Board Game Reviews by Josh

51st State: The New Era Review

2012-02-28T05:13:00.000-08:00

After playing the original 51st State and thoroughly enjoying it, I felt it was appropriate to track down a copy of 51st State: The New Era to play.

Since The New Era is an expansion to 51st State, I am going to assume that you are familiar with the original game (and if not, please click on the previous link and check out my review of it). Therefore, I'm going to focus this review on the differences between New Era and the base game - though you should know that New Era is a standalone expansion that can be played without a copy of 51st State.

The Hegemony

First, The New Era is playable with 2-5 players instead of the 2-4 from the original game. In order to do this, they have added in the "Hegemony" faction. In addition to this faction, they have included all four of the factions from the base game, and those factions are completely unchanged. I felt like this was an area that could have been improved. Instead of using the same factions from the base game, if they had created 5 new factions, there would be much more replayability when combining the two games. Instead, if you combine the games, then you have a useless copy of 4 of the factions. In addition, though the game is now 5-player, I am not sure who would actually play it with five. Due to the length of the game (which seems to grow proportionally with the number of players), I think that four and below really was adequate. Either way, extra factions are always nice as they allow you to have a different feel when playing the game (which, again, is why I wish that they had different factions from the base game).

The next topic is directly related to my biggest complaint with the base game. The base game was incredibly hard to learn and teach. Whereas the New Era isn't entirely clear (I read the rules, played with someone else who had read the rules, and still had a few things I was unclear about), the instructions have added an "Abbreviated Game Guide" on the back. This really helps when teaching the game. There are simply so many different actions available that it is hard to remember them all when explaining. This very small addition makes it much easier to make sure you don't leave them out.

Ultimately, there are two big changes in the gameplay. First, the leaders from the base game have been eliminated. If you combine the sets, then the leaders are still legal, but they did not include any new leaders in the expansion. I'm fine with this change, as I thought the leaders may have been a bit too powerful and helped favor whoever had the good fortune of drawing one.

Note the blue/red arrow

Secondly, the New Era has added player interaction. The cards now include a blue/red arrow that indicates how far the location is from the other players. So, in addition to making agreements with cards from your hand (playing them for the blue side), you can now make agreements with cards that other players have played as locations (white)! This is a nice addition. The other aspect of the player interaction (red half of the arrow) is that you can blow up your opponent's locations. If you successfully destroy your opponent's location, though, he can fairly easily rebuild it (assuming he has access to brick), and gains a victory point for doing so! Therefore, attacking other players can be useful when done strategically (specifically in games with three or more players), but if done haphazardly can actually help your opponent by essentially giving him extra redevelopment actions. This player interaction is done well, and I think that it adds value to the game.

The only other real change that I noticed was in the components. Instead of having seemingly hundreds of very small round cardboard chips (that were hard to pickup), resources have been replaced with wooden tokens. I think that this helps the game feel higher quality, but actually may be a touch more confusing during gameplay - instead of very easily knowing that a cardboard chip with a gear on it represents a gear, you now have to mentally convert a wooden gray disc into a gear (which is trickier with the brick and gun since the orange and red discs are somewhat similar in color). They have also replaced the faction cards indicating what the faction's permanent actions are with a single sheet showing all four of those actions (including the redevelopment).

Old and New Faction components

Overall, I give 51st State: The New Era an 8.5/10. You may be thinking, "but that's what you gave 51st State!" Indeed, it is. I think that The New Era is an improvement over the base game, and I would recommend that people purchase it instead (or in addition) to 51st State. However, the gameplay isn't distinct enough that I thought it warranted a higher score. Either way, it is a very solid game that I enjoy playing!

If you like New Era, you might also like Race for the Galaxy, Eminent Domain, and Summoner Wars.

I would like to thank Portal Games for providing me with a review copy of 51st State: The New Era.

Caveman Curling Review

2012-02-24T04:10:00.001-08:00

One of the newest dexterity games that I've been able to check out is Caveman Curling (which isn't available on Amazon at the time of this writing).

In Caveman Curling, players take turns sliding their "rocks" (disks) in an effort to get them closest to the center of the cave. After each shot, the active player has the option to use one of his hammers or totems - if you play a hammer, then you are allowed to lay the hammer on the board and move your rock to the other side of it. If you place a totem on the rock, it "protects" it - if the totem is knocked off later, then you have the option of leaving the rock in it's new location, or picking it up and re-shooting it at the end of the turn. Once all six rocks have been shot/flicked/hammered/curled (plus any totem re-shots), whoever is closest to the center of the cave gets a point for each of his rocks (fully inside the cave) closer to the center than his opponent's closest rock. Next, pull everything off the board, and try again. Continue playing until one player (or team) has six points.

The first thing that I like about Caveman Curling are the magnetic board holders ("slammers" - but I can't say that without thinking of pogs). One of my greatest concerns when I received my copy of the game was how the board was going to lay flat - it was pretty obvious that the board was rolled up inside the box, and it is really important in a game like this that the board isn't "curling" (hehe), but is laying flat. Fortunately (in case you can't tell from my picture) the game includes two magnetic strips that clamp together on each side and help force the board flat - this part of the component design was great!

Totems give you "protection"

The next thing that I liked with Caveman Curling was the option to use the special tokens. Instead of being strictly dexterity/skill based, these allow you to have a few "cheats." However, we found in our games that it seemed like you had a few too many special objects available - we didn't like the fact that you could use a special object on every shot. Fortunately, unless you're planning on taking Caveman Curling to the far extreme of tournament play (you'd probably have to run the tournament, too), there is nothing forcing you to play this way. We thought of variants that you could try that let you include the special objects to the level that you prefer - you can try playing without them, playing with them but only allowing each to be used once per game (instead of per round), you can cut the number of them in half (one of each object instead of two), or you can use them as the game designer suggests. Whatever you choose, it is nice that you have them available as an option - it might even be good to use them as a handicap to balance out the gameplay between experienced and novice players.

Finally, I thought that the board art was both amusing and very functional. As an example of amusing, if you look closely, you can even see that the credits are "written in the snow." When it comes to functional, the circles in the middle of the cave really help distinguish which rock is closer to the center, to where I have never needed to pull out a ruler to measure who is winning.

Now, with this said, there were a few "less than good" things that I will mention about Caveman Curling. The first is that because of the weight of the "rocks" it is a bit too easy to slam all of the rocks. Specifically, if one team has done very well and has three rocks clumped together in the center of the cave, the other team will (if they are good at shooting their rocks - but then again, why are they losing like this if they are good at shooting?) quite possibly be able to shoot a single rock and knock out all of his opponent's rocks. This wouldn't happen in actual curling or bocce ball (the other games that score like Caveman Curling) due to the weight of the objects being moved, but I don't think this was avoidable in this kind of tabletop dexterity game with very lightweight pieces. And, I wouldn't want to change the game to where you can't dispel your opponent's pieces. After all, part of the fun of the game is to try to knock your opponent's pieces out of the way. Maybe if the board were a bit longer.... which leads to...

Amusing board art

The next thing that I will mention is more of a missed opportunity than an actual con. I felt like it would have been pretty sweet to have a variety of gameboards so that you could mix up the size of your game. If you're playing with inexperienced players, you could use a shorter board - if you're playing with better players, you could force them to shoot it further. This would also add more importance to the special objects, and would keep the pieces from clumping together as much (on the bigger boards), thus addressing the previous con. (Well, we have a plotter at my office, so I may be able to resolve this issue on my own - at least for my copy! Now, I'll just have to find a table big enough to play the "slightly modified" version.)

The final "less than good" thing is the only one that is truly a con. I was disappointed with the actual components of the game - specifically the gameboard. The gameboard is a piece of paper. It is a nice piece of paper (the lint textured kind - sort of like paper money), but it is still a piece of paper. When I received the game, I was expecting it to be a mousepad-type of playing surface. My wife was incredibly frustrated that it wasn't at least laminated. She likes to point out PitchCar and the fact that it's game pieces will last a long, long time because of the quality of the wooden board. However, with Caveman Curling, I am concerned that my copy will wear out a bit too quickly.

Overall, I give Caveman Curling an 8.0/10. This number was a bit hard for me to decide on, so I'll share how I came up with it. I like Caveman Curling better than Fastrack (which received an 8.0), but less than PitchCar (which received a 9.0). This pretty easily makes it an 8.5, right? Well, I have a personal rule (previously unpublished - you're now in the secret club!) that 8.0 or higher means "I wouldn't have been disappointed if I had bought this." This is where the scoring got tricky. Caveman Curling lists around $50. Because of the paper board, I really can't see myself having spent $50 and opening up the game to see the paper board and not being disappointed (before I even played the game). Well, this means it should be a 7.5, right? So, eventually, I decided to give it an 8.0 thinking that if I had backed it when it was on Kickstarter, I would have spent $39 to get a copy with shipping included. Since this was a review copy, I can't tell for sure, but I don't think that I would've been disappointed at that point. Either way, I do actually enjoy Caveman Curling and recommend that dexterity game lovers should look to try it - I just think that there's not that much in the box for $50. (But this can lead into a much longer discussion of whether or not you should be paying for the components and pieces in a game or the idea of a game when buying it - but that would be an incredibly long post, so we won't get into that now.)

If you're interested in other games that were funded through Kickstarter, you might want to check out Orbit Rocket Race 5000, Alien Frontiers, and Eminent Domain.

I would like to thank Eagle/Gryphon Games for providing me with a review copy of Caveman Curling.

Final note: Currently I believe the only way of preordering Caveman Curling is through Eagle Games' website here.

Mob Ties Review

2012-02-21T04:10:00.000-08:00

One of the more recent games to be published through Kickstarter is Mob Ties.

In Mob Ties, each player takes on the role of a rival mob family that is trying to take control of the city. To do this, you need influence. And, of course, your goal is to have the most money. But you must be careful of the Feds - they'll try to crack down on your empire if you're not careful. Of course, if there's a member of some other family present when the feds crack down... well, I guess the Feds aren't all bad. During each game round you will first decide on who is the Don for the round - based on who is able to garner the most influence in the Don's Mansion (the Don gets extra cards and is able to serve as the tiebreaker for all other showdowns). Next, you go around each of the other locations and determine who has the most influence - and those players collect money. During this phase, you can also buy new cards (for killing your enemies). Next, each player must move one of his mobsters to a new location. After this, the Feds show up; you flip a number of "Fed" cards based on the current "Heat Level" (this goes up as more mobsters are killed or thrown in jail). If there are more than four Fed markers at a location, then the Feds will arrest somebody (the person with the most influence gets to choose which Family loses a mobster) unless Weapon cards are played (which reduce the number of Feds). Finally, we get to the "Action" phase (that's a polite way of saying the "Kill all of your Rivals" phase). During the Action phase, different cards can be played - but mostly you Attack your enemies... or try to convince the other players to attack each other (possibly by greasing the wheels with a few thousand dollars). Finally, you can bail your mobsters out of jail (if you have the money for it), and then you check to see if the Heat Level is raised. Once the Heat Level is raised three times, the game is over, and whoever has the most money (living mobsters that aren't in jail count towards this) is the winner.

The first thing that you need to realize about Mob Ties is that it is a game of "negotiation" (bribery, extortion, threats, black mail, etc). You are trying to win the game, but you won't do very well if you don't play well with (manipulate) the other players. Sometimes you will need the Don's influence, sometimes you'll be bribing other players to exact revenge for you when you lose a mobster. Sometimes you'll be bribing other players not to attack your mobster. If you enjoy negotiation and social interaction driving a game, then you'll really enjoy this part of Mob Ties. If you play with a group that doesn't enjoy social aspects of games (the kind of people that don't bother making treaties when playing games of Risk (2210)), then your experience with Mob Ties might not be a positive one. With this negotiation, you also have the option of playing with "Honor Among Thieves" (where you must actually hold up your end of the bargain) or "All Bets Are Off" (where people will regularly stab you in the back after you make a deal).

Mob Doctor's can save a life

Secondly, you need to realize that Mob Ties is not intended for a younger (or easily offended) audience. I have not noticed any profanity in the game, but all of the artwork is intentionally dark and sinister (I showed the Mob Doctor card as an example - it is definitely not one of the worse cards). Plus, one of the locations is "Kitty's" (a strip club), and the artwork shows a woman's butt in a bikini-like outfit. There is nothing in this game that wouldn't be in a PG-13 movie, but if you're going into it looking for a more "family friendly" (hehe... get it? I like puns, so, if you didn't laugh then you're only punishing yourself) mob game like Family Business or Famiglia, you will be in for quite a surprise!

With that said, my first pro for Mob Ties is the interaction. I like the negotiation aspect of the game, and I especially like the role of the Don. Depending on who plays the Don, the game can work quite differently. A good Don will do everything that he can to be bribed as often as humanly possible. Each turn he draws two cards; one of them he gets to keep, and the other he has to give to another player. A savvy Don will ensure that he doesn't "give" the card to anybody, but makes sure that he gets his at least a few thousand dollars out of this card. I like that the game balances the Don by having it be a location like any of the others - but without a direct monetary aspect (yet with the potential of being either the most or the least valuable location on the board).

The next thing that I really like about Mob Ties is that it has a large amount of variants that you can play. In fact, there is an extra instruction manual included with the game just for these variants (and you also have pieces that are included in the game for them). Do you feel like players are getting eliminated too quickly? Then you can play with the mercenary variant that lets you buy extra mobsters. Do you think that the Feds aren't doing enough? You can start the game by drawing an extra Fed card. Do you really just want to play on everyone's paranoia? Then you can play with one of the player's Associates being an Undercover Fed (of course you don't know which one.... so I guess you need to "take care" of all of them).

The Capo - the king of your crime syndicate

One of the final things that I think is interesting about Mob Ties is that it is a very bloody game. Depending on how you and your friends play the game (and how many of you are playing), it is quite possible that five or more mobsters are killed in the first round. The game helps encourage this by having a "first blood" bonus of $25,000 to the first player that kills an enemy's mobster. Of course, once you kill a mobster, you've given that player a really strong reason for attacking you - revenge! So, from the very beginning, many players will be attacking each other. And then they'll realize that one of the players has been left out a bit too much - "What, you still have five mobsters? Hmm... here's an attack of 3. Oh, and here's a car bomb. While we're at it, let's go ahead and poison your spaghetti... Oh, was that your Capo? How sad for you."

