cards that you can acquire somehow. Or, if you're super dedicated, you can buy actual replica championship belts.)

People that will not enjoy the SuperShow:

People that ask, "You watch wrestling? Really? You know that it's fake, right?"
People that are looking for a deep strategy game. I have reviewed a lot of those on this site - but the SuperShow is much more similar to Lunch Money (without having to memorize all of the cards), than it is to Viticulture.

Overall, I have enjoyed my games of the SuperShow, and I have some friends that I think would enjoy it with me, but the people I played with (non-wrestling fans) haven't shared my excitement for the game. Overall, I am curious to see what they do with the game going forward. I have hopes that they expand the game to give it a bit more variety - hopefully allowing you to customize the starting decks, and play to each wrestler's "strengths." (For example, right now if you have a 10 in Grapple, it doesn't mean that you have extra Grapple cards in your deck - which I think it should.) There are also areas about each wrestler that I think they could continue customizing as each wrestler comes out. (The wrestlers I've seen all have the same stats, but in a different arrangement. I think that they could make some wrestlers have worse stats but better special powers, as an example of how to add more variety.)

If you think that the SuperShow sounds like something you would enjoy, make sure to check it out on Kickstarter. As I write this, it is over halfway funded, and has about 3 weeks to go!

I would like to thank Steve Resk for providing me with a copy of the SuperShow.

City Hall Review

2014-10-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

As a board game enthusiast, occasionally I get to play prototypes of games. These can be hit or miss, with most of them still needing to be refined. But, every now and then the prototype is amazing and you want to play it a lot more. This is how I initially played City Hall. And, after two years of waiting for it to be published in its final form, I finally have a copy!!

In City Hall, the players are competing to become mayor of New York City. In order to become mayor, they have to win the most votes - by bringing people into the city, and also making sure they have a high approval rating among the people they bring in. The game consists of a series of turns, with each turn having all of the players select different roles to be performed. However, whenever a role is performed, there is an auction of Influence (one of the currencies in the game), and whoever spends the most Influence gets to do the action associated with the role. And, if the person who selected the role chooses not to perform it himself (chooses not to win the auction), then he gets to keep all of the Influence from the high bid. These roles allow you to purchase land, build upon your land, run campaigns to increase your approval, bring people into the city, acquire extra Influence or money, and move the turn order. Whichever roles aren't selected at the end of each turn have an Influence placed on them to incentivize players to select them later. Play continues turn after turn until a player has maxed out their approval, or until all the players have collectively improved enough land. Then there is a final turn with all of the roles being activated, one final population check, and then the final vote to see who becomes mayor! (Note: there is no chance that some guy from Boston that wasn't even playing comes in at the last second and wins the vote - one of the players always wins. I know, I ruined some of the excitement of the election. Second Note: that was supposed to be a joke. I'm pretty sure it failed miserably, though.)

The board design is also slick - each role is with what it affects

My first pro for City Hall is that I like how the role selection works with the auctions. This mechanic really encourages you to sometimes select roles that you don't even want, just to give you a better chance of getting to perform the roles that you need. For example, if you can't earn very much money from taxes, but all of your opponents can, and you don't have much Influence, it might be better to select the Tax Assessor than a role that you want to perform. Hopefully your opponents will all want to perform the Tax Assessor, thus letting you collect quite a few Influence in preparation for whatever role you need. Conversely, if you have a lot of Influence, getting to select the role that you need can be very powerful - as the person selecting the role, you make the final say over who gets to perform it (such as yourself), and if you have enough Influence to match any bid, then you can guarantee to perform it without accidentally bidding more than you need to (or risking getting outbid).

The next pro that I have for City Hall is that I don't feel like there are any bad roles (which is impressive, since there are seven roles). Now, there are some roles that will be performed more frequently than others. But the less frequent roles can really make a large impact on the game when they finally are selected. The roles that I see selected least frequently are the Deputy Mayor (which allows you to move to the top of the turn order), and the Lobbyist (which allows you to collect Influence based on your Approval Rating - and then you can buy or sell Influence). The benefits of these roles may appear minor, but once you also factor in the number of Influence that might be sitting on them from having not been selected in a few turns, they can really shift the balance of the game. Selecting Deputy Mayor and suddenly getting first choice of roles each round lets you select more roles that have Influence on them, and lets you avoid overbidding for the role you most want. And, being the Lobbyist when you have a lot of Influence, and selling that Influence for money can sometimes give you all the money you will need for the rest of the game!

