Drake's Flames

Board Game Review - Canal Mania

2012-01-25T20:20:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another review from my old man. It's starting to become a habit. It's a good thing his last name is also Drake, or I would have to rename the site.

First off, just to get this off my chest, how did anyone imagine that a game with the title “Canal Mania” would sell? From the title you’d think it was in the same genre as “Party Mania” or “Monkey Mania.” May I forever be exempted from playing games with the word “Mania” in their title! But my friend has wanted to play this game for quite a while, and he defers to me at times, so I acquiesced. Good call – “Canal Mania” is actually a very good game.

Theme: I love history and have studied it since I was kid. Well, my knowledge is stunted in the period this game covers. Seems that in the late 18th century in England there was a rash of canal building. (Who ever heard of that?!?) So players build canals to towns and cities, and then move goods along the canals. Does this sound familiar? Think “Age of Steam” and “Railroad Tycoon” with canals instead of tracks.

Game Play: Just as you do in AoS and RRT with track, in CM you build canals between points. But CM has a twist of its own reminiscent of “Ticket to Ride”. Instead of destination cards, in CM you have a stack of cards that are contracts from Parliament to build canals between specific towns and cities. Now here’s one of the MAJOR differences between track-laying games and CM. In CM you don’t have any money, nor do you have stocks. You never know where the money to dig these canals comes from. You just have a contract and you “get ‘er done.” To build a canal, you draw cards that allow you to build locks, aqueducts, and even tunnels. (A canal through a tunnel?!? REALLY?? My historical knowledge is feeling threatened.).

What is probably the biggest difference between Canal Mania and most railroad games is in moving goods. In many railroad games the players place blocks on cities during game set-up, and move the goods as the cities are connected by tracks. In Canal Mania no goods blocks are set on the board during set-up. Players have to take a card with a goods icon and place a good in the appropriate city. This is radically different! The rules dictate where the goods are to be placed – and there are only “goods,” all one color, with no differentiation on which city they GO TO. No, in this game, the rules dictate where the goods START, and you score points according to the number of cities and towns the goods cube goes through until it reaches its destination. When I first saw this mechanic, I didn’t like it. It was a conservative knee-jerk reaction. But there are some very real weak links in the way the goods are placed in the rail games (no pun initially intended, but then I liked it), and as I played Canal Mania I began to appreciate this new way of placing and delivering goods. After one game play, my mind is pondering this and wondering if there isn’t a way to combine the ideas to come up with an even superior goods mechanic. Well, point is, this does radically change the game strategy over rail games. At the beginning of the game I was building canals like crazy, as I would in RRT. But then goods began to move between cities and I found I hadn’t built my canals strategically, and I wasn’t moving any goods. In games that will follow I’ll know to build FROM cities and not just connect towns.

For what is a smaller version of a rail game, Canal Mania does take a while to play. After a few plays you might be able to get it down to 90 minutes, but the three of us, all veteran gamers, took over two hours for our game. Actually, I love long games, but to a lot of gamers this can be an issue.

Components: Canal Mania is not a slick production, like RRT or other Euros. Don’t let that deter you. The components are of good quality, but on the small side. The game board is absolutely functional, but it doesn’t show any attempt at artistry and you won’t need a table the size you’d use for RRT. The pieces are also perfect for game play, but again they don’t show any panache. The canal pieces are small, but they work great for playing the game. The cards, as well, don’t show much of an attempt to be works of art, but again (broken record here?) they’re great for playing the game. If you’ve been spoiled by the Euros on the market, you might be a tad disappointed, but don’t let that put you off. It’s a great game.

Final thoughts: This is a Euro, so that means luck is at a minimum. Three of us played the game, and there were times when we were each in the lead, and other times we were each dragging the tail end. We ended in a close pack, though I’ll admit I came in last, due to the fact of my rush to build canals between towns and wasn’t starting from cities. I’m looking forward to playing it again, and I have some definite strategic ideas that should let me accumulate a lot more victory points.

Summary

Pros:
A fun, lite game.
Components are of sturdy quality.
Allows for different strategies.

Cons
Not up to the component quality of most Euros.
Game length could be an issue for some.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'man, where can I get that game?' Unless you're thinking, 'I do not want to play that at all,' in which case, I did not actually know what you were thinking. OK, to be perfectly honest, I don't have any idea what you're thinking. You could be thinking about dolphin farts (and if you weren't before, I'll bet you are now). But in case you were thinking what I thought you were thinking, here's a very handy link to my good friends at Noble Knight Games:
LAY SOME PIPE... ER, CANALS

Internet TV Review - The Booth at the End

2012-01-23T14:45:00.001-08:00

There are not very many good things about having your house catch fire. Really, I cannot recommend it to anyone at all. However, through a convoluted series of coincidental annoyances, I discovered something that is absolutely awesome - Hulu.

Of course, saying that I discovered Hulu is a little like saying that Christopher Columbus discovered America (how do you discover a place that other people have already visited, and that is already occupied when you get there?) I knew about it, and just hadn't ever bothered with it. It was too much trouble to watch TV on my laptop. But when our rat-trap rent house wasn't cable-ready, we bought a Roku and decided to just watch what we could stream.

And I'm glad I did, because otherwise I never would have seen The Booth at the End. Yes, I could have watched it on my computer, but I hate watching TV on my computer. I can barely stand to watch a YouTube video on my computer. But give me Internet shows on my television and let me sit on my sofa, and I'm in.

The Booth at the End is an artsy morality play about a guy who sits in a diner all day and gives people what they want, as long as they pay his price. His price is always a task, and it's almost always morally repugnant. The guy who wants to save his son from cancer has to kill a little girl. The girl who wants to be prettier has to rob banks. The old lady who wants her husband to get over his brain pain has to blow up a cafe. (Don't worry, I didn't spoil anything - you'll get all that before you're halfway through the first episode.)