Having played the game and done very well, and having played it and done very poorly, the main con that I would list is that it is very hard to catch up to other players once you fall behind in the game. Once you lose a couple of mobsters, you will really struggle to do well. Even if playing the mercenary variant, with only three (or less) mobsters it will be hard to control a location. If you don't control any locations, then you don't make any money. If you don't make any money, then you can't buy those mercenaries (or more cards to defend yourself with). For that matter, with no money, you can't even bribe your opponents to fight each other - you have to just convince them with your smooth talking. And if that doesn't work, you just go around sad as you watch other people's crime empires blossom as yours crumbles around you.

Overall, I give Mob Ties an 8.5/10. I didn't see this one during it's Kickstarter campaign, but it is really one of the more pleasant surprises that I've had recently among games offered to me that I wasn't already familiar with. Obviously, if you don't like negotiation games or your friends would be offended by the seedy artwork, then this isn't for you. However, if that's not the case, I would definitely recommend checking it out.

If you like games with large amounts of social interaction, you might also check out The Resistance, Battlestar Galactica, and possibly even Ideology.

I would like to thank Hostage Entertainment for providing me with a review copy of Mob Ties.

Loch Ness Review

2012-02-17T04:10:00.000-08:00

One of Rio Grande Games' latest offerings is Loch Ness.

In Loch Ness, each of the players takes on the role of a photographer trying to get a picture of the elusive Loch Ness monster. In order to do this, they must make sure that their best cameras are positioned in the place where Nessie will (hopefully) appear. Each turn, the players will get to select a bonus for the round - improving their camera's value, moving a bonus camera, hiring an extra camera, stuffing hotdogs in their pockets to try to convince Nessie to go just a bit further (ok, officially in the game you use "Bagpipes" for this, but you tell me - I think that Nessie would respond better to hot dogs) etc. Then the first three players will select a move card; the sum of these cards will determine how far Nessie will move along the board once all of the players are situated(. Once these are selected, each player will be forced to move one of his cameras (hoping to get that great photo!) and then will have the option of moving a second camera. Finally, the move cards are revealed, and Nessie moves along the inner gameboard based on what cards were revealed. Anyone that is directly in front of Nessie gets to collect a card (or two, depending on where she lands), and is attempting to get a collection of Nessie's head, body and tail. Finally, everyone with a camera in the area that Nessie appeared (regardless of if their camera was directly facing Nessie) scores points equal to their camera's value. Also, "little Nessie" moves along the score track a number of spaces equal to how far "big Nessie" moved. Once "little Nessie" moves 65 spaces, the game is over, players turn in their cards, and whoever has the most points wins. (And then has to find a writer that is willing to claim that the Loch Ness Monster is real - maybe the photos will help!)

"Big Nessie" and "Little Nessie"

My first pro for Loch Ness is that it is a game that can easily be played with children. This game is simple enough that I think kids could pretty easily understand the rules and the strategy. Yet, there is at least some strategy to it, so that they will do better if they plan ahead, instead of a game where they are simply trying to roll dice better than their opponents (here's looking at you Heroica and Sorry).

Secondly, I like that there is an element of bluffing involved in Loch Ness. Since nobody knows exactly how far Nessie will move, you must guess based on your opponents' actions. The first three players all know one piece of the puzzle - if I played a five, then I know that Nessie move at least seven spaces. Conversely, if I play a one, I know Nessie will not move more than eleven. What's more, if I perform the "Church" special action (this lets you look at one of the move cards), then I can even know two of the three pieces. However, I can never know exactly how far Nessie will move. Unfortunately, once I move one of my cameras, everyone else will know what I think Nessie is going to do, and (since I know more than they do in this hypothetical) they will probably try to position themselves accordingly. This leaves open the possibility of tricking your opponents - setting up a smaller camera where you know that Nessie won't go, hoping that your opponents will set their larger cameras near it, so that you can then place your larger camera in a better position. Another way of bluffing is in picking numbers - if you get the impression that your opponents think you normally pick high numbers, to go low (or vice versa). If you can do this successfully, you will often allow yourself to get situated well; assuming that you don't fall for your opponents doing the same thing.

Overall, my main con with Loch Ness is that there just isn't enough to draw me into the game, nor is there enough to make me want to keep coming back for more. The game works, and as I said before, I can see it being something fun to play with kids. However, I don't really see a strategy gaming group being eager to play it, and unfortunately, I don't even see it being used as a filler. I guess the main gist of this con is that I struggle to see who Loch Ness' target audience is. It claims to be for ages 8 and above, but I think that it would be best suited for about ages 6-12 (along with their parents). Now, to be fair, I think that it could be played easily enough with kids that were age 6 and above if their parents wanted to teach it to them (but then again, I could be horribly wrong - I don't have kids, and they really are an enigma to me).

Overall, I give Loch Ness a 7.0/10. I gave it a score this high because of it's ability to be played with kids as a game that can be used to start teaching them more advanced games (and I have convinced myself that this probably is the intention of the game). However, though there's nothing really wrong with this game, it isn't something that I really seem myself continuing to play. Whereas Rio Grande has made a ton of games that I really love (Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Ra, Princes of Florence, Dvonn, etc) this one didn't really click for me.

If you are looking for games to play with your kids, you might also consider Hey, That's My Fish!, Stomple, and Rory's Story Cubes.

I would like to thank Rio Grande Games for providing me with a review copy of Loch Ness.

Risk Legacy Review

2012-02-14T04:07:00.000-08:00

I have drooled over Risk: Legacy since I first saw that it was coming out. So, when I moved to Philadelphia and was offered a spot with a group just starting a campaign of it, I jumped at the chance to join them! Now, let me tell you that we have played 5 of the 15 games so far - so, I have a good feel for how the game is played, but have not opened every pack. However, I am also intending to write this review without spoilers: so if you're looking for spoilers, this may not be for you, but if you're looking for a good feel on how the game is played, you don't have to worry about me ruining anything - everything I tell you should be found in the rulebook or was at least known to us before we started playing our first game. (Note: I had a pretty picture of the board that we're using, but I realized that if you looked too closely, you might see a spoiler, so I removed it - I have checked all of the other pictures, and they are safe. The Enclave of the Bear pictures shows only a starting power - which you select before your first game.) With that said, let's dig into Risk: Legacy!

Select your faction - with a starting power

Risk: Legacy is Risk; but with extra stuff. In Legacy, each player starts with a headquarters and a handful of troops; all of which are on the headquarters. He also starts with a faction from the game. The first time that you play, each player selects a faction, but also gets to select which of two abilities that faction will be able to use - and that faction (not necessarily that player) will use it the rest of the time that you play Legacy. Your goal is to capture four "stars." If a player has never won a game, then he starts the game with a star. Each headquarters is a star, and you can also turn in four "resource" cards to gain a star. When playing the game, you basically play with standard Risk rules. You add up your number of territories (and add population based on cities that you own - this part is new), and divide by three, rounding down. This is the number of armies that you collect each turn (minimum of three). You also get extra armies for each continent you control. From here, you can attack as many territories as you want. The attacker can roll with up to three dice, the defender with two, and the defender wins ties. If you take a contested territory on your turn (ie, you kill somebody else to do it), then at the end of the turn you get a card - when selecting a card, you can either select a card of a territory you control (territory cards can be worth anywhere from one to six resources), or you receive a standard resource card if you do not control any of the available countries. On future turns, you can trade in four cards for a star, or you can trade in cards for additional armies - if trading for armies, then the number of resources on the cards is added to determine how many you receive (with a bonus for having larger numbers). The only in-game change that I haven't mentioned are that you each will start the game with one "scar" card. These cards specify when they can be played, and to play them, you peel the sticker off of the card, place it on the appropriate territory, and then this affects that territory the rest of the time you play this copy of Risk: Legacy! Gameplay continues like this until one person has collected four stars. Then, they win the game, and sign the board (meaning they will get a "missile" instead of a star to start the next game; missiles let you change a single die roll to be a 6). After signing the board, they have the option of naming a continent (giving them a permanent one army bonus whenever they control that continent), place a major city (a city with a population of two that only they can start in), destroy a resource card (rip it in half and never use it again), or a few other things. Anyone that was still alive can either place a minor city (population of one, but nobody can start there), or add a resource icon to a territory.

Ok, that was one of my longer introductions, but now it's time to get to the pros and cons. The first pro is that Risk: Legacy is the most innovative game that I believe I have ever played. I was incredibly hesitant when I first heard that you write on the board, destroy cards, and generally make your game vastly different than when you bought it. However, this part of the game works incredibly well. You truly feel like you are in a campaign throughout the game, and in later games, you will remember what happened in the earlier ones. This will also affect how you play - for example, we had one time when a player had named Australia. He refused to play any negative scars in Australia, because he knew that it would negatively affect him if he controlled Australia in future games. This ever-changing game is an amazing concept, and I am really hoping that more games do something similar. And, when I think about it from a financial perspective, if I pay $60 for a copy of Risk: Legacy, and I play it and enjoy it for the 15 games of the campaign, then I'm paying $4 per play - I have paid a lot more than that per play for many of my games!

I'm ready to open this!

Next, I think that it is awesome that not each game has the same cards. When I was first reading about the game, I thought to myself, "ok, that'll be neat, but once I've played it 15 times, I'll have to move on." I now realize that I was wrong. First of all, for those of you that really enjoy the basic game of Risk, there's no real need to stop playing the game after 15 games - just because the world is no longer changing does not mean that the game itself is no longer playable. You can continue to play the game, and it will really feel like it is "your" version of Risk; because you and your friends will be the ones that caused the board to be setup how it is. However, if you constantly want the game to change, you can also figure out how to tell which copies have the same cards (I believe this is by serial number) and get a new copy of the game - one with different contents, and play through it again! Now, I don't know what all is different in the games, but I have looked at spoilers for the "Do Not Open. Ever." pack (oh, don't give me that look - we are playing on a friend's copy, and he keeps refusing to open it; you know "do not open" means "open me immediately"), and this has confirmed to me that there are different variants.

Now, those are really my only two pros to Risk: Legacy. But they are huge pros! So, instead of me trying to make something else up, let's just acknowledge that they are gigantic pros and count them both twice. So, now we're at four pros, and I can move on to the cons. Oh, I just remembered another one - the game goes much faster since you only have to get four stars instead of eliminating everyone. There you go, five pros.

The first con is that there is really very little change in the gameplay. Whereas all of Risk 2210's changes are to the gameplay itself, in Risk: Legacy I found myself playing through the game in order to get to the post-game. I was ready to customize the board, open packs, etc., and the game itself was all secondary to this. If you enjoy Risk, you will have no problem here at all! However, I do not enjoy the standard Risk, so I would often find myself bored while waiting for the game to end.

The second con is really more of the same. I don't like how easily strategy is derailed by poor dice rolling. There are some scar cards that can modify dice (make them plus one or minus one), but most of the game will be spent seeing who is better at rolling six-sided dice. I am not good at this. So, this part is incredibly frustrating.

Next, Australia is still overpowered. Whoever controls Australia will probably win the game. Fortunately, this one has a caveat - you can fix this. Since the winner of a game can make a continent bonus plus one or minus one, you can make Australia only worth one extra army instead of two. Plus, one of the scar cards (ammo shortage) makes it harder to defend a country. In addition, players cannot start on "scarred" territories, so this also can prevent players from being allowed to even start in certain territories in Australia. However, in your first few games, this might be a problem.

What's in the box

Finally, because of the abbreviated timeframe in Risk: Legacy, I think that a player who is close to being knocked out (the difference between "knocked out" and "eliminated" is that if all of your armies are destroyed, you start your next turn with half of your initial armies on any valid starting territory; "eliminated" means there are no starting territories) has very little chance to come back in the game. Not only have you probably lost your own headquarters, but it is incredibly difficult to ever accumulate enough armies to actually challenge the other players that are still doing well - especially since they are collecting more armies than you each turn. Your only chance is to somehow stay alive (if you are knocked out, then they get to take all of your resource cards), gather enough resource cards to get a large amount of reinforcements, and hope that your opponents fight a lot in the meantime. And, if they see you gathering resource cards, they will probably only leave you alone if one of them is close to winning the game (since they will know that they can steal your cards, which will help them win).

Overall, I give Risk: Legacy an 8.0/10. I absolutely love the ever-changing game. However, the ever-changing game is all centered around Risk. I wish that they had started with Risk 2210 and had then added the changing board to it - having a combination of new gameplay and new outside the game effects. Either way, I love that Risk: Legacy has introduced an entirely new idea into board games - one that I am very excited to see if people will incorporate into future games!

If you like war games, you might also check out Summoner Wars, Test of Fire: Bull Run 1861, and Axis and Allies: Pacific.

NOTE: I have been informed since writing this review that the only packet with variance is the "Do Not Open. Ever." packet.

Castle Panic Review

2012-02-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

A simple cooperative game that I people recommended to me is Castle Panic.

Castle Panic is like a tower defense video game - swarms of evil monsters are coming at your castle, and your job is to stay alive. (Yes, killing them is nice, but for all that is good, just stay alive, man!!!) Each turn, you start by drawing up to your hand limit. Next, discard a card (if you want) and draw a new one (if you discarded one); and then you can trade a card with another (willing) player. Now - smash the enemy!!! You can play as many cards from your hand as you would like (normally as many as possible). Primarily, this is done by playing cards that match the color and circle that an opponent is in, which inflicts a point of damage per card played (the map is built with four rings surrounded by a forest - each ring except the center one has corresponding cards in the draw deck). Finally, the bad guys do stuff - first they all move closer to your castle, and then you draw two more of them from the pile. This continues, again and again. Until the game is over - because you have either died off by allowing all of your castle towers to be destroyed, or because you have stayed alive through all of the swarms of (pile of) enemies, and have managed to kill off all of them.