Queens was popular in this game

The last pro that I will mention is that I appreciate how City Hall encourages you to buy land that is unpopular. Each time you gain new land, you have three locations to select from. Whichever two locations aren't selected will have $5 placed on them. (When buying land, you must pay $20, but at the beginning of the game you get some land for free.) So, if a certain location is regularly passed on, it may have $20 or more on it! Then you can choose between getting a free piece of land that might be in a less ideal location, or paying for land in a better location. And, which decision you make (and how you're able to capitalize on that decision) can really swing the outcome of the game!

Now that I have praised City Hall, there is one con that I need to mention. Initial placement on the board seems to have a very strong influence on the game. Whereas I want initial placement to matter, it sometimes feels like it matters too much. Each type of building you play has a maximum number of stars that can be placed on it. (Stars are used when determining how many people come into the city - you want a lot of stars.) Also, each type of building gains or loses stars based on what other buildings are next to it. So, Housing specifically can be powerful if it is near other Housing. It has the most stars possible (5), and it gets more stars for being near Housing (2) than any other type of building. Your buildings also play off of each other player's buildings - which is pretty cool. But, if two players start with adjacent Housing, and the other players start elsewhere without the ability to get as many stars, then the players with Housing might be able to dominate the population all game without the other players having much ability to catch up. This is especially the case if either of those players is able to place another Housing next to the existing ones. I have not played the game enough to say that Housing is overpowered, or that there is a single "right" initial move (and, in fact, I don't think there is, since all of the placement can be affected by what your opponents do), but I do have concerns that an early lead in stars feels almost insurmountable. (If you're wondering, the initial placement options other than Housing allow you to earn extra money but have less stars.)

Overall, I give City Hall a 9.5/10. I have loved my playthroughs of this game, and I want to play it more. Rarely do I find games that I think work incredibly well with each player count, but I've enjoyed City Hall at 2, 3, and 4 players, and I would gladly play again at any of these counts!

If you enjoy City Hall, you might also check out Goa, Notre Dame, and Puerto Rico (one of my very early reviews).

I would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing me with a review copy of City Hall.

Slaughterball Kickstarter Preview

2014-10-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

This post is not a review, but a preview for a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

Slaughterball is a board game simulating a future blood-filled sport where 2-4 teams battle it out in a pit. In Slaughterball, teams score points not only by scoring goals, but also by attacking and injuring opponents - that and the name Slaughterball, should tell you pretty much all you need to know about this game!

Athletes in Slaughterball have stats like accuracy, agility, brawling, speed, and toughness. These stats tell how many dice the athlete will roll when testing certain skills. The interesting thing about this is that there are four different types of athletes, who can each perform any of the available actions, but each of them have specialized stats so they are much better at doing certain things.

On a turn, each player will go through Draw, Onslaught, and Cleanup phases. During the Draw phase, players can discard as many cards as they would like, and draw the same number back into their hand.

The Onslaught phase is the main phase of a turn. Players will activate a number of their athletes one at a time in order to take actions such as Chop, Move, Pass, and Shoot.

The Cleanup phase is where players may be able to return athletes who have previously been sent to either the Penalty Box or the Slaughter Box.

The game ends after 6 rounds, and the team with the most points wins! Players can score points being the first to move onto the central Meat Grinder spaces with the ball, by scoring goals, or by knocking down or injuring opposing athletes.

Slaughterball certainly invites comparisons to the other big sport-combat game this year, Kaosball. I've played both now, and I have to say that Slaughterball blows Kaosball out of the water. Slaughterball is much more streamlined and intuitive, and more successfully combines the aspects of sports and combat that I think both games aspire to achieve.

If you think Slaughterball would make a good addition to your game collection, go ahead and back it now!

Extra Life Charity Event Announcement - Gaming for Good 2014: Sponsored by Z-Man Games

2014-10-06T04:38:00.000-07:00

The crowd at last year's event after 10 hours!
The open gaming area in Karl's new location
is twice this size - let's fill it up!!!

For the third consecutive year, I and my friend Karl (owner of the Games Keep in West Chester, PA) are putting together an Extra Life charity board gaming event to benefit Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Over the past two years we have been able to raise over $2,500 through these events. Each year, we get a bunch of friendly, caring people together, and we play games, give away prizes, and have fun spending time with each other - all while raising money to help sick kids.

This year's event is going to be held on Saturday, October 25, 2014, at the Games Keep - 521 East Gay Street, West Chester, PA 19380 - from 11:00 AM Saturday until 1:00 AM Sunday morning.

Some Ticket to Ride
at last year's event!

