Card Game Review - Eminent Domain

I get new games all the time. It's the upside to writing game reviews. In fact, the only two upsides to the whole gig are the free games, and the ability to write off-color humor. But since the end of last year, I've been waiting to find a truly awesome game, one that got me so excited that I want to play it over and over, and not just keep it in a closet until I run out of space and donate it to the Red Cross or Amnesty International or some other organization that doesn't need it at all, so that I can feel good about myself because I contributed something entirely useless.

Well, last week, I got one. It's the first real keeper I've scored in months. It's called Eminent Domain, and it gets more fun every time I play it. It's gotten so I can barely get any work done without wanting to play it again.

Eminent Domain is a game where Wal-Mart gives a bunch of money to the city so that they can buy your house and turn it into a parking lot across from a football stadium. That is actually a really crappy game to play, unless you're Wal-Mart or the city councilman who gets to buy a new convertible with the graft Wal-Mart gave him. Fortunately, the Eminent Domain that I got last week is not that game. Instead, it's a game about exploring planets and discovering science stuff and blowing things up.

Now, we've seen a lot of these kinds of games. They're usually some massive, four-hour marathon game (unless they're an eight-hour marathon game) and they cost like 80 bucks because they're chock full of plastic spaceships and planet tiles and moon bases and piles and piles of cards. This is the first time, however, that one of those explore-and-dominate-in-space games is a deckbuilder.

Yep, it's a deckbuilder. I know a lot of people, disgusted with the whole deckbuilding idea, have just thrown up in your mouths and left for the bathroom. Good riddance. We don't need you. We need people who will play Eminent Domain, because it's so much fun that I plan on preaching it like a cardstock religion. You can call me Holy Reverend Spacekiller. I won't respond to that, or anything, because that's just stupid, but you can call me that anyway. Come to think of it, you could call me pretty much whatever you want. It's not like I could stop you.

But Eminent Domain is not like other deckbuilding games. There are no piles of intriguing cards, mixed up every time to be something different. There are five cards. Well, OK, there are way more than five, but there are only the five different card titles. They're stuff like survey (to find new planets), colonize (to settle new planets), and warfare (to blow stuff up and steal new planets). And on your turn, you don't buy them. You just get one, and then you do what it says, and then everyone else gets to do what it says (but they don't get a card).

It would seem like this would be a pretty dull game that would get old really fast, because it's not like you go, 'hey, colonize is interesting, and all, but this time, let's get rid of it and play with Spinach Factory. That has a neat power.' But the thing is, you can try a different strategy every time you play. Because doing a thing adds that card to your deck, the more you do something, the better you get at it.

The key thing that makes this game not like any of the other deckbuilding games out there is the fact that you can do stuff on other people's turns, if you have the card. That means that if you really like war, and someone else goes to war, you can jump in and have a little war of your own. If another guy decides to produce goods to sell later, and you're the merchant king, you'll get more out of his turn than he will. Research and colonizing and surveying all become more powerful the longer you do them, leading to a really interesting game where every decision matters, not just because you need it to help you out, but because you don't want to throw out freebies to everyone else.

Interaction in Eminent Domain is around the high end of middle. You won't attack your opponent's planet and nuke his guys from orbit, but at the same time, every time you take a card, you're opening it up for the other people at the table. It's critically important to choose a strategy that both benefits you as much as possible, and allows fewer bonuses to other people. People who hate games that don't let you sucker punch your buddies might not love Eminent Domain, but it's not one of those solitaire games where everyone plays the system. Your strategy absolutely must take into consideration the actions of your opponents, or you'll feed them the game.

I think the reason I really like Eminent Domain, possibly more than just about any other deckbuilding game, is that it does an exceptional job of feeling like a game about building an empire in space. Even the theme in Nightfall (still my favorite deckbuilder) is little more than an excuse to buy cards and play chains. But in Eminent Domain, the actions you take actually feel like you're doing whatever it is you're supposedly doing. When you colonize a planet, you can imagine the ships launching to set up homes on alien planets. When you use a warfare action, you can picture the fleets of warships you're assembling. And when you decide to produce, you can really see all your wage slaves breaking their backs in sweatshops to make you affordable sweaters that you can buy at Wal-Mart (right before they turn your house into a hot-dog stand).

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have obtained a copy of Eminent Domain, not because it's hard to get (it's not) or because the publisher is particularly stingy (they're not). I am lucky to have landed the game because it is the most fun I have had playing games this year. And that's not to say that I haven't played some fun games this year, it's just that this one is so very damned fun. It might not appeal to fans of bloodshed and nut-kicking, but it's thematically consistent, interactive, clever and tense. If you've hated every deckbuilding game before now because it didn't feel like anything but a bunch of combos and tricky rules, try one more time. Eminent Domain is worth the effort.