The first thing that I liked about Castle Panic is that it is very simple. It's easy to learn, and also incredibly easy to teach. What's more, the game flows well and is fairly intuitive once you have learned it. This allows it to be played by just about anybody - friends that don't like "complicated" games, kids (probably starting at around 8 - though I made that number up, because I don't have children, so I really have no idea), or anyone else. Unfortunately, the simplicity of the game comes at a cost - and the replayability suffers.

My castle is never unscathed

The next thing that I like about Castle Panic is that it feels intense. The main thing that I heard when I asked people about this game is that "it's a bit too easy." Of the games that I have played, I never felt like I ran away with a game. Sure, I thought that at various times throughout my first game, but then the monster draw pile decided to smite my arrogance by having me draw 9 tiles on one turn! (We drew a "Draw 4 monster tiles," and the Boss that forces you to draw 3 monster tiles on the same turn. I will admit this probably isn't the normal situation, but I'd guess that other people encounter it periodically.) Even in the games I won, I felt like I was close to being annihilated, as I always had at least half of my towers destroyed. So, I think that the people who think Castle Panic is too easy really enjoy playing masochistic games like Forbidden Island on the "you start off the game drowning" difficulty. (Oh, there's also a variant of Castle Panic where you start the game without castle walls. I feel that everyone who thinks the game is too easy should play with this variant and then tell me if it solves their problem.)

However, though I liked Castle Panic, I had a few cons. First off, it's somewhat disappointing that there is no difference between players. For example, you have no "roles" like in Pandemic. Really, the only difference between playing with one player versus playing with six will be how often it is your turn, and how many cards you can draw and trade. This simplicity keeps the game from having as much replayability as I would like.

The next con that I had was that it was too difficult to kill a monster that made it into your castle. Specifically, there is one card in the deck that lets you kill a monster in this situation. One! Yes, if you are playing well, it doesn't become much of an issue. Yes, monsters do lose a hitpoint each time they destroy a wall or a tower (I hadn't told you that part), so they will slowly die either way. But, there is only one card that allows you to kill a monster that makes it's way into your castle. One!!!

Finally, I thought that the "Giant Boulder" was a bit too random. Essentially, this monster tile simulates the enemies massing together to roll a giant boulder at your castle. The boulder will destroy everything in it's path (even other monsters), and will only stop once it destroys a wall or tower. This really seems to be one of the main ways that walls and towers are destroyed (there are four Giant Boulders in the game). So, whereas I see the need for these tiles in play balancing terms, I still wish that it were a bit less random than "hey, you drew a tile and so now something is going to instantly blow up."

Overall, I give Castle Panic an 8.0/10. It's fun and easy to play - definitely worth a look. However, the game feels too similar from one play to the next for me to envision myself wearing out a copy. Yet, it's good enough that I will occasionally pull it out and give it another game.

Want a second opinion? Check out Play Board Game's Castle Panic Review; or if you want to read about other cooperative games, you might also check out Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings, Shadows Over Camelot, and Sentinels of the Multiverse.

I would like to thank Fireside Games for providing me with a review copy of Castle Panic.

Fealty Review

2012-02-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

An interesting area control game by a small publisher (Asmadi Games) is Fealty.

Fealty, at it's core, is a very simple game. The (full) game consists of eight rounds, in which players each place a single piece. Specifically, each player starts with three cards in his hand. Each player selects one of his three cards and all of the players reveal them at the same time. Whoever placed the lowest numbered card places first, followed by the other players in ascending order. Finally, each player draws back up to three cards. There are a couple of rules to note when playing pieces (your cards each correspond to one of your pieces), though. First, you cannot place on the same "duchy" (one of the boards that makes up the playing area) as another player in a single round. Also, you cannot place in the same row or column that you have placed a figure in earlier. Finally, you can't place on top of "obstacles" - mountains (apparently there are no dwarves in Fealty), other pieces, etc. At the end of eight rounds, you add up influence - again, starting with the lowest numbers claiming tiles, and continuing until all of the pieces have claimed everything that they can. Whoever has the most influence is the winner.

The first thing that I like about Fealty is it's simplicity. Essentially, the designers have been able to distill area control to it's core; and what is left is the game of Fealty. Everything you need for a quality area control game is included, but there is really very little excess. This allows you to have a game with depth, yet it can be played in around 30 minutes. You are able to have a give and take interaction with other players where you can block them from claiming influence (of course they'll do the same to you), or you can peacefully each try to claim as much as possible (well... at least theoretically you can do this - I've not seen it. Of course, I'm normally the one doing the underhanded blocking of my opponents, so maybe I'm the wannabe warmonger in this scenario.) Due to the nature of the scoring, it is entirely possible to remove most of the value of your opponent's early placed piece by placing a piece of your own (with a slightly lower number) which will claim several of the squares around your opponent - thus cutting off his access to other tiles.

The next thing that I like about Fealty is it's replayability. The game comes with double-sided terrain, and also comes with two different sets of pieces. You can play the game where all nine of your cards are available to you from the beginning, or you can play where you draw three at a time. You could even play where you get to pick cards from each of the two sets, if you really wanted to. These fairly minor inclusions add quite a bit of replayability. I could play it repeatedly (which is really the definition of replayability - which Blogger keeps telling me isn't even a word; stupid Blogger, it should play more board games) and not feel like I always know where the best placement of my figures should be on the board (since the board will be different every time).

The third thing that I will mention is the collapsing options throughout the game. I thought this part was very interesting. Since you can't place in the same row or column that you have previously used, the number of options you have throughout the game will decrease (and the importance of some of the pieces' powers that allow you to move will increase). This adds quite a bit to the strategy (though I'm far from having mastered it). You have to decide whether you want to use your large pieces, which can claim a lot of territory, in the middle of the board early (while you can still legally place there); thus opening yourself up to having your opponents block most of your scoring, or if you want to wait until the end to place that large piece. You have to decide if you should leave an open spot somewhere in the middle for your piece(s) to be placed towards the end of the game - and hope that your opponents don't take it from you. As the game progresses, your options become more and more limited as you eliminate a row and column each round, and if you're not the first person to place, your opponents will even be eliminating entire duchies! By the end of the game, you may only have about 5-10 legal placements. And these placements may be horrible if you don't plan ahead (author's note: this is from experience; my final placements in Fealty are often horrible).

However, I did have some cons with Fealty. First, I felt that the rules were unclear on some points. Fortunately, there were examples, so I was able to figure out what I think the correct rules are, but I'm still not entirely sure. I wish that they had addressed some of my issues more directly. Specifically, (I will admit that I may have missed these things in the rules) I never saw the rules explain what a "conflict marker" does (we assumed it was an obstacle). I also never saw it clearly tell me if an opponent's influence marker counts as an obstacle to prevent you from drawing a path through them to claim tiles on the other side. (An example suggests that opposing influence do count as obstacles, so we played it that way).

The other con that I have is harder to explain. Because of how the scoring works in the game (and that the person influencing any given tile might change from one round to the next until final scoring), the first game or two will be very hard to see how well each player is doing. Until the end when you place all the influence markers, you won't know if you are doing winning or getting obliterated. However, once you get past this initial blindness, you run directly into "Analysis Paralysis" (taking a long time to decide what to do on a turn because of too much information or too many choices). Since the influence is not immediately visible, you will have to continually look around the board to determine what positions might be valid. And, inevitably, once you finally find the correct position it is illegal because of your previously placed pieces (there's an alliteration for you), and so you have to start looking all over again! This is almost begging for a computerized version of the game that allows you to highlight where each person is successfully influencing (and where you can legally place).

Overall, I give Fealty an 8.0/10. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised with the game. It's not something that I'm going to yearn to play repeatedly, but I thought that it was very intuitive and really a very solid title. This is now the second game I've played by Asmadi Games (Innovation being the first), and I am pretty impressed with this small publisher!

If you like Fealty, you might also read about Princes of Florence, Smallworld, and Alien Frontiers.

I would like to thank Asmadi Games for providing me with a review copy of Fealty via Game Salute.

Puzzle Strike Review

2012-02-03T03:31:00.000-08:00

A game with an interesting take on the deck building mechanic is Puzzle Strike.

Specifically, you could say that Puzzle Strike is "what Quarriors was trying to do" (build a "deck building" game without cards). Instead of cards, Puzzle Strike is played with chips. And, instead of the traditional means of victory (victory points of some sort at the end of the game), it mixes in an element of classic Nintendo-style puzzle games like Tetris. Each turn you ante a gem into your pile (like having rows fall down on your screen), and the last person to have his ante pile filled up is the winner. So, to start each turn, a player takes a one point gem and puts it in his ante pile. Next, he is able to perform an action using the chips in his hand (actions can include combining chips into larger chips and "Crashing" chips to remove them from your ante pile and send them to the opponent on your left (who can counter Crash, etc)). After playing an action, you have to buy a chip from the bank. If you have no money, then you have to buy a wound chip - which does nothing, but it makes your deck worse because it keeps you from drawing something useful. Finally, you discard all of your chips and draw back up to five. And, depending on the size of your ante pile, you may draw some bonus chips (one bonus chip for every three points in your ante pile). Finally, you check to see if you have ten or more points in your ante pile - and if you do, then you lose (after all, your screen has filled up - you can sit there envisioning a TV screen with a pixelated "Game Over" label flashing).

Gambling Panda

The first thing that I love about Puzzle Strike (yes, love) is that there are character specific chips. Each "deck" starts with six one-point gems, a Crash gem, and three character specific gems. I have not played enough to see if any of the characters are overpowered (I've played 4-5 times), but they at least all seem balanced. However, each character plays quite differently. Some are good at defense, some help you perform extra actions, one transforms into "Dragon Form" which causes him to ante 2's instead of 1's, but also makes his crashes un-defendable - and one (the Gambling Panda) has a chip that can only be used when he has 10 or more points in his ante pile (is about to die). I wish that more games would start doing this! Can you just imagine playing the Star Trek: Deck Building Game and getting to pick whether you're using the Klingon, Romulan, or Federation starting deck? Sure, Nightfall allows you to draft at the beginning of the game to make player-specific piles, but Puzzle Strike is the only game I've seen that allows you to actually start with different items that have different powers - and it does it well!

The next thing that I like about Puzzle Strike is the vintage puzzle game feel. I really think that this theme allows it to be played and enjoyed without feeling as competitive. Yes, I want to win (as with all games), but the theme is just relaxing and allows you to enjoy the act of playing the game - almost like it reminds me of my childhood to an extent.

Dragon Form!

Next, I think that it's interesting that, essentially, the entire game is played with a countdown timer. Every turn, each player gets closer to losing. Sure, you can counteract this by playing Crash chips to send some of your pile at your opponents, but unless you actively do something to prevent it, you will lose the game simply by playing. For whatever reason, this mechanic resonated well for me.

Finally, I like that the closer you are to losing, the more chips you get to draw. This leads to more combos being played. If I am doing incredibly poorly, I am more likely to draw several Combine chips (these let you combine two gems in your ante pile and perform another action) and then Crash a larger gem at my opponent. It also gives me a better chance of drawing something that helps me to defend. It can do quite a bit to balance out the luck of having to draw the right chips at the right time.

For the most part, I really enjoyed Puzzle Strike. However, there were a few things that I should point out. First of which is that a lot of the chip piles will be left untouched in most games. Whereas, in our first game every chip seemed crucial (and, truly, I haven't seen any chips that aren't ever useful), some are simply better than others. Specifically, Crash and Combine are better than a lot of the other Action Chips - so unless there is a chip that lets you string together several Actions, you will probably find yourself mostly focusing on buying the Crash & Combine (and 2-4 of the other chip piles; especially if there are some that let you steal other people's Crashes and Combines... and then you'll be quite pesky. And other people will have to play the "Really Annoying" chip on you. That's right - that's what the chip's name is. Why? Well - because it's really annoying.). To be fair, though, this is true in any deck building game - you are trying to hone your deck as much as possible, and so you will often avoid buying good cards in an effort to get better cards. (*cough* I mean chips. Did I say cards again? It's like there's not really a difference or something.)

The next con is something that has already been addressed by the game company. It is very easy in Puzzle Strike (during your turn) to get your hand, in-play chips, and ante piles confused. And, if this happens, it can inadvertently change the game dramatically (by changing how many gems are in your ante pile). Fortunately, the Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack provides you with playmats to keep track of each of these things separately. Sweet - now if only it weren't $25. I'd guess at some point they will combine them and sell them together for a discount.

Those are really my only two (very minor) cons. I will mention two other things briefly, though. Using chips instead of cards is unique. It doesn't really affect gameplay at all (which is why I kept referring to chips as cards), but it does reinforce the theme, so that was nice. Finally, the rule that forces you to buy a chip each turn is interesting. It forces players to pay attention to how they construct their deck to ensure that they can always afford to buy something. At the same time, it can water down a deck - which I think is intentional. This prevents the game from dragging out if several players are all able to build decks that consist of only Combines and Crashes.

Overall, I give Puzzle Strike a 9.0/10. I was quite pleasantly surprised by this game, and I'd recommend that anyone that likes vintage puzzle games or deck building games should "hit start" on this one. (Whoa! Vintage Game reference!!! If only anybody else thought I was nearly as funny as I did!)

And, if you like deck building games, you might also want to read my reviews about Thunderstone or Dominion; or if you like the Fantasy Strike world that Puzzle Strike is set in, check out Yomi.

I would like to thank Sirlin Games for providing me with a review copy of Puzzle Strike via Game Salute.

The Speicherstadt Review

2012-01-31T13:50:00.000-08:00

Check it out, I'm famous! You can see my review of The Speicherstadt at Dice Hate Me. Thanks to Chris for the opportunity to share this review with all of his fabulous fans!

If you're looking for more euro-style games, you might also check out my reviews of Caylus, Le Havre, and Tigris and Euphrates.