The whole show takes place in the diner. There are shootouts and murders, romance and drama - but you never see any of it, you just hear about it when the perpetrators come back to report their misdeeds to the man in the booth. And yet you can't wait to find out what happens, even though you're only going to get the action second-hand. Will the old lady detonate her bomb? Will the fat guy nail the stripper? Will the man in the booth ever use the bathroom?

So many elements intertwine to make The Booth at the End a riveting piece of television. The show asks you what you would do to get what you want, but it does it without judging you for answering incorrectly. You'll sit there, watching the father struggle with having to take a life to save his son, and wonder what you would do in his shoes. You don't hate anyone for their decisions. The show doesn't have any villains.

In fact, while you might think that the dude in the booth is a bad guy, he really isn't. People keep asking him, 'Why are you making me do this?' and he always responds, 'the choice is always yours. I'm not making you do anything.' And in the end, he's not a bad guy. He's not a good guy. He's more like an instrument of fate, a guide on the path of free will. More than one of the people who come to see him will thank him for what he's done, and some of the grateful customers will surprise you.

Many Internet-only shows rely on what are quickly becoming irritating tropes, like dumb comedy, over-the-top CGI, or stupid stunts. For The Booth at the End to do so much with so very little is a fantastic indicator of the strength of the writing. You'll be glued to your seat through more than 90 minutes of a guy having conversations in a diner, and when you're done, you'll be disappointed that it's over.

The story isn't the only things riveting, either. The characters in this show are dynamic, three-dimensional and interesting. Even the shallow losers are capable of surprising you, and they'll change as the show progresses. The man in the booth seems to be little more than a plot device at first, but with the help of an inquisitive waitress, he, too, shows that he is human (even though he may not actually be human).

I could talk for a lot longer about all the reasons you should watch The Booth at the End, but I really don't want to spoil it for you. Plus if I go on too long, I'll build up all these expectations and then you'll be desperately disappointed. So here's a link. Check it out:

http://theboothattheend.com/

General Gaming Postulation - Gamers or Wargamers

2012-01-20T20:55:00.000-08:00

My old man continues to bail me out, this time with an interesting discussion regarding the nature and the various flavors of gamers. Personally, I prefer cookies n' cream, but at the same time, I try not to lick gamers, unless they are very attractive females, and even then my wife strongly disapproves. But when they do taste like cookies n' cream, then either they're absolute keepers, or they need to wash their hands.

Oh, yeah, the article.

There are gamers, . . . and then there are wargamers.

I’m a wargamer heart and soul, both by nature and nurture. I discovered games when I was 14, with Monopoly and Risk. I rarely played Monopoly, but I used to ditch school with friends so we could play Risk. When I was 16 I bought my first Avalon Hill game, Afrika Korps, and from that defining moment I’ve been a wargamer ever since.

Unfortunately, I live in Reno, NV, where there is only one true game store, and for some odd reason in the flux of the universe there are almost no wargamers in this city. So a couple of months ago I began going to a Saturday afternoon group of gamers hoping I could find someone who would oblige me in playing a wargame now and then – and they have. Several Saturdays ago only Denis showed up and he and I played one game of Up Front (I taught him) and one of Memoir 44 (he taught me). A very positive experience. But the next Saturday there were four of us. We played a game about building towers in the Middle Ages – it was OK, then a card game that had as much theme as white rice, and then closed with Nefarious. Nice components, but I was a bit lost the entire game. (Every week I have to learn a new game with a new mechanic – I often feel like a newbie gamer.) We talked about possible games for next week, and a couple of the guys suggested Pret-a-Porter. Now I don’t know much French, so as far as I knew it could have meant The Decisive Napoleonic Battle for Pret. I asked, “What’s the theme?” and was told, “Fashion.” It was one of those “deer in the headlights” moments for me. Dumbstruck could describe my reaction, and in total honesty I replied, “You’re kidding me.” I really meant it – they were kidding me, right? Four American guys playing a game on fashion?!? (Now as sure as I’ve ever submitted a post on this site, someone’s going to come to the defense of Pret-a-Porter. I can hear it now – it’s just as violent a game as any wargame, but this is fought with needles instead of bullets.)

Well, I’ve begun contemplating the differences between “gamers” and “wargamers.” As I mentioned last Saturday to the group, as a wargamer, theme and historical context are important to me in a game. Then I suggested to these guys that theme wasn’t important to them, and they all agreed. In fact, one guy responded, “Absolutely not at all.” So after some reflection I’ve decided to make a list of some of the differences I’ve found between “gamers” and “wargamers”. After reading the list, I’d very much appreciate feedback and more contrasts to add to the list.

Wargamers
Love history.
Theme is important.
Game balance isn’t very important; historical accuracy of the game is the issue.
Have a great imagination – they can picture the game in their mind as they play (like watching a movie).

Gamers
History was a boring subject in school.
Theme is not that important. The game mechanic is more important than how it relates to theme.
Game balance is critical.
Possibly more analytical – I suspect they don’t have as great an imagination.

This is just a starter list. Please add more and let the discussion begin.

OK, you heard the man, discuss. And remember to keep it clean.

Ha! No, you don't have to keep it clean. That was a joke. But if you are going to make it dirty, I would appreciate it if it tasted like cookies n' cream.

Board Game Review - Fealty

2012-01-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

After the fact edit: I just realized that I repeatedly mention cardboard squares in this review, and the main playing pieces are, in fact, circles. Man, am I embarrassed. Especially because there's a picture, right there, with a picture of cardboard circles. Imagine my discomposure.

I recently obtained a copy of a game called Fealty. It is not, as you may have supposed, a game where you have to work for other people in exchange for pretty much nothing at all. Instead, it is a game where you put down cardboard squares and then, when you're finished with that part, put down some other cardboard squares. At the end, you count how many cardboard squares you put down, and if you put down the most, then you win the game. At this point, the other people at the table now have to work for you for free. Except they left that last part out - that's my personal house rule.