Admission to the event is $15, which grants the attendee access to the Games Keep's large open gaming area and game library for the duration of the event, 10 free raffle tickets to use on the awesome prizes we'll have up for raffle, snacks and drinks (generously provided by the Downingtown Wegmans), and hopefully some lunch/dinner deals at some of the local restaurants.

As was the case for our previous two Gaming for Good events, many generous game publishers have stepped up and made donations to help promote our event.

Our Main Sponsor, Z-Man Games, has donated copies of:
Russian Railroads
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Prophecy + Expansion

GMT Games, AEG, APE Games, Arcane Wonders, Portal Games, and Stronghold Games have also donated the following titles:
Twilight Struggle, Thunder Alley, Thunderstone: Numenara, Maximum Throwdown, Agent Hunter, Cheaty Mages, Love Letter (Boxed Edition), A Matter of Honor, RARRR!!, Mage Wars, Theseus: The Dark Orbit, Little Devils, and Crazy Creature of Dr. Gloom.

A Stonemaier Ambassador will be in attendance to demo Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, and then give away the copy of the game to one of the people who sit down for a demo!

An AEG Vanguard will also be on hand to demo Thunderstone and Valley of the Kings!

Gil Hova, designer of Battle Merchants, will also be attending! He will be giving demos of Battle Merchants, and will also be giving away a copy to someone who sits down for a demo!!

Lastly, Karl and I will also be raffling off two $75 gift certificates for the Games Keep - and if you've ever seen the Games Keep's amazing prices and superb selection, you know that is a fantastic prize!!!

We really hope you can make it out to our event! But if you can't, and you would still like to help, please share this post on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter!! You can also donate to my Extra Life team here: My Donation Page!

If you have any questions about the event, feel free to leave them in the comments, or to contact me at jim.flartner@gmail.com.

Thanks so much - hope to see you there!!

"Extra life is where you can spend hours having a blast with fellow board gamers while saving lives."

- Khanh Nguyen

"I've been to the event every year it's occurred and it's awesome to see it grow each and every year. I get to see familiar faces and make some new friends, all while donating to a great cause. My wife is even joining in on the fun this year!"

- Michael Green

All Hands on Deck! Kickstarter Preview

2014-10-02T04:48:00.001-07:00

This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

All Hands on Deck! is a family set collection game with a fun, cartoony pirate theme. The game consists of 108 cards made up of 3 different bands of pirates (colored suits) as well as a variety of actions cards.

The goal of the game is to assemble a team of winning pirates - either 7 consecutive pirates from one crew, or 3 consecutive pirates from all 3 crews. Players go about this by participating in auctions and through clever play of their action cards.

Each round, there will be a card from the deck put up for auction. All players will put up cards from their hand into the blind bid auction. All pirate cards values are added up, and the highest bid wins. Any actions cards that are included in the bid are also resolved in turn order.

Once someone assembled a winning hand, the game ends!

That it pretty much it! The game is great for families - it is easy to understand, has fantastic artwork, and a fun theme. Decisions in the game - like knowing which cards to give up in your bids and which to hold onto as sets (as well as which type of set to shoot for) are simple, but also not so easy as to make the game uninteresting. All Hands on Deck definitely has enough gameplay to be enjoyable for everyone, and definitely doesn't outstay its welcome!

If you think All Hands on Deck will be a good fit for you, go check it out on Kickstarter!

Five Tribes Review

2014-09-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of great games released at Gen Con this year. Five Tribes, from Days of Wonder and Bruno Cathala, was one of the most talked about - and hardest to get.

Now that the game has finally hit distribution, does it live up to all that hype?

No "board" but still takes up a lot of space!
Looks good doing it, though.

Five Tribes is a part logistics puzzle, part action selection, part point salad game that pits players against one another, each of them trying to best maneuver the five tribes of the "Land of 1001 Nights" in order to become the next Sultan!

The game board is made up of 30 individual tiles, which are arranged randomly before each game. Meeples of 5 different colors are placed on these tiles, also randomly. Players will take turns picking up a group of meeples from any tile on the board, and dropping one off at a time, mancala-style, until they drop the last meeple they picked up. One important rule when choosing which tile to end up at - there must already be a meeple on the tile the player ends with that matches the color of the meeple she is placing on the tile.

Days of Wonder has included some large, but superb player aids.

Once the player finishes distributing the group of meeples she picked up, she performs two actions. First, she picks up all of the meeples on the tile she ended on that match the color of the meeple she placed there (always at least two because of the rule I mentioned above), and executes that tribe's action. If the player was able to pick up all of the meeples on a tile (because they were all the same color of the meeple she placed there) she gets to place one of her camels on the tile, and will score that tile's depicted points at the end of the game. Then, she also gets to perform the action of the tile she ended on.