Carcassonne Review

2012-01-31T04:19:00.000-08:00

When a game truly defines a genre, I think it is only appropriate that I give it a try. And so, I wound up buying Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is the tile placing game. In Carcassonne, players take turns drawing and playing a tile. When playing a tile, it must be be placed in a "valid" position (which means that whatever is on the tile matches up with what is on the tiles next to it - no dead-ending roads, castles without walls, etc). After placing the tile, a player has the option of placing a meeple (yes, I believe Carcassonne also brought us meeples - wooden people shaped pieces) on the newly placed tile. Placing meeples is where much of the strategy of the game takes place, as it is what drives the scoring of the game. Meeples can be placed on roads, farms, cloisters, and castles. Whenever one of these things (other than a farm) is "completed" (the castle is completed, the road becomes a circle, etc) then the meeple scores points and becomes available for the user to re-place. Play continues like this until all of the tiles are placed. At this point, farmers score points, and so do all of the meeples on incomplete roads, cloisters and castles. Then, gasp, the player with the most points wins.

What's good and innovative about Carcassonne? Well, we will start with innovative - the whole game is innovative (to me). I had never seen a game where the actual playing of the game is based on placing tiles. Yes, there is a possibility of games before Carcassonne being based on tile placing (feel free to tell me about them in comments), but Carcassonne still managed to define the genre, as it brought it to the gaming market in a big way.

Now that I've told you that it's innovative - is it good? Well, I think that the best aspect of Carcassonne is that it is a nice, simple game. When you want to play a game but don't want to obsess about every move and debate whether it is the best strategy, Carcassonne is your game. It is easy to teach people (though I recommend not beating the snot out of them like what happened to me the first time I played), and can be played by almost anybody - gaming background or not. It is long enough to be engaging, without being so long that you get bored with it (though if you play too many expansions, you might argue that it gets too long).

However, though Carcassonne is very innovative and simple... it didn't click for me. I like to say that I don't care what genre a game belongs to, as long as it does that genre very well. Tile placement may be my exception. I have tried several tile placement games including Carcassonne, Alhambra, Architekton, and a few others. I haven't found any that I think of more highly than "they're ok." Carcassonne falls into this range for me. I can play it, but it's not really one of my preferred games - I would play it when friends want to play it.

Now, for a more objective con, I dislike the reactive nature of Carcassonne. Each turn you must draw a tile, assess the current state of the game, and then place it. There is very little that you can do to form a continuing strategy throughout the game. No matter how well you place things, if you don't draw the correct tiles to allow you to score, there is very little that you can do. I think that this does add to the lightheartedness of the game, and indeed many people will like this. However, this isn't an aspect of games that I am particularly fond of.

Overall, I give Carcassonne a 7.0/10. It is a respectable game that I understand why people enjoy. However, with that said, it appears to have defined a genre that I have discovered that I dislike.

If you're looking for gateway games, you might want to check out Tsuro, Cargo Noir, Shadows Over Camelot, or 7 Wonders.

Fastrack Review

2012-01-27T04:08:00.000-08:00

So, sometimes I play incredibly complicated games, and sometimes I just relax and play something quick and easy. Something like Fastrack.

In Fastrack, you and your opponent sit on opposite sides of the board, and you each start with 5 disks on your side. You also have an elastic band attached to your side of the board. Here are the complicated rules: using the elastic band, be the first player to flick all of the disks to your opponent's side of the board. Now, it's not as easy as it initially sounds - after all, there is only a small opening in the middle of the board to shoot the disks through. If you're able to shoot the disks over the middle divider, that's legal as well. Finally, if a disk shoots off the board entirely, it is out of play until the end of the round. That's it - now you know how to play.

Here's the first thing that I like about Fastrack - it's incredibly kid friendly. Now, I don't have children, so I'm not always the best judge of this. However, when I went over to a friend's house, his kid was playing Slithering-Jumping-Hissing Snake (oh, you don't know the rules to that one? They're fairly simple - you have to wriggle yourself across the floor... or jump... or even walk if you're not motivated. Oh, and you can hiss at people - and you definitely want to earn style points! But, really, there's no score keeping, so those style points just make you feel better.) Anyway, where was I - ah, yes, Fastrack. So, after I arrived and the very intense Snake game ended, I asked if he wanted to play Fastrack with me - the answer was yes, and we both enjoyed playing several rounds of it until I was ready to move on to the next game; he then played with the next person... and would have continued playing except that he had to go to bed. So, yes, I would say that I have tested this and that "kid friendly" is a very valid descriptor for this game.

Next, I really have enjoyed dexterity games recently. I realize that they're not for everyone, but if you're looking for something fast-paced that requires dexterity, Fastrack is a good choice. Most other dexterity games (like PitchCar) allow you to prepare for your turn and take your time, Fastrack is not like that. You have to be ready to go full speed the whole time.

Now for something interesting that I hadn't thought of when I first heard about the game. How hard is it to shoot your piece through the middle? Well, not too terribly hard. However, you have to be careful with this - keep in mind, you both have elastic bands. So, if your opponent is grabbing a piece and not covering his band while you shoot a piece at him a bit too powerfully, there's a good chance that it will bounce off of his band and come back to your side. This happens to me much more often than I would like - I need to work on shooting a bit more softly.

The only real "con" to the game is related to the nature of it - it is a very simple dexterity game. If you don't like dexterity games, fast-paced games, or non-strategy games, then why would you even consider playing this? For me, I enjoy Fastrack as a diversion, but it is not the kind of game that I will spend hours at a time playing. However, I will probably break it out and play a few games of it every now and then for a change of pace - and enjoy playing it when I do so. After all, it is relatively small and light, so it will be easy to carry to a gaming event and play when I have a few extra minutes.

Overall, I give Fastrack an 8.0/10. It is a fun, lightweight dexterity game that can be played just as easily with kids or adults. (Though kids might realize that it's much more effective to shoot all of the pieces off of the board rather than to your side of the board - this is actually a brilliant strategy. You've been warned.)

I would like to thank Blue Orange Games for providing me with a review copy of Fastrack.

Yomi Review

2012-01-24T04:17:00.000-08:00

A somewhat hotly debated board game that came out recently is Yomi.

Yomi is a fairly simple fighting game. Each player takes on a character and attempts to knock out his opponent. This consists of a series of rounds in which both players will play a card and (depending on what cards are played) one player will most likely take damage. Specifically, each player chooses a card (and a side of that card) to play each round. Both reveal at the same time, and there is a Rock/Paper/Scissors style resolution. Attacks beat Throws, Throws beat Blocks & Dodges, Blocks & Dodges beat Attacks. If both players play the same type of card, then the tie is broken based on the speed of the attacks. Once a player successfully scores a hit, depending on the Attack or Throw, they will probably be able to combo that attack to score more damage. His opponent has the opportunity to counter by playing a Joker, though - or to bluff and pretend that he is playing a Joker. If the person being attacked truly played a Joker, then all of the combo damage is deflected. Otherwise, he takes all of the extra damage and loses the card he used to bluff! Finally, both players have the opportunity to "Power Up" by discarding various poker hands to retrieve Aces (each character's super moves) from the discard pile and/or deck. Play continues in this manner until one of the characters is knocked out.

Now that you understand the rules of the game, it's time to discuss the crux of the game (I normally jump into pros and cons, but this is a much more topic in Yomi). The crux of the game is the Attack/Throw/Block (Rock/Paper/Scissors) mechanic. As opposed to standard Rock/Paper/Scissors, in Yomi you aren't just guessing at what the other person will play. You know enough information that you will be thinking, re-thinking, and over-thinking the situation. Each character has a different breakdown of cards in their deck (with a cheat sheet on their character card telling you this breakdown on a 0-5 scale). Therefore, you know if your opponent is more likely to have Attacks, Throws, Blocks, or Dodges. You also may know if they have a Block (if they have successfully Blocked previously). You also might know if they have some Aces, and if you paid attention, you'll know how that Ace can be played. But you also know that they know all of this. Therefore, the game of Yomi is truly a battle of wits against your opponent as you both try to stay one step ahead of each other as you try to outwit one another. If you like this type of mechanic, then you will absolutely love Yomi. If this sounds like something that you are uninterested in, then you should definitely stay away.

Characters add flavor

The first pro that I have found in Yomi is the different characters. This game could mechanically work with a standard deck of playing cards (where you make each suit a certain type of move), but it would have no flavor. Instead, with the characters, the differences in decks, and the different breakdown of moves, you truly get the feel that each character has a unique style that you need to embrace in order to win. Along the lines of theme, the next pro that I have for Yomi is that I really enjoy the artwork. Whereas I don't often care much about the components in games (unless they are really good or really bad), I found the art in Yomi to be a definite highlight of the game.

Next, I really liked the fact that each card was double sided. This essentially doubles the possible plays that you have available. This is critical as you are trying to stay one step ahead of your opponent. If all of your cards were one-sided, then you would be more likely to guess what your opponent is going to play based on how many cards they have in their hand. However, with the double-sided cards, you are almost guaranteed that they at least have a chance of countering whatever card you are going to play.

Double-sided cards add variety

When playing Yomi, however, I found that I was often frustrated by not having my deck "flow" well. I will freely admit that I have not played Yomi to the point where I consider myself a master at the game, and so this con may go away with continued play. However, I often found myself short on cards, which makes comboing and powering up very difficult (these actions both require several cards to perform). Without being able to combo, you are not able to hit your opponent for more than a few points each turn, which in turn leads to the pace of the game being much slower. Now, Blocks allow you to draw extra cards, so if you are very good at picking the right time to play a Block, you may not suffer from this problem - but it was frustrating in the games that I played.

My other con is really just a confession - I was not in love with the Attack/Throw/Block mechanic. I think that it works, but it wasn't something that captured my imagination and made me want to keep playing it. Since this is the crux of the game, you can imagine that the game didn't really click very well for me.

Overall, I give Yomi a 7.5/10. Even without being enamored with the key mechanic, I thought that it functioned well enough to give it a respectable score. The closest comparison that I know of is BattleCON, which I also gave a 7.5 to; however, in a direct comparison, I believe that Yomi would score the victory. At $100 for the complete Yomi set, I would highly recommend trying out a friend's copy or buying some of the smaller sets before investing in buying the complete set.

Want a second opinion? You can read another review of Yomi at Play Board Games.

I would like to thank Sirlin Games for providing me with a copy of Yomi via Game Salute.

PitchCar Review

2012-01-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

Have you ever read an internet blog about board game reviews? (I hope so, otherwise I'm writing this to myself.) Well, I do, and several of them told me about PitchCar. Now here I am - the proud owner of my own copy.

In PitchCar, you build your own race track, and then each player races to get around the track three times. Your car is a wooden disc that you move by flicking it along the track. If your car flips over, knocks another car off the track, or goes off the track itself, then you are placed back where you started (and if you knocked another car off, it goes back as well). If you start your turn next to a rail or another car, you get a little bit of wiggle room to make room for a good flick. The first person to cross the finish line the third time is the winner! That's all of the rules.

The first thing that I love about PitchCar are the rails. None of the other reviews mentioned them. I figured that the game would just consist of carefully navigating along the path, and that it might be a bit slow. Fortunately, there are rails along the pieces that are made well and really let your car fly around turns. The rails help the game be much faster paced and can allow a really talented "pitcher" to send his car halfway around the course in a single (amazing) hit!

The next thing that I like about PitchCar is that the track is customizable. If the track were the same each time, the game would get somewhat boring. I think it is really important to the game that this track is customizable. Along with that, however, I think that many people will enjoy setting up different tracks and (if using the expansions) building crazy ramps and such. In the same reason that people enjoy Legos, I think that people will enjoy the setup aspect of PitchCar.

Really, the biggest pro that you need to know about is that PitchCar is a lot of fun. It has that "it" quality that makes people enjoy playing it together. It can be played anywhere from 2-8 people, and I believe it truly can be enjoyed with any of those numbers. It's fast enough that you could play a quick game when you needed a break from something else, but it's also fun enough that you could set it up and play it off and on throughout an entire night. When looking for a game where fun is more important than strategy, PitchCar is definitely where you should look.

However, there are a couple of nuisances about PitchCar. First, I have noticed that in my set the rails often come loose. You will fairly regularly be fixing your track by pushing the rails back in. And, if you didn't proactively push the rails in, you might occasionally be annoyed because the rail came off when you hit it with your car, and it can completely mess up your shot!

The other thing that I will mention that is a con for PitchCar is that the first player has a distinct advantage - especially depending on the track. The "official" rules state that you should each go around the track once in as few flicks as possible to determine poll position. We normally determine poll position by letting whoever feels like going next take the next turn. If the first player is able to get a good first flick, and some of the other players have bad flicks, there will often be a large cluster of cars together that are really hard for late-turn players to pass - while the first player is flying along by himself (until he starts lapping people).

The last thing I will mention that you need to be aware of - it is crucial that you set up your track on a completely flat surface. When we first got the game, we set it up on our rug. It looked flat but it was not flat. Remember where I said it was awesome that you could customize the track? Here is the con of that - if you do not set it up on a perfectly flat playing area, then the intersection of different pieces will give you a speed-bump feel, and cars will constantly fly off the track, even when going slowly!

Overall, I give PitchCar a 9.0/10. I got my copy in a trade, and I'm glad I did - I love the game! With that said, it seems really expensive for what it is (I think the base game lists around $75!). Fortunately, I already own a copy, so I will play the crud out of it! Now, I just need to find a way to get all of the expansions - yeah, all of them... because I want them... all. Bottlenecks, jumps, crosses, etc!

Innovation Review

2012-01-17T04:15:00.000-08:00

One of the most innovative games I've played in a while is Innovation! (First, yes I love puns. Secondly, this is actually a true statement.)

Innovation is an abstract version of a civilization building game. Whereas you go through "ages", your powers get better but you never really feel like you're building an empire (and you don't really get troops to attack people with). But that's ok. What you actually do is this: each turn you get to perform two actions. These can be to draw a card, play ("meld") a card from your hand, "achieve" if you have enough score (gaining a certain number of achievements wins the game), or activate a card effect for one of the cards you have "melded" ("perform a dogma"). That sounds pretty straightforward and possibly even boring. Where things get interesting, however, are when you are performing a dogma. When activating a card's power, the power is related to a symbol - a castle, leaf, crown, clock, etc. If another player at the table has more of the corresponding symbol showing than you do, then they have to do the card action first. The game keeps going like this until one person has enough achievements to win (or the last draw pile is empty and someone has to draw from it; or one of the instant win conditions is met).