In many ways, Fealty is very similar to Neuroshima Hex, except that it is played with squares, so it's probably more accurate to call it Neuroshima Square. Except that it also does not have a theme about robots and mutants and nuclear fallout, because it has a theme about knights and barons and nobles and stuff instead. And you don't shoot anyone, either, you just get in their way so they can't do their jobs. In that way, the game is a little like working for the government.

Now, just putting down squares would be boring, so each square does something different, and you can't wait to see what other people are going to put down, because you have to choose a card that you play before you put down your square. And the card will tell you who goes first and who will probably beat up the guy who goes first, except that Fealty is a non-violent game that does not endorse beating up guys at all. Like I said, instead of beatings, you just bother people.

So once you choose your card and see what card everyone else has chosen (you all do this part at the same time), you put down the square that matches your card. Maybe your square is called a knight, and he will let you put down some smaller squares at the end of the game, as long as nobody else blocks him with their own squares so that he is unable to reach the squares where he wanted to put down smaller squares. Or maybe your chosen square is an agent, who is very fast and good at capturing cities, but who gets a lot of wedgies from knights (knights are bullies. Everyone knows that). And then you can put down your agent, and he will let you move one of your other squares, like the one who is the important nobleman who doesn't do very much at all. This is especially handy if a square you previously placed on the board is now blocked by either an opposing player's square or, in the worst case, that lady from HR who never returns your phone calls but who is absolutely not going to let you have a poster of Megan Fox because she is way too hot, even if she is wearing a tent.

You have to be very careful as you put down your squares, and you have to think very far ahead. In this way Fealty is once again a lot like Neuroshima Hex, because all the pieces you put down will interact with other pieces and set off square piece chain reactions that will eventually destroy the economies of small square countries. Planning is important, but if you're not good at planning, it won't matter because other people's squares will completely ruin all your plans anyway.

Once you have all had several turns to put down different kinds of squares, you will put out some other tiny squares that will let you know all the places where imaginary people will be forced to work for you in exchange for pretty much nothing. Putting down these little squares is how you win, so you want to put down a lot of them, but if you didn't plan very well (possibly because you got a headache after five minutes and quit trying to plan), then you will not get to put down very many small colored squares, and you will lose. And if you're at my table, then you have to wash my dishes. In the tradition of ancient codes of fealty, I will let you keep a soap bubble.

It is important that I note that I did not enjoy playing Fealty very much. I am sure there are people who will find this game intriguing and involved. I am not one of those people. If you took a jigsaw puzzle, started doing the puzzle, and then every five minutes, someone came up and moved all the pieces and added pieces from a different puzzle, you would know how I felt playing Fealty. It's like a puzzle where the solution changes every two minutes. It's not very fun to me. It's more aggravating. Plus if I have knights and barons and woodsmen and stuff, I want to stab someone. I do not want to just get in their way and make loud noises so they forget what they were saying.

However, as much as I did not like playing Fealty, I know that other people will like it. Some people like doing very confusing puzzles. Other people will just like that your squares never do any punching. I actually read a few places where people thought Fealty was a gem, but they were obviously wrong, because Fealty is a cardboard box full of cardboard squares, and none of those would make very good jewelry. However, if you play a game where you have to work for someone to get a giant bucket of nothing, maybe someone will let you make rings and necklaces from their copy of the game. It will be not be very nice jewelry.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Rewards careful planning and strategy and stuff
Lots of replay, because you can just use a different deck and then your squares do different stuff
Interesting, and there's lots of interaction

Cons:
Design is effective, but a little bland
Not really very much fun

You might like Fealty. I don't, but you might. So if you want it, you can get it from Game Salute:
http://shop.gamesalute.com/products/fealty

Board Game Review - Manhattan Project

2012-01-17T14:49:00.000-08:00

Minion Games had a decidedly rough start. Where a lot of new game companies lead off with a smash hit, they started out with four games, of which two were decent, one was stupid, and one was an absolute travesty. Not to mention the fact that their cards literally fell apart. Basically, the initial offering did not impress.

But they're not quitters over there at Minion, and things are really starting to come together. They've had some good games come out since those early tragedies, and now, with the release of Manhattan Project, Minion Games finally has a flat-out fantastic game. In fact, we played EVO and Manhattan Project this weekend, and had more fun making a-bombs than we did killing dinosaurs.

The theme of Manhattan Project is pretty much what you would expect - it's World War II, and you're all making bombs. The race is on, and the first nation to have their bombs ready to drop is going to win the whole shootin' match. While Einstein and his crew are busy making Fat Man and Little Boy (and his brothers are making bagels), the Germans are hard at work making Existentialist Brooder and Black Turtleneck. Japan, Russia, France and Britian are all in the running to perfect the technology needed to blow giant radioactive holes in the other countries before they wind up pissing glow-in-the-dark KoolAid.

The important thing about Manhattan Project, though, is not what you do, it's how you do it. You start off with a small labor force of untrained workers, and you'll have to school them up to be engineers and scientists. You'll need to build factories, dig mines, and establish universities. You'll refine yellowcake into uranium and uranium into plutonium. You'll call air strikes on your enemies to shut down their enrichment plants, and send spies to sabotage their mines. And just to keep everyone happy, you'll have to send one guy to make beer runs every now and then, because the other guys are so busy.

At first glance, there's so much happening in Manhattan Project that it can be intimidating. But when you realize that all you have to do is tell people where to go to work, it's a lot more manageable. Send your high-school grad to college to get a scientist, then send your scientist to research atomic power. Send another laborer off to mine up some yellowcake, then send an engineer to supervise a factory and make a couple airplanes. Then, since these are government employees, they will all leave work at 3:30 in the afternoon after having spent the day checking out YouTube videos. And when all your people have been allocated, you'll have to spend a turn recalling all your placed laborers so you can do it all again tomorrow.