Summary

Pros:
Different enough to bring a fresh idea to a rapidly stagnating game concept
Full of tough decisions and smart plays
Difficult to 'solve,' because every strategy has a counter
You're not just playing against the game - you're playing against your friends
A deckbuilding game about space that actually feels like a game about space

Cons:
Won't let me blow up my friends

This is one great game, and even better, it's not stupid expensive. In fact, if you run over to Noble Knight Games, you can pick save off the original price (which is already damned reasonable).
BUILD YOUR EMPIRE WHILE YOU BUILD YOUR DECK

Board Game Review - Zpocalypse

There sure are a lot of games these days with zombies in them. You can't swing an undead cat without hitting one. Some of them don't even need zombies, they're just in there because zombies are the new Care Bears. Or unicorns. Or something else really sweet and loveable that is a merchandising gold mine.

Unfortunately, most of those games kind of suck, or are at least less awesome than they should be. I mean, zombies are pretty cool, in that they are dead and still walk around, unless they have a terrible virus that makes them eat other people, as in modern zombie movies that try to make the flesh-eating psychopaths seem plausible, and not just in a Hannibal Lecter kind of way. Come to think of it, I am not sure why zombies are so popular, except that possibly a lot of people think it would be cool if something dead ate their face. But whatever the reason, lots of the games are not awesome.

Zpocalypse intends to change that, both by being a cool game about zombies, and by obviously being imaginative by changing the first letter of 'apocalypse' to an upper-case Z. Which, of course, stands for zeppelin. Why a game about the walking dead attacking a fallout shelter would be named for a zeppelin, I cannot say for sure. I am especially disturbed by the complete lack of zeppelins in the game itself.

What are in the game are lots and lots of zombies, and just a few people who will try to kill them all but fail miserably because there are just way too many zombies. And they kind of move fast, which is unfortunate because while you are trying to cut one in half with a samurai sword, another six or seven will come up and surround you. As anyone who has seen a zombie movie will know, getting surrounded by zombies is exceptionally bad for you. It can lead to athlete's foot.

The survivors in this bunker (that's you, if you're playing the game, or if you are living through a zombie apocalypse, which seems unlikely) have more problems than just the hordes of zombies. They are also very hungry, and require an absurd amount of food. In fact, if they don't eat, the survivors just sit around in the bunker and watch reruns of Three's Company. So rather than just hiding out in the bunker and locking the door at night, they have to wander around looking for food and guns and stuff.

Time is of the essence here. Survivors need to really hustle if they're going to find something to eat, because before you know it, zombies will show up. Then the survivors have to kill them, which would be easier if survivors were not completely incompetent at killing things. Cut them a little slack, though - before the zombies arrived, these poor bastards were janitors and school teachers and eight-year-old girls. Now they are janitors and teacher and eight-year-old girls who have guns and baseball bats.

The survivors learn how to fight zombies pretty quick, fortunately. What they do not learn is how to close the door after they leave. In that way, they are very much like teenagers, who will let bugs in the house because no matter how many times you ask them if they were born in a barn (to which you probably know the answer, since it is very likely you were there), they just plain forget to close the door.

Anyway, with the door to the bunker left open (and the people inside far too hungry to remember to close it), the zombies will have to all be killed before they can get to the tasty meat snack at the center of the bunker pop. This poses a challenge because there are so many zombies and only a few people with a stomach full of irradiated Pop Tarts who could kill the interloping dead people. But eventually, all the zombies will be dead, or all the survivors will be dead. Either way.

To give you a better summary of how this goes, it's a fairly straight-forward process. First you look for supplies. Then you feed a few people so they can fight. Then a ludicrous number of zombies appear and you have to kill all of them in a big skirmish-type game with an incredibly high body count. Then you do it again, after which time zombies probably eat you to death.

Zpocalypse is a cool game. At first glance, it might seem ridiculously difficult, but the thing you have to realize is that if you don't play well, zombies will eat you. If you play well, zombies will still eat you, but you will destroy a lot of them first. Don't get surrounded. Kill zombies, but also find food (and smart people, because smart people find more food). Protect your home with barricades and walls and stuff. And then kill a bunch of zombies before they eat you.

Some parts of Zpocalypse are kind of busy. This is not what a more well-spoken, erudite game reviewer would call an 'efficient design.' Me, I just think there are more rules than are strictly necessary, and that makes what should be a pretty straight-forward bug hunt into a bit of a cluster hump. There were lots of places where we said, 'what do we do now?' Or 'how do we kill that guy?' Or 'does this smell spoiled to you?'

For the most part, though, Zpocalypse is an action-pack, gun-toting, zombie-slaying gore-fest. It's an aggressive, violent game against unmitigated horror in a no-win scenario. The winner is the guy who takes out the most zeds before he goes out in a blaze of gunfire and bloody limbs. It's all about killing in the most spectacular fashion possible, not surviving or escaping.

For it to be about escaping, they would have had to include the zeppelins.