The first thing that I like about Innovation is how the dogmas work. Specifically, there are two different kinds of card powers - there are "demand" powers, and there are normal powers. Both of these are related to the number of resource icons each player is showing. If you perform a demand action, then all of the players with less resource icons than you of the given type are affected (generally negatively). If you perform a standard action, then everyone with as many of that resource icon as you get to perform the action first (this generally helps them, but it can sometimes allow you to perform the action more powerfully). This works really well. It encourages people to both have good cards in front of them, but also to make sure that they have large amounts of resources showing - specifically for whatever power their opponents are using.

Splaying Up

My next pro is something unique to Innovation (as far as I know). It's a concept called "splaying." Splaying is especially important because of the previous pro of how dogmas work. There are various cards in the game that allow you to "splay" cards in different directions. What this means is that you can take a stack of your cards (by default you can only have one card showing of each type (color)) and you can reveal part of the cards underneath the top one. For example, when "splaying right", you slide your top card along with each card underneath it to the right so that the far left resources of each bottom card are displayed. This can be very powerful as it can allow a player to suddenly have large numbers of resources showing - and since resources let you perform actions on other people's turns (or prevent them from doing actions on your turn), this is a crucial component of the game. This is a mechanic that works masterfully, and only works because the cards are both well thought out conceptually and well laid out graphically.

Skyscrapers - A very powerful card!

Now, with those brilliant pros, there are some other things that you need to be aware of with Innovation. First, there feels like a runaway leader mechanic while playing the game. If you are losing (especially because you have less resource icons showing), you can start to feel hopeless. However, there are enough resource types that it is very difficult for one player to be winning in all of the different categories. And, there are some incredibly powerful cards that can quickly sway a game. For example, if one player is winning in every category except for the "crowns", they can have entire piles of their empire (including all of the splayed cards underneath the pile) removed with the "Skyscrapers" card - suddenly the leader is the one playing catch-up! On the other hand, if a player that is already winning gains a powerful card like this, they may be able to completely obliterate their opponents! Essentially, it felt to me like one of the "balancing" mechanics was to make cards that were more and more powerful as the game progressed. This makes sense to some degree from a thematic perspective (we have better weapons and technologies now than 100 or 200 years ago), but you really need to be prepared for this kind of giant power swing before trying the game. Some people will not have any concerns with this, but I wasn't a huge fan of it (granted, Skyscrapers was used against me, so take that how you will).

Another thing to realize before deciding whether you would like Innovation is that the game plays out quite differently with different numbers of players. I have played it with 2, 3, and 4 players. With 2, obviously you have the most control over what happens in the game - you're going every other turn. However, you have the hardest time catching up if a player starts winning (I believe) because you have nobody to help you slow down the leader. On the other hand, a 4-player game is almost chaotic because so many things can happen between your turns that you almost feel like the game is out of control. Yet, with key strategic moves, you may be able to score a victory. There is a good chance that you will have a strong preference of what size of game you enjoy most when playing Innovation.

My main con for Innovation is that I felt like it deserved to have some better art and graphic design. This isn't something that I normally care much about, but I felt it warranted mention here. Whereas the graphic design that allows for the splaying is beautifully setup, much of the art feels like generic "Clip Art" that you would find anywhere on the Internet. Plus, whereas the player aids are helpful, it would be nice to also include what the end of game conditions are as well as how to gain the non-age specific achievements (these are some special achievements that you can get throughout the game for being the first player to match a certain condition - like having all of the cards on top of your piles be from age 8 or higher).

Overall, I give Innovation an 8.5/10. I really felt like this game brought some fresh new ideas and I really enjoyed them. However, the power swings in the game are a bit more extreme than I would like, which kept the overall game score down just a touch.

I would like to thank Asmadi Games for providing me with a review copy of Innovation via Game Salute.

Babel Review

2012-01-13T04:19:00.000-08:00

A nice little two-player game that one of my friends introduced to me was Babel.

In Babel, the players are competing to try to build the largest temples. On any given turn, a player will draw three army cards, perform any number of actions (such as building temples, playing armies, using army powers, or once per turn doing a "migration" which consists of moving a group of 3 armies), and then draw two new temple cards that are available for either player to build (placing the lowest numbered one on top of the stack). In order to build a temple, they must have a corresponding number of armies cards present at that location - for example, in order to build a level four temple, they must have four army cards present. However, each of the army cards represents a different race of people. If three of a given race are in consecutive order, then the player may discard one of the three cards to perform that race's special power. Play continues in this way until one of the "game end" conditions is met; basically the game ends when one player has 15 points of temples and the other player has less than 10, or when one player gets 20 points of temples (or if the temple draw stack runs out, whoever has the most points wins). Did I make that crystal clear? Well, there's a reason it's called a "summary" and not an instruction manual. Oh, you didn't see where I called it a "summary", because I didn't use headers? Well, that's just whining...

For the first pro in Babel, I really liked the different races and their powers. Granted, I have not played this game enough to determine if one power seems "better" than any of the others, but in the games that we have played, each race's power had times in which it was crucially important. The Persians (which let you skip a level when building your temple) I initially thought were the weakest of the powers, but I used them to secure victory in one of the games! Some of the other powers are much more directly offensive (one of them lets you rob the top level of your opponent's temple, another lets you "emigrate" (kill) their troops), but finding the correct time to use your powers, while preventing your opponent from capitalizing on his (and maintaining enough units to actually build temples!) is the crux of the game.

The next major pro for Babel is simply what the game itself is - it is a fairly quick, somewhat deep, easy to learn two-player strategy game. There are some of these available (I think this was actually part of a product line several years ago of two player games). However, none of the other ones that I played from that group seemed to actually gel as well as Babel does. It claims to be 45-60 minutes, but I would think that around 30 minutes would be a bit more realistic. To actually learn the game from the rules takes about 15-30 minutes, and to teach it takes about 5 minutes. And yet, while playing the game, you feel like you're actually engaged in a strategic experience where one person legitimately wins primarily based on skill (and there's enough depth to it that the game won't be "mastered" after a couple of plays through). And, to go with all of that, the box is also compact enough that it could pretty easily be slipped into a backpack to be played at a coffee shop or, better yet, at an airport! (Yes, I'm back to really liking games that can be played at airports.) Setup time is incredibly short, and so it is an ideal game for these kinds of situations.

When it comes to cons for Babel, nothing truly jumps out to me like in many other games. That by no means is the same as saying the game is flawless. It simply means that its cons seem more nuanced. For example, I have questions about the replayability of the game. Whereas I have enjoyed my plays of it, I'm not really certain that it will be a game that I will really think "I really need to play that" about, nor was I immediately motivated to start a new game after completing the previous one. I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to get a game of it in. I think this really starts relegating it to the filler category - something that you play because you want to play a game, and often that you're playing while waiting for a different game to be played (such as if several people in your gaming group are regularly late).

Overall, I give Babel an 8.0/10. I debated between a 7.5 and an 8.0, really thinking that this one isn't quite as good as Hive (which I also scored at 8.0). Eventually, I determined that I think I simply should have given Hive a higher score, as this one seems to fit in perfectly at 8.0 I think that it is a solid game, and would truly be ideal for someone looking for a game that they can carry around with them and teach whomever might be interested in gaming.

Talisman (Revised 4th Edition) Review

2012-01-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

So, after hearing mixed reviews for a long time, I was finally able to play several games of Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, Revised 4th edition.

In Talisman, each player takes on the role of a generic person of a given type (Sorceress, Thief, Wizard, etc). From here, he must wander around the board fighting monsters and encountering strange phenomena until he is able to strengthen himself enough to go to the Crown of Command and then start killing off all of the other players (in the Crown of Command he gets a magical spell that lets him kill them from where he is without chasing them). On any given turn, the active player will roll a six-sided die and will then have to move that many places around the board in either direction. Once he finishes movement, he will encounter whatever is already there (if anything), or he might draw a new encounter card (or cards) as directed by the game space (or he may even try to fight another player if one is present). Once the encounter is resolved, his turn is over and the next person repeats the process. This continues until one person quests all the way into the Crown of Command (which requires a Talisman (hence the name "Talisman") to get into) and destroys all of his opponents (who are glaring at him for shooting them).

Talisman is a conundrum to me, and so this section about pros and cons may seem a little bit different than normal. For example, here is the first conundrum: Talisman felt like a lightweight game to me, and yet seems to average around an hour per player. By "lightweight", I mean that there are not a lot of stats that have to be kept track of, and combat is really pretty simple (compare your stat plus a six-sided die roll to the opponent's stat plus a six-sided die roll). It is a very quick paced game in which the time between each of your turns is only about a minute or two, even in five player. And yet, with this, the game can still take a long time to play (this is not as much true in two player, but even still the "short version" of the game where you only have to enter the Crown of Command (not kill everyone else) will take about one and a half hours). Because of that, I don't know that I can easily fit it into either the category of lightweight or heavy.

One of the pros for Talisman is that, since it feels lightweight, it allows for social interaction during a game. To me, Talisman is a game that I can play when I am really wanting to hang out with people but I don't really know what I want to do - we can talk and enjoy each other's company, but we can also be throwing dice and playing a game. In this same vein, it is also a game that I could see myself playing on a Saturday afternoon while watching baseball on the TV (yes, I like baseball), and the learning curve of the game is small enough that almost anybody could learn the rules and play it with you (though they might rudely make fun of our hobby, but that's a different discussion). Yet, with the small learning curve, there are still a few random rules that are easy to forget - like how many spells you are able to hold based on your craft; see, it's a conundrum.

The main unique pro that I have for Talisman is the concept of fate tokens. How many times have you made the worst possible roll of the dice at the most critical moment? For me, that seems to be the inevitable time that I will fail any given die roll. That's where fate tokens come into play. Each player starts with some fate tokens (based on their character) and you can use a fate token to re-roll a single die (only one that you have rolled on your turn - not one that was rolled against another player, and not one that was rolled against you). You have to keep the result (even if you're like me and roll the same number again). You can use this to re-roll for movement, battle, or encountering a location. This really helps you to avoid being turned into a Toad.... which can happen. (There are even special cards and figures for Toads - four of them, for in case lots of players are turned into Toads!) I've not seen anything like fate tokens in any other game, and I think that it is a great mechanic.

One thing that is noteworthy about Talisman but I both like and dislike is this: your character can actually die in Talisman. Whereas in games like Runebound, your character is "knocked out" (and you only lose an item or a few turns), in Talisman, if your character dies you get a new character and you have to start over. I thought that this was interesting and forced players to be much more careful about their life total. With that said, however, if someone dies after a few hours of the game, I personally would prefer that they were eliminated; realistically at that point they aren't going to win either way.

My second point of note is that Talisman is built to have player interaction. Whereas you can play Runebound (and many other games) as a race to see who can kill the big bad voodoo monster first, Talisman really pushes you towards fighting each other. There are several spells that affect other players, characters who have abilities that let you steal from other players, and even encounters that will affect the other players - in fact, in order to win, you have to kill everyone else! Many people will love this part of the game (they probably actually did player versus player combat in Runebound!) but some would prefer that this aspect of the game was a bit less emphasized. I just thought you would want to know about it up front.

One thing that I didn't like about Talisman is how the encounters were setup. The entire time you are playing the game, you are drawing from the same pool of encounter cards; the way that challenges become more difficult is that you either experience more of them at once or the board causes their traits to be somewhat higher. This setup does not allow for characters to experience monsters that are the appropriate level for their character - you are just as likely to experience a strength 7 dragon when you just start the game as you are to experience a pool of life that replenishes you or a strength 1 wild boar (which in the middle might get a plus two to be a strength 3 wild boar) when you are getting close to the final boss. What's more, in the base game of Talisman, there are far too many "useful" (or net no-gain) encounters. From the times I've played, it seems like there are twice as many items that you might find than there are monsters to fight. So, you might purposefully go to the locations that force you to encounter several cards, just to see what all you can draw (and hope that you don't run into one of the 2-3 dragons). I wish that there were several decks in the game - one corresponding to each region of the board.

Another thing to note that I don't consider a pro or con is movement. I had heard about the movement of the game for a long time before playing it - how awful rolling the six-sided die was. Whereas, I definitely don't like the movement system as well as I do in Runebound, I did not feel like it detracted from the game. Yes, there were times that I wish I could have rolled differently, but since you are able to have an encounter on every space that you land on (as opposed to only certain ones with encounter markers), the way that the movement works doesn't really help or hinder the overall game play.

Overall, I give Talisman an 8.5/10. I would be willing to play it some more, and I mainly envision playing it while hanging out with good friends and/or watching baseball.

Quarriors Review

2012-01-06T04:06:00.000-08:00

One of the most widely discussed games (whether positive or negative) of 2011 is Quarriors.

"Quarriors is Dominion with dice." That is how I was first told about the game, and I can't think of a better way of describing it myself. (See here for my Dominion review - one of the first reviews I wrote on this site!) In Quarriors, each player starts with 12 basic dice. Each turn, they draw six dice from their bag (and if their bag is empty, they return the discarded dice into their bag and continue drawing). After this, they roll all of their dice, which can cast spells, provide potential creatures, or produce "Quiddity" (money). After rolling the dice, you can summon any creatures that you rolled (they each have a Quiddity cost to summon), and you can buy one new die from the common area. After this, all of your creatures attack all of your opponents - you calculate your total attack value and your opponent sacrifices creatures until he is able to absorb all of the damage. Then, your turn is over. To start your next turn, if you have any creatures still alive, they score "Glory" points. The first player to a certain amount of Glory (based on the number of players in the game) is the winner. I believe that the game can also end once a certain number of dice piles are empty, but this has never occurred in a game that I have played, so I'm not sure how many piles it is.