What happens as the game progresses is that you're essentially building a machine, one that you fuel with your workers to get the output you need to make your bombs. This is a tricky balancing game, where you'll need to get universities and factories, mines and reactors, and you'll need to be careful not to get too many or too few. It requires a solid strategy from the outset, smart timing to take advantage of opponents' weaknesses, and now and then, a little bit of luck.

You'll also have to watch your opponents closely. If one player has a lot of yellowcake, it might be a good idea to bomb his enrichment plants so he can't use it. If another guy has a huge number of fighter planes, you might be best served to beef up your own air force for defense. If someone is looking for money to pay the pizza guy, make sure you're in the bathroom so you can eat for free.

Manhattan Project isn't just the best game to come out of Minion Games since they started, it's also one of the best games I've played in the last month or two. And that's saying a lot, because I've played some pretty awesome games recently. It's intense and exciting, which is especially remarkable from a game with such a European feel to it.

Now, I would be remiss if I threw out a blanket 'buy this game' suggestion for Manhattan Project. While I think an awful lot of gamers are going to love this, it is going to be a bigger hit with people who love Railways of the World than with fans of Last Night on Earth. Plus it can slow down a little with more players, a problem which is just exacerbated by those turns when all you do is pick up your workers and say, 'next.' If you have a short attention span, or only enjoy games where you get to count the bodies, you probably ought to avoid Manhattan Project. But if you like long-term planning and careful strategy, there's a really good chance you'll wind up taking any opportunity you find to build bombs and blow up cities.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Brilliant theme - making bombs is awesome
Outstanding components and great art
Planning and strategy mixed with timing and tactics
Tons of grueling decisions
Hilariously awesome interaction that lets you bomb your friends and spy on them

Cons:
Can slow down with too many players (three is probably perfect)
Very little violence (might not be a Con if you're a Quaker)

You can't buy Manhattan Project yet, because it's not out for a few more weeks. But Minion Games has it up for preorder, if you just have to get your mitts on it:
SET UP US THE BOMB

Expansion Review - Thunderstone: Heart of Doom

2012-01-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

It's time for another review from the guy they called Mister Drake before they called me Mister Drake, by which I mean my dad. This was a big help tonight, because I didn't have anything ready at all, and since I've already spent most of the night hooking up my new computer, I probably wouldn't have had anything, anyway.

If you haven’t had a good look at what comes in the new Thunderstone expansion, Heart of Doom, I’d say you’re in for a pleasant surprise. There are some great new concepts in these cards, and more player interaction. The theme of Thunderstone is strongly reinforced and sweetens the cards we have so far. In fact, this is my favorite expansion to Thunderstone yet.

After opening the box I pulled out a packet of cards, and the first card I saw was “Grognard”. Ah, a beautiful introduction to the game, and it elicited a smile. As I opened the packs of cards and read what they do, I was immediately hooked. Some great ideas here, and again some great artwork. Unfortunately, I’ve only played this new expansion once, but after this initial play I have very good impressions.

One of the best things about the expansions to Thunderstone is the increasing player interaction they’ve promoted. Heart of Doom is, I believe, the best in this regards so far. For example, the Highland Soldier (not sure if this is a female or male soldier, female I think – kind of scary). If you destroy the level one Hero you can steal a treasure from another player. Not interaction that promotes marital bliss when you play this on your wife, but it’s interaction all the same. And then there’s the Ritual of Cleansing. You play it on a player, and you can play it on yourself if you want, and that player draws 5 cards from the bottom of their deck and destroys 2. It can be a blessing or a curse. I like that twist. And then there’s the touch of brilliance of the Grognard (yes, it’s an old French term for a war veteran, but we all know that today it refers to US). If you have traps in the dungeon and you trigger one, and the Grognard is along, you can choose another player to suffer the effects. Hmmm, it does reflect the attitude of some guys I’ve gamed with.

Tis true that the artwork in some of the earlier expansions fell pretty flat (I’m still very unhappy about the replacement to Iron Rations. The original card looked like Lembas, or maybe K-rations, but the newer artwork looks like a full three-course meal, with plates and silverware. Should have changed the name of the card to Picnic Lunch.) Anyway, point I’m trying to make is the artwork in Heart of Doom is especially good. Two of the Heroes, Isri Thrower and Nyth Bowman, are beautiful to behold. Kudos to you, whoever you are who did these cards. About the Isri Thrower, she really does throw stuff – from weapons to any odd item you may have in your hand (so she can even throw a lantern if she has one with her). As always in a collection of this many cards, some of the art doesn’t inspire, but the exceptional far outweighs the bland.

Game play isn’t greatly impacted by any new game mechanics – new rules cover all of one page, only two points. But some of the cards utilize the mechanics we’ve learned so far in new and wonderful ways. All-in-all a great expansion.

Two cards especially impact game play:
The Short Spear adds Attack +2 when equipped to a Militia. All of a sudden your Militia aren’t taking up as much space in your deck as they used to. And then there’s the Chalice Mace. This is a heavy item, but those scrawny clerics know how to heft these – if a cleric picks one up, it requires three less strength. They also add +1 to your light, so if you put some clerics in your deck you’ll absolutely want to match them with this mace.

I won’t try to cover every card, but I do want to note those that deserve Honorable Mention:

The Guardian “Heart of Doom”: The worst nightmare of a Guardian yet. This card will stop all players in their tracks and take a while before anyone can take him out (Health of 25! But 15 VPs!!!). Think you’ll sacrifice a turn and send him to the bottom of the deck? You can do so, but the card has the clever caveat, “If this card is not defeated, the player loses.” Holy crap! Like getting punched in the solar plexus! As a final touch for the games so far, this one is classic. How could you not love this guy?!? And if you let him breach, that’s the shootin’ match – the game’s over. Nice touch!