The leftmost tile allows a player to
buy 2 goods cards for 6 gold.

The actions of the tribes and the tiles are quite varied and give players the opportunity to score points in a variety of different ways. Some allow players to get money right away, which can be used in game, or exchanged 1:1 at the end of the game for points. Some allow players to acquire powerful Djinns which can grant either in-game or end-game bonuses. And others will allow players to go to the market, and attempt to assemble sets of goods card which can be traded in for large amounts of points/money.

Gameplay continues until either one player places all of her camels or there are no legal moves left (no groups of meeples can be distributed in such a way that the final meeple to be placed will be the same color as one already on the destination tile).

The biggest potential problem for Five Tribes is how many options players are presented with, all at once. Five Tribes is not a game that starts off at a reasonable pace, and then ramps up as the game progresses. For the most part, from when the game begins, the number of choices for the players is gradually decreasing, as more meeples are removed from the board, and more tiles become owned by players. That not only can make the game intimidating and difficult to learn for new players, but it can also lead to a lot of analysis paralysis for experienced players. This can lead to awful amounts of downtime for the rest of the table. This also, however, means that player turns are almost never boring, and each point earned by players really feels like the result of proper planning and execution.

One of the most exciting parts of Five Tribes is something I haven't mentioned yet - bidding for turn order. Before each round, players will bid for turn order. There is a bidding track, like in Amun-Re or Vegas Showdown, where the values are fixed, and in turn order of the previous round, players place their bidding pawns on the amount of money they are willing to pay for turn order. This is interesting in itself and leads to a bit of bluffing and gamesmanship, but keep in mind also that at the end of the game, money is converted into points at a rate of 1:1.

The main mechanism of Five Tribes, the manacala-esque distribution of meeples is so much fun and super satisfying. Players are challenged each turn to both get as many points as they can (hopefully more than they bid for their turn order) as well as keep from setting the other players up to either take ownership or a tile or otherwise have a huge turn.

Five Tribes absolutely lives up to the hype that surrounded it during Gen Con. The game is a solid 9.0 in my book - one of my favorite releases this year.

Knee Jerk Kickstarter Preview

2014-09-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Final art, rules, and components are subject to change.

I don't think there's anything I love more than sitting around with my friends and family and laughing. That is why I love games like Taboo and Balderdash. They don't is not much to those games, but they produce such hilarious and memorable moments that I simply can't get enough of them.

Knee Jerk is a game similar to those two in a way. Players need only a deck of cards and about 10 seconds of rules explanation in order to play.

The game is dead simple - the active player (host) deals 2 cards to the table, and 3 to her hand. She chooses one from her hand, and lines it up with the other 2 so that the green arrow of the first card points to the blue arrow of the second card, which points to the orange block of the third card (the one she chose from her hand). This orientation of the cards will create a randomized story prompt.

After the host player reads the story prompt, the rest of the players begin offering up their versions of how the scene ends. The host then awards the player who answered first a point - in the form of the left-most card on the table. Play then continues with the host placing another card to the right.

Knee Jerk is so simple, but so much fun. The crux of the game, however, relies on the players you've gathered together. I think that the rules are simple enough that anyone thinking about bringing this out with a group would already have a pretty good idea of whether or not it would go over well. But because the rules are so simple, it is also fairly easy to implement variants.

The game rules also suggest playing where the host awards the point for a story to the first answer given. While this rule certainly fosters a wide range of hilarious answers shouted out without thinking, I also think that having the host choose her favorite story for each round is also a lot of fun. The last game of Knee Jerk I played with a kind of a blend of the two, where the host of the round chose which rule variant she wanted to use.

Knee Jerk is one of those party games that I love - it brings out a special kind of silliness in people that is just so much fun to be involved in. And just like the best party games, it is not only a blast to play, but it can also create discussions about where some of these ridiculous stories come from - either real or created. Knee Jerk is great party game - and an absolute steal at $10.

If Knee Jerk sounds good to you - go back on Kickstarter now!

Dead of Winter Review

2014-09-09T05:07:00.000-07:00

Dead of Winter is the latest game from Plaid Hat Games. Despite not being a huge fan of any of Plaid Hat's games (except for Summoner Wars, which I love), I always get very excited about each of their releases. They always have really interesting themes mixed with neat twists on game mechanisms. Does Dead of Winter buck the trend of disappointment? Would I even ask such an obvious rhetorical question is the answer was "no?" Read on to find out!

Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game that takes place after a zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world. Players take control of survivors in this world, struggling to live in this new world. The survivors need keep the hordes at bay and make sure the colony is safe and fed.

In a round, players will roll their action dice. On their turn, players will spend their dice in order to take actions with their survivors. These actions are things like searching locations in order to gain resources or items, fighting zombies, or building barricades. The zombies will keep coming and bad things will keep happening to the colony, until either the survivors complete their shared objective, or the colony's morale falls to 0.

Sounds simple enough, except that Plaid Hat and Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Vega have added quite a few interesting little twists and turns to make Dead of Winter quite a unique experience. First is the fact that although the group as a whole has a common objective, each player has a personal objective. Each player's personal objective states what the player needs to accomplish in order to win. These objectives most often have a bulleted list that includes the group completing the common main objective, but also some other conditions that must be met that will likely make the group's completion of the main objective more difficult. Even if the main objective is competed, players can only win if they also completed their individual objectives as well.

The great thing about this system is that there are also betrayer objectives. These objectives require that the game end not because the main objective has been completed, but because the colony's morale has fallen to 0. The game also includes the option to exile players from the game if they are suspected of being a betrayer. This adds a lot of tension to the game, and keeps the players from devolving the game into a mess of "well Idecide on a 'm not going to win, so no one is going to win," which, in my opinion, has been the biggest issue with semi-cooperative games in the past.

A huge source of tension in the game is the exposure die. It must be rolled every time a survivor either moves around town or fights a zombie. On about half of the sides is nothing - which is what you'll be hoping to see each time you roll that accursed die. On the other half are bad things, which cause either normal wounds, frostbite wounds, or even instant death. The fact that players can lose a survivor with a single roll of the die is a lot of fun.

The last twist in the game is the deck of Crossroads cards. At the start of each player's turn, the player to the right of her draws a Crossroads card, and reads the it. Each Crossroads card has a condition on it, which the reader of the card does not reveal to the current player, unless the player fulfills it. These cards contain conditions like, "If the current player controls a survivor at the Police Station, read the following:" and the rest of the card has a bit of story, and then a decision. The player (and sometimes all the players) then need to decide on their course of action concerning the story, and deal with any consequences that decision presents.

Not a super exciting photo, but I didn't want to spoil anything about these awesome cards!!

This mechanism is brilliant. I know reviews can rely on hyperbole a little too often, but really the Crossroads cards are my favorite part of this game. It creates a weight to each player's turn, since she has to go about the things she wants to do, knowing that she might be interrupted at any moment by the player holding the Crossroads card. Not only that, but the Crossroads cards have really interesting story beats that can create some extraordinary moments for the players. I wish I could say more about how much fun we had with these cards, but I really don't want to give anything away.

In fact, one of the things I don't like about the game is that the Crossroads deck is limited. Don't get me wrong, Plaid Hat have provided 80 Crossroads cards, which is a lot - and a Crossroads card won't even be triggered each turn. And I'm usually the first to call out people who complain about this sort of stuff - how many times are you really going to play this game, no matter how good it is? Despite all that, (and perhaps because the cards are just so friggin' awesome) just the fact that the deck is limited (whether or not said limit will ever be reached by me) makes me want more cards.

I also mentioned how much fun that exposure die is. Well, it can also be painful (which is part of why I love it). Rolling a Bite (meaning instant death) on your first turn can really knock the wind out of you and the group - but having to deal with the consequences of that so early can definitely make things interesting for the right players.

Dead of Winter is a great game. There is a lot going on in the game, but not so much to make the game a slog. As the players internalize the rules, the narrative of the story really starts to shine through. The tensions of the individual objectives, the Crossroads cards, the exposure die, and the fact that its a pretty tough cooperative game to begin with all make for a seriously engaging experience.

The first time I played Dead of Winter was with my lovely wife, who is a seasoned gamer, and my dad, cousin, and sister - all three of whom have played some of "my games" in the past but need some encouragement to sit down with one that isn't Wits and Wagers or Telestrations. Right after we lost the first game, we started talking about the stories of our survivors, and what we would do differently when we played again. We didn't have to wait long to find out, because we played again the very next day. And after losing a second time, we set it up to play again...twice. We were up playing Dead of Winter well past 2 AM, laughing and dying horrible deaths.

Dead of Winter is the very definition of an immersive experience. My cousin, usually a "too cool for school" type, started reading the Crossroads cards in character, and was pushing all of us to do the same. We all started making up stories for our survivors about their motivations and why they always seemed to fail so miserably. Based on those memorable experiences alone, I can't recommend this game highly enough. 8.5/10.