My absolute favorite part of Quarriors is the replayability inherent in the game because of how the dice are setup. You have sets of five dice, but then you have three different cards that represent what those dice might be. Yes, each of the cards representing a given set of dice are very similar, but they still change up the game enough to give it some extra diversity. For example, the die representing a wizard may be a wizard that will give you extra glory when scoring, or he may allow you to cull dice from your bag. He may have a special ability that lets you re-roll him and get an extra die from the bag - it all depends on which card is representing that die in any given game. And, each of these different wizards has a scaled cost based on their abilities, so it actually allows some of them to be better than others (instead of all wizards are equal, but simply slightly different).

The next thing that I like about Quarriors are the Spells and Creatures. It is really hard to put words together to explain why I enjoy them, but I think that some of the Spells and Creatures are interesting, and add depth to the game. You can at least somewhat envision yourself actually bringing this giant dragon into the realm - and you feel like you should be suddenly winning since you managed to summon him! (Though you probably won't win based on a single creature, not even a sweet dragon.)

However, though Quarriors definitely has some positive aspects, there are some things you should be aware of. First of all, the game is incredibly random. Did you think that Dominion wasn't random enough through all of your shuffling and drawing cards? You also wished that there was a chance that your card didn't work as you wanted it to any given time that you play it? Then you would like Quarriors. The game can be incredibly fun or incredibly frustrating, all depending on how you roll. For example, that sweet dragon that I mentioned can be incredibly powerful if you roll the correct side of the die... or it can miss completely and give you Quiddity. This can be good, since there is a chance that all of the dice you draw are creatures, and you will need at least some Quiddity to play them; but it's normally frustrating. This element of the game isn't really a pro or con - it is really just the crux of the game, and you need to determine if that is something that you would enjoy.

My first con with Quarriors is that I don't feel like you are ever able to make a good "deck" (bag of dice). In most <whatever> building games, you have ways of getting rid of the start cards/dice, thus making your deck better. This isn't really the case with Quarriors. Yes, there is at least one creature that allows you to cull dice, but most games you will simply be attempting to make your die bag better by adding more powerful dice to it, not by upgrading what you have. This makes early turns more boring as you may be forced to debate on whether it is even worth it to buy the die that you can afford.

The other con that I have for Quarriors was that it felt like my purchases were a bit too prescribed. For example, the creatures are all costed well enough that 9 times out of 10 the creature that costs 7 Quiddity is better than the creature that costs 6 Quiddity. Therefore, most turns consist of rolling all of your dice and then looking to see what die costs the correct amount of Quiddity for what you rolled. What's worse, most of the Creatures that cost less than 5 Quiddity are worthless (in comparison to everything else), so there is very little reason to clutter up your die bag with them. Whereas other "building games" have things that you can purchase that are mid-range in cost, but helpful long term (like the Village in Dominion), I didn't really get that impression with Quarriors. There are very few mid-range cards that actually make your die bag better, which makes you feel like you don't ever have a "good" bag of dice.

Overall, I give Quarriors a 7.0/10. I think that this game can be fun to play with the right group, but that group needs to appreciate lightweight, highly random games. If you enjoy deep strategy and having lots of control over your actions, Quarriors isn't really a game that I think you will enjoy.

EDIT: Since originally posting this review, it has been pointed out to me that I missed a rule. Whenever you score glory for one of your monsters, you are able to "cull" (remove) one of the dice from your used pile. This would definitely help address my first con, but I do not believe that this rule would make a big enough impact on the game to where you would ever feel like you had a "good" bag of dice. Specifically, in 4 player, you very infrequently score monsters (because everyone else kills them), and will probably only score a few monsters before winning (only the big monsters are likely to live long enough to score). In 2-player, I can see this being a much more important addition. Thank you to those of you who pointed this out to me, so that I can play it correctly from now on!

Top Ten Abstract Strategy Board Games - January 2012

2012-01-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

So recently I have been debating what I want to do with this site. I enjoy writing reviews, and I still intend for that to be the bulk of my posts. However, one thing that I've heard from some of my readers is that they like when I compare games to each other. Also, I got to spend some time with Jason from Play Board Games recently, and he encouraged me to start writing "Top Ten" lists - he said that they're both fun to write and engaging to readers. So, why not? Feel free to add comments to my Top Ten, missed games, and whether you like the addition of Top Tens to the site!

Some of these games I have reviewed, and some I haven't. If I've reviewed it, I'll give you the link to my review (instead of the normal link to Amazon, but feel free to use this Amazon link and search for any of these games in the search bar). If I haven't reviewed some of these yet, I'll try to get around to writing one for you! And, since I just completed my self proclaimed "Abstract Strategy Month" of December, what better place to start than...

Top Ten Abstract Strategy Games!!

10. Tsuro

Simple but enjoyable. This may be the only abstract strategy game that I know of that can support up to 8 players!

9. Stomple

Gorgeous and engaging. This game is perfect for anyone with children, but the amount of luck involved in your initial setup keeps it from placing higher.

8. Abalone

This is basically sumo wrestling as an abstract strategy game. It can be incredible fun, but can also become tedious if you and your opponent are too experienced at it, if you are both able to avoid getting any pieces knocked off the board.

7. Jin Li

One of my surprise finds of 2011 was Jin Li. Having never heard of the game before I was given a copy, I quickly fell in love. Surprising depth with very brief rules, I wound up buying the iPhone version so that I could play it when I needed a 3-minute break.

6. Hive

One of my very first reviews, Hive is the game on this list closest to having a theme, but it's paper thinness allows it to still land on the list. Simply a brilliant game (another one that I've bought for my iPhone) of attempting to surround your opponent's queen.

5. Yinsh

The Gipf project finally cracks the list with what many believe to be the best game in the series. Unfortunately, it's up against some brilliant competition both from other games in the Gipf project, and some outsiders. Still, Yinsh combines some beautiful gameplay elements to make for a great experience!

4. Hey, That's My Fish!

A game that can be enjoyed by everyone, I would recommend that everyone buy a copy of Hey, That's My Fish since you can currently buy it for around $12 from Fantasy Flight. The setup time (especially in comparison to the actual gameplay time) is the biggest downside, which is why I have converted most of my time with this game to playing it on the iPad. However, anyone with children take note - this is a great game that you can play with kids, and I've played it with kids as young as 4, who were still able to understand and enjoy the game.

3. Pentago

Mindtwister USA's flagship game really is a prototypical example of what I look for in an abstract strategy game - easy to teach, easy to transport, and many levels of strategic depth. "Play one, twist one, try to get five in a row." It's much deeper than it initially appears.

2. Gipf

Yes, I should post a review about this one. The original game from the Gipf project, Gipf is an amazing game. It combines elements of pushing and matching pieces into a brilliant, amazing, and exciting game. (I'm running out of adjectives - I love all of the games on this list!)

1. Dvonn

A game that I gave a score of 8.5 to tops the list? Yeah - I always say to read the text and not to focus on scores, and this is a perfect example. I love Dvonn. Love it. What's more, the setup and the teardown of the game are the game allowing for essentially no downtime with either of these activities. Some people disagree, but I think that the ever-collapsing board makes for a great play experience!

Honorable Mention

Rise, Tzaar, Ingenious, Multiplayer Pentago, Cityscape.

Any of these could have easily made the list, as they are all solid titles, but the real question would be - what do I take off of it in their place?

I hope you enjoyed my inaugural Top Ten list. Feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think I got right, and where you think I was way off! (As a note, I've never actually played Go, if you're wondering how it got completely left off of the list.)

Ingenious Review

2011-12-30T04:48:00.000-08:00

A game that I initially tried because there was an iPhone app for it was Ingenious (and if you notice from the picture, I actually had the Travel Edition).

Ingenious is an abstract spatial reasoning game. The game is played on a hexagonal shaped board in which players alternate placing pieces that are two hexes put together (like hex dominoes). After the first placement (in which players must place next to the symbols built into the board), the pieces can be placed anywhere on the board, but will primarily be placed next to other pieces with matching symbols. Once a piece is placed, you score points based on how many of the corresponding symbol are connected to the newly placed piece in each of the five lines beginning at the new tile (not going through the other half of the tile). If the newly placed tile causes the active player to score 18 in any of his colors, he can immediately place again. If not, he draws a new tile and then the other player takes his turn. Play goes on like this until no more tiles can be laid; at this point, whichever player has the highest number of points in his lowest scoring color/symbol is the winner (yes, it is by Reiner Knizia, in case you were wondering by this mechanic).

Let's begin with the paragraph that is in each of my spatial reasoning reviews: I don't really know how to express what I like about these games. I think other people had this issue, too, which is why they termed these games "abstract". So, if the rest of this review seems more like "rambling" (even more than normal) than it does "concise thoughts", you'll just have to get over that.

I really like how the placement of pieces works in the game. Especially because you can use pieces both offensively and defensively (and I imagine if I get better at the game, I'll be able to use them as both at the same time). You can use the pieces offensively by placing a color next to pre-existing tiles of the same color - this scores points and continuing the line of colors, but this also leaves it open for your opponent (or you on a future turn) to be able to score even more points. You can also play defensively by cutting off a long line of a single color by placing a different color at the end of it. However, then nobody will be able to score that line anymore. The ideal situation is to be able to place your tile in such a way as to be able to score the long line and then have the second half of your tile block off any future scoring of this line (preferably while scoring it's color, too). That would prevent your opponent from being able to easily earn points in one of the colors - which would then probably turn out to be his lowest scoring color.

Another thing that I like about Ingenious is the "Ingenious bonus". This is where you get to place two tiles in a row if the first tile caused one of your colors to finally be 18 points (the highest score on a specific color). Having 18 points in a color doesn't really help you in the game - after all, if a color has it's maximum number of points, then it won't be your lowest, and so it won't be the one that scores. However, with the Ingenious bonus, it is just rewarding enough to tempt you into scoring extra in that color. If I have a color that is around 15, I will start looking to get the Ingenious bonus in order to be able to go again - I'm not convinced it helps me very much strategically, I just really like getting to go twice in a row.

A final pro that I will mention is that I really like scoring based on your least valuable color. Whereas I have seen this mechanic in other games, it seems to work the best in Ingenious. Because of this mechanic, each player must make sure that they don't simply ignore one color. More specifically (since each tile only has two colors on it) they must make sure that they don't ignore one color for too long. You will probably not evenly place your colors throughout the game - you just have to make sure that as you place them you are planning ahead to where you will be able to score points on your other colors. And one thing that helps in this (that I haven't mentioned yet) is that if you don't have any tiles matching the color that you have the least points in, you can discard all of your tiles and draw six new ones at the end of your turn. This helps prevent the "score based on your lowest value" mechanic from causing you to lose simply because of what you draw.

I can't really think of any specific cons for Ingenious. I enjoy the game, but not quite as much as some other spatial reasoning games. I think this is really when my inability to speak in a very intelligent manner about the genre comes into play. I like the game, but there is just something about it that I didn't like quite as much as some of the others; and that's why it won't get quite as good of a score. However, don't hear me saying that it's not a good game, because it definitely is.

I'm sure that there's a lot more that I should say about the game, and that I'm not doing it justice by any means, but honestly I don't really have much more to add to this review. One thing that I will note is that I'm not a fan of the Travel Edition - I don't recommend buying it unless you actually intend to play it while traveling. The pieces are very small and it is a nuisance to try to pick them up. I didn't factor this into the score, though, since it is about the edition that I have and not about the game itself.

Overall, I give Ingenious an 8.0/10. It is a very solid abstract spatial reasoning game that I will continue to play. I still prefer Dvonn (which is growing on me more all the time), Yinsh, and Abalone, but Ingenious is a very solid title that I plan to continue playing for quite a while (though I did go ahead and replace my Travel Edition with the full-sized version).

Repello Review

2011-12-27T04:45:00.000-08:00

Another intriguing looking game by Mindtwister USA (makers of the fabulous game of Pentago) that I had the opportunity to play was Repello (which for some reason they don't seem to sell through Amazon).

In Repello (the first game I've played by Mindtwister that doesn't involve twisting the board) the object of the game is to score points by knocking pieces off of the board. This is possible because every piece "repels" every other piece - but you (as the active player) get to choose which piece gets repelled, and which piece stays. To start your turn, you move your piece one space in any direction (and leave behind a round black disc from your pogo-stick looking marker). Each square on the board has a number on it, and after your initial single-space movement, you continue moving by this many more spaces. If you run into a wall, then you "bounce" back in the opposite direction (or at a 45 degree angle if you come at it diagonally). After your move is completed, you must check to see if any two pieces on the board are adjacent to each other. If so, you must move one of them directly backwards from the piece it is adjacent to - if there are several pieces adjacent to each other, you choose the order that the "repelling" occurs in. After this initial "repelling", you again check for adjacent pieces, and you continue this process until the board is in a "resolved" state (no two pieces are adjacent) - this repelling is how you knock pieces off (to score points). Play continues in this manner until each player's pogo-stick marker is out of black discs. At that point, the game is over, and players score points for each of their discs.

The first pro to Repello is that it is incredibly chaotic. The game starts off (and can end) a bit slowly, but there is a peak in the middle of the game where a player will push pieces all across the board. Since each turn adds another disc to the board, the game is setup so that there will be adjacent pieces at some point. And after several of these pieces have been left behind (and before too many of them have been knocked back off) there will be some turns in which a player may wind up moving 10 or more pieces. These turns are great, and they are really where some players start to get a major point advantage in the game. This is also the most fun part about the game - "I'm going to move here and see what happens..." <five minutes later> "Ok, I'm done!" (after scoring 5 points).

The next pro to Repello is that it is really kid friendly. I can see people of any age playing the game, as the rules are simple enough to teach to kids (I would guess) as young as 6-8. What's more, kids may actually have more fun than adults with this game, as I could see them just enjoying the actual playing of the game, and so they would play it quickly (see the con below for how it works with adults).