Monster Abyssmal Darkspawn: These guys are truly dark – they cause rank 1 to be take on a much higher light penalty. They slowed our game down appreciably as we all started drawing more light sources. I like these guys for how they twist the game.

Monster Basilisk/Animal are really wimpy and should be easy to take out. But they all gain Health for heroes, items, weapons, etc. that are revealed. They’re still too weak to slow you down too much, but they add a fascinating quirk to the dungeon. Yep, I like these guys too.

Lizardfolk Humanoid: If you like monsters that are hard to take out and slow down the dungeon for a bit, then you’ll love these guys.

Spider/Animal: The spiders aren’t that hard to kill (except the Queen), but if they breach someone’s going to die – you can lose several Heroes to these cards. In our game we didn’t have any breach, but their threat was noted. A great addition to the cards.

Undead/Spectral: Every time you take on one of these guys, you have to destroy or discard something. And yeah, I like these monsters.

And some cards I don’t care for:

The Dopplegangers: Some guys like these, but I for some deeper existential reason I just don’t. They look like some of your friends in the village, but these guys are evil. Kind of a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome I guess. And by the way, what are they trying to get away with in the dungeon anyway? They should be lurking around the street corners in the village. If I met the blacksmith in the deepest pit of the dungeon, what are the odds I’d ask him to sharpen my blade? Maybe they have a place in some dungeons, but I’ve called Homeland Security on these guys in my games.

I'm running really low on review copies, which means I'm going to be counting on Noble Knight Games to hook me up with a few I can't get otherwise. And for that kind of thing to keep happening, and for me to keep reviewing the stuff you ask for, they have to know they're appreciated. So if you're going to buy games, I would consider it a personal favor if you would get them from Noble Knight. And it never hurts to drop my name when you do it.
KEEP ME SEARCHING FOR A HEART OF DOOM

Rip-off Game Review - Haunted Village

2012-01-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

My wife used to teach college history to freshmen students, and she learned that if there's one thing college freshmen do very badly and very often, it's cheat. She would regularly read a paper from a student she knew damned well was incapable of stringing four words together coherently, and the paper would be brilliant. These stupid college kids were apparently unaware that the internet could be used for more than Facebook and porn, because my wife would almost always find their papers published somewhere online, and then the student would get a big fat zero and a free trip to the dean's office.

I always kind of thought that would be cool, to find some cheating lowlife and expose them as a fraud, but didn't figure I would ever get the chance. Then I received a review copy of a game called Haunted Village, and after a quick visit to BGG (thanks, T.K., whoever you are), discovered that it is a carbon copy of a free Print-and-Play game called Fatal Frame. It's not similar to that game. It IS that game. It's not a coincidence. It's blatant.

Unfortunately, it's not as though the guy who made Fatal Frame can do much about it. For one thing, the free version is based on a big-name video game, and even uses licensed art. Kind of tough to start screaming about copyright infringement when your game is already infringing (though in all fairness, the print-and-play game is free).

The second problem, and the one that makes any legal action almost completely impossible, is that the publishers of Haunted Village are in Russia. Yeah, good luck with that lawsuit. Sure, they stole your entire game, swapped out the art and pretended they came up with it (even going so far as to credit a Russian guy as the designer), but I'm just not sure where you'll find an attorney willing to work on contingency for an international lawsuit that's probably worth a little less than a mortgage payment. It's about as ethical as the Chinese people who pirate DVDs, but there's really no legal way to stop them.

There's supposed to be a review in here somewhere, and while I haven't played Fatal Frame, I have played Haunted Village, so I guess I should tell you about it. I enjoyed the game, before I knew it was a blatant rip-off, and now that I do know, I'm going to go download the original and have it printed at Kinkos. Then I'm going to be disappointed that I couldn't have lost Haunted Village in my house fire.

The idea is that you're entering a village full of ghosts (thus the unoriginal title of the copycat game). You have to beat the boss monster hiding in the old church, but to do that, you have to claim a certain number of ghosts. In the original game, you do this by capturing them with your magic camera. In the fraudulent edition, they get rid of the camera and you just collect ghosts. How you do that is unclear, because the people who remade the game were unoriginal bastards who couldn't come up with a plausible way for that to make sense.

You wander from location to location, finding horribly screwed-up monsters and battling them. Some things you can find will help, like holy water and crucifix, and sometimes, other players will totally hose you. It's fun and fast, and pretty easy to follow, once you get the hang of it. Once you collect enough ghost souls, you can rush the church and fight the big bad guy, who is called 'the boss' in Fatal Frame and, because they are so creative, the plagiarists called him 'the boss.'

Fatal Frame (and by extension, Haunted Village) could have wound up like one of those dull European games where everyone is doing their own thing and nobody is getting kidney punches, but instead, the designer (Fourhman, not Igor the Russian) added some great ways to interact with the other people at the table. Actions can steal weapons from opponents or move them to unfortunate locations. You can play ghosts on them to slow them down or steal their cards. And when the game is winding up, and everyone is rushing to the church to be the first one to smoke test the Big Bad, it can get downright cutthroat. And that makes it awesome.

This isn't a particularly complicated game, honestly, but we all had a very good time playing it. I really wish the creator of Fatal Frame had made it without the copyrighted stuff, so that he could sell it to a publisher who was not operating out of the back of a shop where they also made fake IDs to sell to Libyan terrorists, but I do have to thank Haunted Village for bringing Fatal Frame to my attention. Even though Fatal Frame is a free game, it's more attractive than Haunted Village, whose artists would not be able to find a job in the United States unless they were willing to draw comic book porn. Fortunately, they are also in Russia, and can probably use their talents to make counterfeit labels to sew onto fake Levis.