Summary

Pros:
Groovy zombie art
Lots of bloody mayhem
Exciting tactical festival of death and dismemberment
A neat story every time - though every story pretty much ends the same way, with everyone dead

Cons:
A little clumsy in places
You are going to die. It's just a matter of how many zombies can you take with you

There's only one place you can get Zpocalypse right now, because it's not actually made yet. Right now, you can only get one through the Kickstarter that's going right now:
KILLER ZOMBIES

Book Series Review - Mistborn Trilogy

Before I start this review, I want to put this right out there - this is not a filler. I do have games now. I know, last week was all about TV shows, and while I had some good stuff in there, it wasn't games because I was out of games. But now I do have games I could write about, I'm just not writing about them because I just read these books and they are so freaking awesome that I think I will explode if I don't tell someone how freaking awesome they are. Which I just did. But I'm not done yet.

The books I just finished are called the Mistborn Trilogy. There are three of them, which you probably could have guessed, because otherwise they would have been dramatically misnamed. I also finished a fourth Mistborn book, but it is not part of the trilogy, and so I don't think I'll really mention it, but you should probably read it anyway.

If there was a college just for nerds, the Mistborn Trilogy would be required reading. It might even have a semester-long course where you discuss how all of the standard fantasy tropes we take for granted can be turned on their head and kicked in the junk while they are upside down, because that's what Mistborn does. It defies everything you've come to expect in fantasy, whether you're a fan of Moorcock or Lieber or Tolkien. It pulls absolutely no punches, and yet manages to be fun and exciting even in the face of incredible darkness.

Brandon Sanderson, the genius who wrote these books, said on his blog that he had a duel intent when writing The Final Empire (the first Mistborn novel). First, he wanted to show a world where a big damned hero made his epic quest - and then totally failed. Like, imagine Frodo putting on the ring and then getting eaten by Sauron, who went on to stomp a mudhole in anyone who thought he wasn't dead sexy. Second, he wanted to write a heist story, where a bunch of professional thieves and general ne'er-do-wells pull off an incredible scam. The result is, more than anything else, like Star Wars - but better.

Yeah, I said that. Better than Star Wars. Bold words, especially from a guy for whom Star Wars is the pinnacle of nerdvana (but only the original three movies, not those horrid prequels). The themes and excitement present in Star Wars are all over Mistborn, but they're more developed and presented with a nuance that would fly right over George Lucas's bearded head. There's the classic hero's journey, but it takes on an element of growth and maturity that is simply not present in nearly any piece of fantasy fiction.

If you're just reading books to see magic stuff happen to people just before they get cut in half, Mistborn won't disappoint. It's not just smart. It's fast and furious and fun. The world possesses a fascinating kind of magic that has incredible internal consistency of a kind rarely viewed in fantasy fiction. You can keep your fireballs where we can't see them, because in Mistborn, the magic makes sense. So does the violence, for that matter.

In fact, while the bloodshed in Mistborn isn't disturbingly over-detailed, it's still there. Peasants are unfairly slaughtered by lords. Thieves beat and kill their weaker minions. Horrible monsters tear defending soldiers apart like unwanted parking tickets. And yet we are spared having to wade through disgusting descriptions of dismemberment (if you like alliteration, you're welcome) because Sanderson focuses on the action, rather than becoming obsessed with the gore. It's there, it's just not the star of the show.

The stars of the show are the people who, you know, star in the show. From the terrified street urchin to the overconfident con man, the idealist-turned-realist nobleman to the overlooked spy, the people of the Mistborn books make the entire thing feel real. These are not just sparingly constructed character types meant to push the plot forward. These are three-dimensional people capable of insecurity and doubt, cowardice and courage, love and hate. The magic of the world feels real because the characters feel so real.

So let's say you're a fan of Martin's Game of Thrones books. I am, so I feel qualified to talk about them. Now, those books are really very adult, possibly because there are boobies in every third paragraph and rotting bodies dot the landscape until it looks like Jackson Pollock painted it with the world's most horrifying can of paint. Well, the Mistborn books manage to be just as intelligently mature than those books without giving us one single swinging pecker. Not only do we see grown-ups acting in grown-up ways, but Sanderson does it without resorting to rape scenes and pedophilia.

At first, the tone of Mistborn might seem like a book for young adults. But as you dive further into it, there is some amazing depth that will fly right past the heads of anyone not old enough to grasp a crisis of faith, gut-wrenching sacrifice, or moral ambiguity. These are not cheesy romance novels or light-hearted escapades into a black-and-white world of good and evil. Sanderson is capable of remembering that even when people are doing bad things, it's because they believe it is the right thing to do.

I haven't read books I enjoyed this much in a very long time. If you haven't read the Mistborn books, you owe it to yourself to get yourself to your local library and discover this magnificent world for yourself. And after you're done, remember one thing:

No fair dropping spoilers.

Summary

Pros:
Amazing depth and maturity, without ever resorting to Letters to Penthouse
High-flying, super-powered action scenes will keep you on the edge of your seat
Thoroughly believable characters in a thoroughly believable world
I liked it more than Tolkien

Cons:
...