The final pro that I will mention is one that I was the victim of the first time I played - you can knock off other players. Specifically, when you knock off other players, you get to steal a disc from their pogo-stick, and you also get to steal a disc that they had previously collected (such as that gold disc worth 5 points). This adds to both the fun and the strategy of the game; the fun because most people will enjoy knocking their opponent off, and the strategy because once you have collected valuable discs you need to make sure that your opponent cannot knock you off. However, after you are knocked off, you get to return to the board in one of the "green" (starting) tiles - and then you get to resolve all conflicts before making your move. This essentially gives you two opportunities to knock things off of the board! So, whereas it is not good to be knocked off (you lose a turn and a disc), you can really gain quite a few points when you come back on the board.

Now for the cons... ANALYSIS PARALYSIS (having so many options and/or so much input that you take forever to make a decision). Criminey, gee wilikers, and holy schnikes, Repello may as well have invented Analysis Paralysis! When playing with strategic minds, most of what you will see when playing the game is people sitting in their seat pointing at the board and counting to themselves. Each turn you have 9 different directions that you can move, and then you may have dozens to hundreds of combinations that you can do with repelling the pieces back and forth. In fact, you have so many options that when you finally do find what appears to be the "best" option, you then go back and ask yourself, "crud, now how did that start?" What makes this even worse is that you can't really do any of this until your turn starts because your opponents will quite possibly change up the entire board - and will at the very least change where they are located (which could mess with your entire chain). (I mentioned earlier that this is kid friendly. I don't think that they will deal with this as much, as kids are more likely to just play and see what happens.)

The next con is that the rules are not quite as clear as I would like in a few instances. For example, I'm still not entirely sure what all the rules are when a player runs out of discs on his piece. If, for example, one unfortunate player (me) has been knocked off the board several times, does his turn get skipped once he is out of pieces to leave behind? What about if he gets knocked off the board - does he get to come back on the board? I believe that the instructions do talk about these things, but it wasn't in clear enough language that we were confident that we were playing it completely correctly.

Overall, I give Repello a 7.5/10. I thought that it was fun, unique, and interesting. However, the Analysis Paralysis can cause this "30+ minute" game to take an hour and a half or more when I play it, and I think that this causes the game to drag a bit more than I would like. If you like spatial reasoning games, this is definitely one that you should consider - and if you have kids that like chaotic games, this can deliver there as well.

I would like to thank Mindtwister USA for providing me with a review copy of Repello.

Legend of Drizzt Review

2011-12-23T05:52:00.000-08:00

One of my very first reviews (I believe it was actually my second overall review) was of Castle Ravenloft. I enjoyed the game, but felt like it had limited replayability. Now that Wizards of the Coast has made two more Dungeons & Dragons titles, I was willing to try again - this time with Legend of Drizzt.

In Legend of Drizzt (just like in Castle Ravenloft), you are playing Dungeons and Dragons as a board game. This means that the scenarios and monsters are preset, but it gives you the opportunity to play with all of your friends without any of them having to run the game as the GM. Each player takes on the role of a hero and the players collectively attempt to accomplish the goal of the scenario (beat the big dragon, recover the treasure - you know, something heroic). Each turn, the players are able to move twice, or move and attack (or attack and then move). After doing this, if they are adjacent to an unexplored edge of the board, they can reveal a new dungeon tile (and a monster). If they don't explore, then they have an encounter (which never ends well, especially if you are near volcanic vents). Finally, the active player must move all of the monsters that he controls. Play continues like this until one of the heroes has died or until the heroes have accomplished their mission.

The first thing that I like about Legend of Drizzt is the same thing that attracted me initially to Castle Ravenloft - I enjoy that I am able to take part in a nice role-playing adventure without all of the setup time. Compared to a normal campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, you can very quickly start (and play) a game of Drizzt. And yet, though the game is brief compared to a normal campaign, the scenarios are very well done and I did not feel like the lack of a GM made the game any less enjoyable.

The next thing that I like about Drizzt is that you can customize your character, and that there are several characters to choose from - including some characters that are villains in some scenarios and heroes in others (I thought that this was a nice touch). There are significantly more heroes than players allowed in a game, which means that if you play the game repeatedly, you can use different characters each time. In addition, you are able to customize the attacks and "powers" that your character has each game, which allows you to even play the same character differently and tailor him to the scenario that you are playing.

A third pro that I think is interesting about Legend of Drizzt is how monster control works. On a player's turn, he controls all of the monsters that he has revealed on previous turns. However, so that you don't have to keep track of which instance of a given monster each player revealed, if there are several copies of a monster on the board (such as a Spider Swarm), the player controlling that monster will have to activate each copy of it on the board. So, if you are not paying attention to some of the smaller monsters, you must be careful that you don't allow too many copies of them out on the table, or else they will start activating very quickly! Whereas this is a fairly minor rule, I thought that it was a nice touch to the game.

The final pro that I will mention about Drizzt relates to the replayability issue that I had in Castle Ravenloft - I really like that they have added different kinds of scenarios. Now, instead of each scenario being strictly cooperative, some scenarios are team based, some are cooperative, and some are even competitive! The monsters that are encountered are still the same, but these different scenario types completely change the strategy with which you play the game - thus allowing the playing experience to stay a bit more fresh.

However, with that said, I still felt that the replayability of the game was a bit lacking. My biggest problem with Drizzt was that you are experiencing the same encounters and monsters every time through the game. Yes, there will be some games where you don't encounter one specific type of monster, but in essentially every game that we played, we ran into the same Feral Troll, Spider Swarm, and Hunting Drake. The scenarios are nice, and I do honestly like them, but the problem is that every scenario involves fighting through the same handful of monsters until you either die or get to whatever aspect of the scenario sets it apart from all of the others. Either way, 75% of the game deals with fighting the same grunts as in every other scenario.

The only other real con that I had for Drizzt was the opposite of the first pro that I mentioned. I really like that you can quickly pick up and play a short scenario of Dungeons and Dragons - but the cost in terms of gameplay is that your character will not really develop very much. None of the heroes are able to level up beyond level 2 (and often don't even get that far). This means that you won't have the satisfaction of the character truly becoming "yours." He will still feel like the out of the box character that he was at the beginning of the game.

Overall, I give Legend of Drizzt a 7.0/10. Adding the different kinds of scenarios helped address my largest problem with Ravenloft, and so it helped my score to go up a full point over what I gave to Castle Ravenloft! If you enjoyed the previous games in this series, then I fully believe that you will enjoy Drizzt as well. If you have been curious about the series, then I would recommend that you play them - they are definitely worth playing! I would simply recommend that (if possible) you play them a couple times before deciding whether you want to invest the money into purchasing your own copy.

I would like to thank Wizards of the Coast for providing me with a review copy of Legend of Drizzt.

Jin Li Review

2011-12-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

A game that I had never heard of was called "Jin Li". Then, a tornado blew up my house and lots of people sent me games. One of those people, David MacKenzie of Clever Mojo Games, sent me Jin Li. As I was looking for a new game to play, I asked myself "hey, what's that weird little game in the canvas zipper?" And thus... I found friendly fish.

In fact, the fish in Jin Li are so friendly that they want to touch each other (not in the dirty way, pervert - these are good, wholesome fish!). Instead, they just like being near the other fish. Because of this, they will reward you with their form of currency called "victory points" if you are able to get them adjacent to each other. Specifically, each turn you can move one of your fish and place a stone, or you can jump over a stone. You cannot jump over more than one stone or another fish. We call those things "cheating". However, if, after moving your fish, it is adjacent to other fish, then you score one point for each fish that is adjacent to the fish you just moved. Keep doing this until one person gets enough "victory points" to escape the fishbowl. Wait, these fish like each other... they don't want to escape. Oh well, the game is played to ten anyway.

The first thing that I like about Jin Li is that you only score on the fish that was just moved. If this weren't the case, I think that the game would be broken. After all, if your opponent moves his fish next to you, then at the end of the next turn you are still next to him. However, since it is only the fish that was just moved, you have to find a way to move and still be adjacent to the other fish. And there might be pesky stones in your way.

The second thing I like about Jin Li is the pesky stones that might be in your way. If it weren't for the placing of the stones, the fish would easily swim next to each other in peace and bliss forever (though you would punish them by leaving them in the game box (canvas zipper), since the game wouldn't be any fun). The stones, however, are the key element in thwarting what your opponent (and his fish) want to do. Stones can be used to both help your fish move more quickly (if a single stone is in front of you) and to block your opponent from moving (if multiple stones are in front of him). The stones combined with fish placement and the fact that you cannot jump over an opponent's fish all combine to make for an impressively strategic game with ridiculously simple instructions.

The main "con" to Jin Li is that it is a filler game. I won't ever go meet up with any of my friends simply to play Jin Li. I used to live 5 minutes away from the game store where I played most of my games; it would take about as long to get to the store as it would to play through a game of Jin Li. I really enjoy the game, but it is by all of my definitions a filler game that I will play in between longer games.

The nit-picky con to Jin Li is that the "board" (which appears to be a mousepad with the playing area screen-printed on it) does not like to lay flat. Neither do the instructions. I think that this is because they spend most of their life rolled up inside the canvas zipper.

Right, the instructions all fit on a single page. So I should stop before my review of the game winds up being significantly longer than the instructions.

Overall, I give Jin Li an 8.5/10. It is a very nice little strategy game that is a great way of passing time when waiting for other games to be played. I would recommend that everyone go out and buy it but, unfortunately, it is not easily (cheaply) available in the United States. It is (as far as I know) only printed in Spain through Nestor Games. However, there is an iPod/iPad/iPhone version available for $0.99. I bought it and I have really enjoyed it - I would recommend you check it out as well.

Like abstract games? You might also read my reviews of Abalone, Dvonn, Pentago, and Rise.

I would like to thank David MacKenzie of Clever Mojo Games for sending me a copy of Jin Li along with several boxes of other games from his personal collection to help rebuild my collection and to give to the people of Joplin after the tornado. Thanks, David!

Multiplayer Pentago Review

2011-12-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

So, as those of you who have followed my site for a while know, I really enjoyed playing Pentago (see my review here). Because of this, I was quite intrigued about Multiplayer Pentago.

Multiplayer Pentago is the same as Pentago - play one, spin one, try to get five in a row. However, instead of only being two player, it can be played with up to four players (or on two teams of two). In addition, instead of only having a 2x2 grid, now the gameboard is a 3x3 grid - adding 5 new sections that can spin.

Now that you know the game, I'm not going to really re-iterate the pros and cons, because they're really the same as in the original. Instead, I'll discuss the differences with the basic game of Pentago to give you a better feel of which one you might prefer.

First, Multiplayer Pentago gives you more ways to win. In the original game, you could be sneaky. So sneaky, in fact, that your five in a row could be spread out across three different tiles. However, if you're that sneaky player in Multiplayer Pentago, you can spread it across four tiles! Plus, the simple middle lines can now spread across three different tiles, making a three in a row on any given tile much more dangerous - it can now be expanded in either direction.

Next, you have the simple fact that you can play the game with more people. I like this feature, and I've enjoyed playing with both three and four players. Three players has an interesting dynamic in which, if one player is leading, the other players can both stop him. Instead of being only one "spin" away, two players can easily join forces to spin the other player's pieces in the wrong direction. However, you can also get caught in a situation where one player keeps blocking the player in front of him - just to let the third player's strategy go undefended (this is the player that gets to win). Four player's dynamics feel more like the basic game, but you have to watch out for so many more connections! When defending, though, you have help - if you don't see a five in a row coming, some of the other players might (or they might all be fooled! This happens too).

I also really enjoy the team aspect of Multiplayer Pentago. At first I didn't think that I would ever bother playing it. However, I think that it really is a fun way of playing the game - it can also be helpful if you play with a couple of people that don't have as much Pentago experience. For example, I have forced (ahem, "sweetly convinced") my wife to play Pentago quite a bit - so she's good at the game. We invited another couple over to our house and pulled out Multiplayer Pentago. It worked quite nicely for me and my wife to each pair up with a member of the other couple to form balanced teams. (And our house rule is that you can't talk to your partner; they just have to see the strategy. This prevents the player with more experience from basically just playing both turns, thus keeping the game more fun for all involved.)

The main place where I feel like the original Pentago may be better is in it's design - the original game was a great combination of sleek look with built in portability. Whereas I think that both games have a nice looking design, I think that the original Pentago just has a classic simple beauty to it. Plus, with the snap on lid (at least in the copy that I have) it is much easier to carry around - and with a much smaller footprint in my car (or bag). (Though, to be fair to the Multiplayer Pentago when talking about design, the double-sided pieces have grown on me. Instead of having four different kinds of pieces, there are still two - green/yellow pieces and blue/red pieces, and each player plays with his color up. It's a nice little touch.)

Overall, I give Multiplayer Pentago an 8.5/10. It's Pentago - with more options. I still don't think that people will get together just to play it (hence the 8.5 instead of 9.0), but I think that when people get together and start playing Multiplayer Pentago, they will enjoy it. And now, they'll feel less exclusive while doing so!

I would like to thank Mindtwister USA for providing me with a review copy of Multiplayer Pentago

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Shadows of Mirkwood Expansion Review

2011-12-13T06:03:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Now that all six installments of the "Shadows of Mirkwood" expansion to Lord of the Rings: The Card Game have been released, I figured it was time for me to write a combined review. This review will cover all six expansions, which include: The Hunt for Gollum, Conflict at the Carrock, A Journey to Rhosgobel, The Hills of Emyn Muil, The Dead Marshes, and Return to Mirkwood. Since this review is of an expansion, I am going to assume that you are familiar with the basics of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and if not, feel free to check out my review of it here. Also, since I've already covered the pros and cons of the basic game, this review will focus more on themes of the expansion set.

Heroes

Isn't this the real reason that you're interested in buying expansions? You're curious who Fantasy Flight is going to come up with? Well, here's a cheat sheet of the heroes that were released in this wave (in the order that I find them in my box, not in the order they were released): Bilbo Baggins (green), Prince Imrahil (purple), Dain Ironfoot (purple), Frodo Baggins (blue), Boromir (red), and Brand son of Bain (red).