So, in my final assessment, do not buy Haunted Village, because it is a horrible rip-off and makes no attempt whatsoever to credit the original source. Instead, go download Fatal Frame, because it's a very fun game - though in all fairness, it will take quite a bit more work to play it. But at least you won't feel like you have to shower afterward.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
A fun ghost hunt
Lots of interacting with your fellow ghostbusters
Cool game that tells a story while you're playing it (especially if you're playing Fatal Frame instead)

Cons:
Flat-out stolen (Haunted Village, not Fatal Frame)
Not a lot of planning or long-term strategy

For God's sake, don't give money to fur-hatted Siberian assholes. Instead, check out this very cool game at the source:
http://www.fourhman.com/fatalframe/

Important note: I did email both the creator of the game and the Russian game thieves. I have verified the contents of this review, though of course the unoriginal foreign bastards said the original guy knew all about it. He did know all about it - after the game was printed and sold. And Fourhman isn't credited anywhere, because the Russians were apparently just hoping he would never find out. Sorry to blow your cover, cheaters. Now go see the dean.

Board Game Review - EVO

2012-01-09T13:33:00.001-08:00

History can show us countless examples of games used as propaganda, like when Careers taught me that if I wanted to get ahead, I needed to let my boss win at golf. Usually these are amusing or at least innocuous, but sometimes they are downright perfidious. Take, for example, EVO.

This reprint appears to be a fun, confrontational game about saving dinosaurs during an era of rapid climate change. But it is actually a horrible attempt to brainwash our children to become Nazi perverts. I don't care how beautiful it is, I simply cannot condone such a twisted set of ideals.

You can first begin to see the darkness of EVO from the object of the game. Everyone has a herd of dinosaurs, and the end of the world is quickly approaching. Only one herd can survive the meteoric apocalypse, so every player is fighting to make his own group the master race. This master race will be pure, and probably blond, and all others will die out. They are clearly dino Nazis.

Now, if EVO were a boring, unimpressive game, this message of hatred and fear would probably go largely unnoticed. But the publishers of EVO have made their manifesto so much more insidious by nesting it inside a game that is very interesting and very fun. Your kids will want to play. Your friends will want to play. And when they do, they will be exposed to the subtle indoctrination of Aryan superiority, as represented by extinct giant lizards.

The game itself is a balancing act of a few different cool ideas. There's a neat bidding segment where the players try to procure the best genetic upgrades for their race of superior beings, followed by a cool maneuvering phase in which you'll all try to get your dinosaurs to safe land before they either cook up or freeze to death. This is accompanied with some brutal dino-on-dino violence, in which the Nazisaurs will attempt to prove how much better they are by stomping opposing dinosaurs to death.

Unfortunately, the next phase of the game introduces a new perversion. Once your herd has moved around, you have to lay some dinosaurs. This is clearly sexually deviant. There is just no excuse for laying a dinosaur. I could see it if the dinosaurs were replaced with sexy Amazon women, and I could even let it go if they were circus freaks or something kinky. But bestiality? That's just not right.

To make matters worse, my daughter actually said she was going to birth some dinosaurs! She was obviously falling under the spell of this exceptionally entertaining game and its twisted message of Aryanism and sexual deviants, when she was prepared to actually give birth to more dinosaurs! It's downright criminal!

So after you have performed illegal acts on your elitist dinosaurs and added new dinosaurs to the herd (probably half-human, half-lizard mutant hybrids, after all that inter-species perversion), you will have to check and see which ones die. Because of the rapidly shifting climate, dinos in a previously healthy jungle may suddenly find that it's far too hot there, and just keel over and die. If you have equipped your dinosaurs with some heat-regulating mutations, you might save a couple, and if you have the right genetic upgrades, you can also pop out a few baby lizards to replace the ones who melt. Of course, this just furthers the subtle undercurrent of perversion, but it does give you a good reason to make more little lizard people.

The very last part of every turn gives every player mutation points. These points are used for two things. First, they let you buy more mutations, which will hopefully keep your sex toy fascists around another turn. Second, the player with the most points when the meteor crashes down is the master race, and wins the game. So you have to spend them to make your dinosaurs more hardy, but you have to be careful, because they're both currency and victory points. Cool, huh?

So the creators of EVO had wrapped their little subversive propaganda inside a delightfully entertaining and exceptionally fun game, but to make it look even more like a candy bar offered to a child from a white panel van, the game is nothing short of visually stunning. Every single piece of art in the game is magnificent, from the box cover to the event cards. You'll want to play this game just because it's so darned pretty, and then they will have you right where they want you - enjoying the hell out of a game about Nazi degenerates.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Lots of interaction, including considerable dinosaur violence
A seamless mesh of several different game ideas
A nice blend of strategy and tactics
Seriously attractive
Pretty darn fun and quite thematic

Cons:
May convince you to become an Aryan pervert

Finally, I'm reviewing a game where you can save a few bucks! Just head over to Noble Knight Games and pick up this sexy new reprint of the classic game, and don't pay retail if you can help it:
NAZISAURUS PERV

Board Game Review - Flash Duel

2012-01-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy - well, actually, in this galaxy. And really, not that long ago. Like maybe a year or two. OK, so not all that long ago in our galaxy, Dave Sirlin started a game company to publish a bunch of games simulating fighting video games. The first of these games was called Flash Duel, and it was pretty damned cool. It was not original, or anything, because it was basically Reiner Knizia's En Garde with special powers, but it was better than that game and quite a bit more fun. It also came in a semi-crappy wooden box and had ten different guys you could play. It really wasn't much game, but what it was, was pretty cool.

Then Sirlin made more games. Puzzle Strike took Dominion and made it competitive (and a lot more interesting) and then Yomi did the same thing for Rock-Scissors-Paper. Puzzle Strike was a big hit, because of how much better than Dominion it was, and then Yomi made a huge splash by being a very cool game.

But in the meantime, people kind of forgot about Flash Duel, because it was almost just an experimental game that didn't really have enough substance to enjoy a lot of staying power. And since Dave Sirlin wasn't really of a mind to have his games fade into obscurity, he reinvented Flash Duel and turned it up to 11.

The new Flash Duel is not just a reboot of the original. Where the first version had a simple format and a limited selection of characters, the new one doubles the guys you can play and has no less than seven different game modes. You can still play the original, head-to-head duel, but now you can also play in teams, solo, or in a huge four-on-one battle royale against a very angry purple dragon (he is angry because he is sick of people calling him cute).

The regular game of Flash Duel is still just as engaging, light and entertaining as it ever was. You maneuver, plan, manipulate your hand and gamble in an attempt to get a hit on your opponent before he can smack you. It's fast and fun, and you can finish a whole game in about ten minutes. There are even ten new characters to use, that add all kinds of interesting strategies and stuff to avoid.

The new game modes for Flash Duel really do add a lot to the game. The solo game has three levels of difficulty, from playing against an idiot drone to battling the dragon by yourself. You can also play the medium mode where you fight the stone golem who trains the fighters. All are interesting, though I think the game is better when you're playing against someone else. There are achievements you can gain as you play, as if you were playing on your Xbox, but while they may seem like a cool way to make a board game feel like a video game, they're actually pretty dumb.

The best new thing in Flash Duel is the dragon mode, where four players take on the dragon. Now the game gets really interesting, because while the dragon is basically just a skinny purple guy with a cute lizard head, he is also a total bad-ass who will beat the bejeezus out all comers. That's why it will take you four people to bring him down. He'll maul you retarded.

Sooner or later, though, you may get so good at killing the dragon that the dragon decides he needs to recruit help. Then you can play the dragon mode, but add in a traitor who actively works to hose the other players. Now the game has an element of Battlestar Galactica, which Dave Sirlin doesn't think is a good game because he is wrong.

If you liked the original Flash Duel, you're going to love the new version. If you thought it was a nice diversion, but weren't too crazy about the lack of meat on its bones, the new Flash Duel will offer a whole lot of reasons to like it and give you something to sink your teeth into. And if you thought the original was stupid and trite, then you were wrong, but you're still not going to like the new one. Me, I think it's awesome, but I really liked the original, and I like this one at least twice as much. Maybe a little more - my accounting is sometimes a bit suspect.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Everything you loved about the original, plus a LOT
Ten new characters
Several new game modes allow for some very interesting game possibilities
You can play this over and over and over

Cons:
Still essentially a light game, even with the heavier modes

As much as I would love to tell you where you can save a few bucks on the new Flash Duel, it's one of those Game Salute games that you can only get for full retail. But if you decide you want to pay full price for it, you can find it at the Game Salute page.

I had a hell of a time getting this review posted at all. We haven't had actual internet for a week, and it's made posting a serious ordeal. We're working with a cell phone set up for tethering, which fails every third time I hit a link, and on top of that, this week has been an absolute Charlie Foxtrot, what with moving into a rent house and what-not. So there are only two reviews this week, and what's more, this one doesn't have an image or a link, because I don't have enough 'net access to go get 'em. Bear with me - I played some great games this weekend, and will have my regular dose of three reviews next week. Thanks for your patience.

Card Game Review - Tschak

2012-01-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

This is not a review of a Russian game. I just thought I would get that out of the way right now, because it very well could be, if you just look at the name. But in this case, 'Tschak' is not a translated word from a foreign language. In this case, 'Tschak' means roughly the same thing as 'Shnick' or 'Fkow' or maybe even 'Kpam'. From Webster's Totally Not Real Dictionary:

Tshcak (not really a word, vt)
1. The sound one hears when one cuts off a monster's soft parts with a very sharp weapon.
2. The feeling of having your tentacle chopped off by a very sharp weapon.
(v)
3. The process of removing tentacles with very sharp weapons.
Grimbolg's axe is sharp enough to throw down some serious tschak.

In theory, the goal of Tschak is to enter a dungeon with a team of adventurers and kill monsters and steal treasures. In practice, the goal of Tschak is to build three solid plays from a hand of ten cards in order to maximize point gains and minimize penalties. Obviously, the title of the game is slightly removed from the actual game play. So there is some abstraction.

In fact, there is very little need for the dungeon theme at all, aside from providing a springboard for some very entertaining art. You're going to get ten cards, and then you're going to see what rewards and penalties you'll compete for this round, and then you'll figure out how to play three hands before you bundle up your cards and pass them to the next guy. Basically, it's a trick-taking game. It's got virtually nothing to do with dragons, skeletons or angry dwarves, unless you play with Vern Troyer and Nicole Richie (in which case you still won't have a dragon).

But it is fairly challenging. The thing is, the playing field is pretty much level, with most of the luck of the draw inherent in a card game being mitigated by the fact that everyone is going to play with the same hand eventually. There are four rounds, and forty cards, and ten cards played in each round. When you finish a round, you pass the cards and play a round with the cards someone else was holding last turn, and see if you can do any better than they did. You don't rely on getting a lucky hand. The winner is the one who plays his cards better than everyone else.

Honestly, Tschak is not generally my kind of game. I like maneuvering tiny robots around a map to battle other tiny robots and then rolling dice, or moving miniature barbarians around miniature dungeons and fighting miniature goblins and then rolling dice. But my wife prefers traditional card games to hobby board games. She whips my ass at Spades every single time. And she very much enjoyed Tschak, which means it's a game that is going to see some serious play time in my house.

Tschak does have many of the elements I like to see in a game, whether it's a card game or not. It provides for strategy from the beginning of the game, and rewards the player who sticks with one consistent plan. It also requires flexibility and quick decision-making, because you're going to have to determine your plays at the top of every round (or one card at a time, depending on how good you are at playing card games, which means that my wife does it once at the beginning of a round, and I end up doing it every time I have to play a card). There are several different strategies you could employ to win, and part of winning the game is playing to your own strategy while countering your opponent's plans.