Bilbo Baggins

So, here's the next important question with heroes - are they worth using? Actually, I found this to be a surprising "yes." Like with most cards in the game (other than Gandalf), it really depends on what kind of deck you're building and what scenario you are playing. For example, one of my favorite decks is a Green/Purple deck that allows me to draw a lot of cards and then have the resources to play them. Biblo fits in quite nicely in this deck (his ability allows the first player to draw an extra card) - unless there are lots of bad treacheries and fighting, because he only has two hit points.

I also really like that Fantasy Flight was able to add heroes that I was unfamiliar with. When I opened the first couple of packs from this expansion, I received Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. I thought to myself, "Gee, I guess this is the hobbit wave - here come Sam, Merry, and Pippin." But, then, I was pleasantly surprised with people that I was unfamiliar with. This means that Fantasy Flight is investing a lot of time into the lore of Middle Earth (or making things up and tricking me). Either way, it means that they have a lot of ideas and plan to keep this game fresh.

Deck Building

Do you have an obsessive need to have the best possible deck? To fill this need, do you have to buy all the new cards when they come out? Were you as annoyed as me when the base set did not contain three copies of each card, thus forcing you to buy several copies of the base game to build the deck that you really wanted? Then rejoice!! Fantasy Flight fixed my biggest complaint about this game! Each of the expansions contains three copies of each card that can be used for deck construction - a full "play set." This means that you only have to buy one copy of each pack, and you can build whatever deck you want!

With that stated, there were a few overall themes in these sets.

Songs

Songs are the cards that allow you to build better cross-colored decks. They each require a neutral resource, and there are four different types - corresponding to the different colors. Each song can be played on a hero, and it gives that hero another resource symbol - suddenly your Purple hero's resources can be used for Purple and Green (or whatever other color, depending on the song you play). These were critical cards, and I'm glad that they released them in the first expansion instead of waiting on them.

Eagles

Landroval

This wave really focused on the Red cards being Eagle related. There are several Eagles released - both unique and non-unique, and there are also many cards that work well with the Eagles (cards that let you search the top of your deck for Eagle cards, etc). Whereas I was quite hesitant about the Eagles when the wave started, by the end of it enough Eagle cards had been released that I feel like a solid Eagle-themed deck could be built. Also, there are several good Eagle cards (like Landroval) that can be used to improve a Red deck regardless of whether it is Eagle themed.

My favorite Eagle cards are Landroval and Radagast (who isn't actually an Eagle). They're both expensive, but they're both worth the cost. Landroval is able to save a hero as it is destroyed (I believe this is the only effect currently available in the game that allows this). Radagast collects resources like a hero, but his resources can only be used to pay for "Creature" (currently Eagle) cards. These cards are both incredibly useful, and I can see them being used a lot through the rest of the expansions.

Rohan

The theme around many of the new Blue cards was Rohan. Similar to the Eagles, Blue gained more and more cards that were either Rohan characters or that supported Rohan cards. I'm not convinced that there is quite enough power behind the Rohan cards that are currently released to make an effective Rohan themed deck, but I must confess that I haven't tried. I have spent most of this wave enamored with my Purple/Green deck (Steward of Gondor is, by far, my favorite card; I also love the Sneak Attack/Gandalf combination), so I will leave off the discussion of Rohan for someone more qualified.

Adventures

If we only ever had the basic three adventures, this game sure would get boring, wouldn't it? Not to mention, it would be simple to build a deck that could win consistently, especially with all the new heroes and deck cards. Fortunately, each new set came with a new adventure.

The Hunt for Gollum

The concept behind this scenario is that you are searching for clues to find Gollum. This really fleshes out the Objective cards that are only used in the base game in the hard scenario. Throughout the scenario, you will need to find various Clues about where Gollum has been hiding. If you don't find Clues, then you will not be able to quest in the last stage of the adventure. And yet, the more Clues you expose, the harder the enemies become. I like this scenario, and I think it is surprisingly challenging. For whatever reason, however, it seems the most fiddly to me. I have played it around 5-7 times, and I hardly ever remember to do each little card action ("at the start of the quest phase...", "after successfully questing...", etc).

Conflict at the Carrock

Do you like fighting? Then this scenario is for you! Honestly, this is the scenario that I have played the least, because it seems like it works best with multiple players (and I have played the game a decent amount two or three players, but much of my gameplay has been solo). You start the game with four names Trolls just waiting to puch you in the face once you get to the second phase of the quest. What's worse, in the first phase of the quest the treacheries are absolutely atrocious! Your heroes can become "Sacked!" which makes them completely useless... and can instantly kill them if a certain other treachery comes out. This is definitely the hardest scenario of the six, but it is quite rewarding if you win. The key (from what I've seen) is to get to the second quest phase quickly, keep your threat down, and kill the Trolls off one at a time.

Wilyador

A Journey to Rhosgobel

This could also be known as the "Quest to Save Wilyador." The goal of this scenario is to protect and heal Wilyador (an Eagle). This I think is the most creative, and possibly most enjoyable, scenario of all the ones I have played. Eagles and Ranged characters are crucial, as many enemies will only be able to be blocked by characters with these traits. To put you on the clock, however, Wilyador receives two wounds at the end of each turn. Fortunately, there are Objective cards that can be used at the end of the game to heal Wilyador by five wounds each. I recommend that you have some other cards (Green) that can help his healing process along as well, because if you do not completely heal him at the end of the game, then you will lose.

The Hills of Emyn Muil

I have heard more complaints online about this scenario that any of the others. This is a single quest phase scenario (that requires only 1 quest point on that phase), but you must have 20 victory points and no Emyn Muil locations in play in order to win. This scenario is really fairly simple (it is mostly questing and traveling to locations), especially if you have the Northern Tracker (or several of them) in play. I will agree that this is probably the least enjoyable scenario to play, but I wasn't really disappointed with it. I am glad that there is a different flavor to each scenario.

The Dead Marshes

Ah, Gollum. This is his first appearance. Specifically, you have captured Gollum, and he is doing his best to escape. This introduces a new concept called the "Escape Test." Every so often, Gollum will attempt to escape, and you will be forced to attempt an Escape Test to see how successful he is. These work similarly to questing, but certain cards will have "Escape: X" on them instead of using the Threat amount on a card. If Gollum does ever escape, then he shuffles back into the Encounter Deck. And then the game goes on until you can find him again! (I don't recommend letting him escape.) This really is an interesting new feature to the game, and I like it theoretically. Unfortunately, I get bored when games force you to draw a card that is shuffled somewhere in a draw pile in order to win. So, when Gollum escaped from me, I did eventually win, but I was somewhat bored by the time he finally came up.

Gollum Number 2

Return to Mirkwood

Welcome back, Gollum! This time you have (somehow) broken Gollum's spirit, and you are dragging him along with you. Unfortunately, you have to keep Gollum alive, which means committing a player to Guard him. This person is too close to Gollum, and needs to be careful not to listen closely to him - and this is represented by having his Threat raised by three instead of one at the end of each turn. There are also a lot of Treachery cards and Shadow effects that try to harm (and kill off) the player guarding Gollum. This was another one that I enjoyed, and overall I was quite happy that each of these scenarios really had a different feel to them.

Summary

Overall, I give the Shadows of Mirkwood expansion a 9.0/10. I was quite happy with them, and I really felt like they expanded every aspect of a game that I already loved. If Fantasy Flight keeps this up, I can see myself continuing to play this game for quite some time.

Rise! Review

2011-12-09T05:15:00.000-08:00

Note: This picture is of a prototype copy of Rise! Final copies may look different

An interesting game that I saw on Kickstarter was Rise! So, after they asked me if I'd be willing to check it out for them, I gladly obliged.

In the great world of Nameless Land, an epic battle raged on between the fearsome Blue Horde and the epic Red Minions (who were disparagingly referred to as "Brown Blockies" (because in my prototype they look brown). In this epic struggle, the two sides sent their round (did they eat too much, or are the a race of round aliens? You'll have to decide for yourself) peasants into the war zone to secure areas where they could build their alien landing pads. (I guess we went with aliens... maybe they should be Pyramids... wait, no! I have it! Blocks of shrinking size! This is the beauty of abstract strategy games.) But while building, these multipurpose round peasants must both fight off opposing round-ites and build their own blocks! They need three Pyramids before the epic destruction of their empire, their world, their universe, and this website! Oh no!!!!!

Ok, so really... Rise! is an abstract strategy game. The goal of the game is to build 3 towers - each tower consisting of 3 levels. Simple enough? The game is played on a growing hexagonal map and to construct a tower, you must have a hex surrounded with your pieces (and the center must be empty). At this point, a stage of the tower is automatically created, and each turn that you still have your pieces in place the next stage of the tower is built. Each turn consists of two actions. Here are your choices: place a new piece adjacent to one of your existing pieces, move a piece, remove a tower piece (rarely), "jump" a piece (capturing an opponent adjacent to you), place a new land tile, sacrifice two pieces to place one anywhere on the board, or sacrifice two pieces to remove any single piece of your opponent. Players alternate turns until either one player lost their last piece (I've not seen this happen) or one player has three towers completed.

What to say about Rise! Well. First of all, I must admit that Rise! has a different feel than any spatial reasoning game that I've ever played - and I've played a ton of them (after all, I even self-deemed this month "abstract strategy month"... though I noticed that no other sites bothered to join me). It's good when a game brings a fresh new feel to a genre. There are familiar elements - jumping, moving, building maps, but I've not seen them all together in a way that feels similar to Rise! Kudos to Crash Games for coming up with something innovative.

Now that I've mentioned a pro, I'm going to mention my biggest con - then I'll just move on to rambling about the game. Let's be honest for a minute. My first game of Rise! was horrible! Afterwards, I thought to myself, "Well. That sucked." (Yes, I can be quite profane like that when I'm thinking to myself.) Here's why: we didn't interact. In Rise! it is critical to be adjacent to your opponent. If you look at how a hexagonal "circle" is built, when a person is able to encircle a single hex (and then places a piece in the center), he has an impenetrable fortress - it cannot be thwarted by jumping, because each piece has a defensive piece behind it. This leaves the option to sacrifice two units to remove one of his to break the circle. Well, if you are not in a position to fill in that newly formed gap, then you have three options: first, sacrifice two more pieces to fill it in; second, take it and allow your opponent to take it right back (costing yourself two pieces for the cost of one of your opponent's actions); third, give up and cede the tower to your opponent. This is not something we realized going into the game - so we spent too much of the beginning of the game playing in our own areas. So, when one of us started building a tower, there was absolutely nothing that the other player could do about it. It was horrible, and we didn't see the point to the game. But then we decided to try again (this is also called "giving my free review copy of a game a fair shot") - and this time we rushed at each other to make sure we stayed in position. And then the game got interesting!

Now I'm just going to talk about things that I think are interesting about the game. The first thing that I think is interesting is that, though the game is officially about "building towers", it is actually about controlling the board. The person with the most pieces on the board is probably going to win. He has options. He can sacrifice his pieces to clear out his opponent's most important pieces, and if needed, he can even sacrifice more pieces to take over that position. I've found that the best strategy is to focus on killing your opponent and then build towers. After all, who builds a tower without laying a foundation? The foundation in Rise! is the destruction of your opponent!

The next thing that I think is interesting is that there seems to be a tipping point in the game. There can be a back and forth struggle at the beginning, but at least in the few games that I've played, there is a point in which one player starts to run away with the game. And it's probably the player that has the most pieces. Because they laid a good foundation (see previous paragraph for ongoing joke. Now laugh. You're welcome. I never said it was "funny," so if you chose not to laugh, you should learn to be less picky about your humor).

As I stated before, it is very, very hard to break a circle that your opponent has started. In fact, it will always (unless I horribly missed something) cost you at least two pieces to attempt to break your opponent's in-progress tower. I find this interesting. Basically, I feel like it is the game telling you, "Well, then don't let them do that in the first place!" And, yet, if you are positioned well, you can actually do something about his tower. Or, if he sacrifices the pieces around his tower, you can even start destroying it (if you encircle it with your own pieces). At first I was annoyed that I couldn't break up my opponent's in-progress tower very easily, but as I kept playing, I realized that this adds to the strategy - you really have to work hard to prevent him from initially starting the construction.

Speaking of which, I think that the land placement adds an interesting element to the game. One of the things that the ever-growing grassy ice-flow allows is to easily jump your opponents (you can place a land tile behind him as a "landing place"). Another area where the land placement can affect the game is by one player forcing the other player to be the one placing all of the land. If I am able to get my opponent to place the land tiles (because he is trying to complete a circle, get better position, or whatever other reason) then I can often take advantage by gaining on him in number of pieces. Any action spent growing the board is an action not spent strengthening your position. And yet, at some point one of the players must make the board grow.

The final thing that I will mention about Rise! that I found interesting is that you really have to be careful to make sure that your "offensive" moves do not backfire. For example, if I have two pieces next to one of your pieces, but mine are at the edge of the board, it is a simple matter for you to take one of my pieces. Simply add a new land tile behind my piece and then jump over me. Poof! - my piece is gone. Of course, I'll probably use my next turn to place a piece back where I had one, and then to place a piece where your piece was. After that exchange, I have one more piece than I started with, you have the same number as you had before, and I'm in a better defended position. I'm winning because you went on the offensive! (If only school fights worked like this... "Johnny punched me in the face and then fell down because he broke his hand on my head.")

Overall, I give Rise! an 8.0/10. I debated this back and forth a bit, but I figured that if I had bought Rise! I would have been happy with my purchase. It is not my favorite spatial reasoning game of all time, but I think that it has a nice, deep strategy to it - and that the games will get better as you play it more. Plus, you have the opportunity to support it on Kickstarter until December 31, 2011, and help a fledgling game company try to achieve their dream! (As a note, I've given up on even pretending to care about every game that is on Kickstarter. There's no way for me to support all of them, and some of the ones I've wound up playing didn't necessarily deserve to exist. But you can get the basic game of Rise! for $20, and it's a solid enough game that I would actually recommend that you help out Crash Games.)

Like abstract games? You might also read my reviews of Ingenious, Dvonn, Pentago, and Jin Li.

I would like to thank Crash Games for providing me with a review prototype copy of Rise!

Rise! on Kickstarter