Tschak is not a game that I would replace if I lost it in a fire, except that my wife likes it. I'm kind of lukewarm on it, because I like games where people die. But I do enjoy playing it, and I really love that my wife likes it, because that means I'll get to play it with her. It doesn't really live up to the name, and I certainly don't get the impression that I'm dealing out bloody tschaks (or even minor fwiks, fleshy ktumps, or devastating prakaows). It's just a fun trick-taking game that the whole family can enjoy for thirty minutes, and then we can put it away so my teenagers can go back to texting their friends and I can go back to worrying about the bills.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Cool card game that rewards strategy and good card play
Fun for the whole family, as long as the kids are out of grade school
The art really is great

Cons:
Theme could be replaced by a story about drunken field mice in a steel mill (though you would need new sounds)

I really hate that I keep reviewing games that aren't out yet, but unfortunately, all the games I was going to review kind of got torched when my house caught fire. I can't tell you where to get Tschak, because it won't be out for a month or two.

Card Game Review - Mundus Novus

2011-12-31T18:30:00.000-08:00

If I were way, way smarter, and maybe went to graduate school in London or something, I would write this review in Latin. It would be awesome and brilliant, maybe even use iambic pentameter. Mostly, it would totally go with the title of the game Mundus Novus, which is Latin for something that I would know if I could actually write stuff in Latin.

And I would write the review in Latin to help illustrate what a smart game Mundus Novus is. It's basically a fully developed trading game pulled from the game Mare Nostrum, which also has a Latin title, and would therefore be far more interesting to read in Latin, except for maybe the fact that nobody really knows how to read Latin, and so the review would actually be, for most people, the equivalent of reading complete gibberish for several paragraphs in a row (which makes it basically the same as this review, but with fewer juvenile jokes).

The idea behind Mundus Novus is that you're all wealthy merchants sailing across the Atlantic to make money in the newly discovered Americas. This theme is so exciting and revolutionary that any gamer worth his wrinkly dice bag will be absolutely overwhelmed with a desire to play the game. I mean, you just don't see games about snobby Europeans exploiting the New World in the late Renaissance period. In case you're wondering, no, I cannot figure out how to put more sarcasm in this paragraph.

But even with a back story about as fresh as a used Kleenex, Mundus Novus is a very clever game. It's also very focused and pretty damned fun, to boot. It's like if you took an entire game about global conquest, surgically extracted the most intellectually challenging part, then injected it with Super Soldier Serum and anabolic steroids until it was like the board game version of Mr. T. It keeps all the parts it needs to be awesome, and for the rest, it just does not have time for no jibba jabba.

The goal of the game is to either have ten different kinds of resources at the same time, or to accumulate a buttload of money by building sets of cards. You only get five cards every turn, and you discard them at the end of the turn, so making a set of ten is problematic, to say the least. So to improve your odds of success, you need to pick up the crazy ability cards, which you get by building sets of cards.

So, you have to build sets of cards to get the ability cards, and you need the ability cards if you want to build other sets. And you need those sets to be very specific cards, which you are decidedly unlikely to have handed to you by pure chance. And that means you need to trade with your friends.

Every turn, you'll all choose some cards to put up on the block, then take turns swiping the stuff in front of your friends. You don't get to choose a card unless someone chooses one of yours, so it's worth your time to put some good stuff out there. Plus there are other advantages to putting out really good cards, like the chance to go first in the trading or pick up the best ability cards. Of course, if you put out all your best cards, you might get a very nice ability to go with your hand full of absolute garbage that you have because you gave away all the good stuff.

One thing I love about Mundus Novus is the subtle layers of consequence and decision-making. For instance, you might decide to try for a hand containing three high cards, to grab that double-sized warehouse, but to do so, you only offer up some crappy low cards. Then someone else gets to go first, and you get shut out of the trading, leaving you with a bunch of nothing to reward your greed. Or you might decide on a lower set, but the sweet goods you put out there wind up letting someone else build a much better hand than yours, and then they get that sweet warehouse and you wind up with a dirty sock.

We also really enjoyed the various potential strategies. You could try for a huge hand of varied cards, to grab up the instant crazy-combo win, or you could go for a big earner with lots of recurring payoffs. You might exploit the events to hinder your opponents, or you could just get nasty and never let anyone else get ahead. It's actually kind of deceptive - every time we think we've figured out one particular preferred strategy, someone at the table breaks it and sweeps the win out from under us. Like I said, this is a smart game. I'm a little ashamed at not being able to write the review in a dead language.

It's also a beautiful game. It's an Asmodee game, which makes the amazing art no surprise, but even still, it's hard to imagine how it could have been any better looking. The visual design is impeccable. The cards are fantastic quality. The artists for Mundus Novus should be very, very proud of their work. If I knew how to say, 'holy crap, that looks good' in Latin, I totally would.

But then, if this review had been written in Latin, it would be very snooty, and might give you the impression that Mundus Novus is a game only fit for Mensa members and ivy league academics. And if the game were that hard to play, it would not be anywhere as smart. Being a smart game means that dumb people can play it, but smart people will win more. And that's definitely the case with Mundus Novus - this game is deep and clever, but it's surprisingly easy to learn.

So it's probably just as well that I don't know any Latin. On top of being able to write this review in a language most of you can read, it also means that I won't have to replace all my t-shirts with cardigans. But in the absence of thoroughly brilliant writing, I'll have to settle for blunt. And here it is - Mundus Novus is fun and smart and pretty. If you visit a redneck bar in Arkansas, those same adjectives can be used as a pickup line. You're welcome.

(Please note that those words will not work in a redneck bar in California, because then you have to include some reference to either organic artichokes or pretentious-but-affordable white zinfandel).

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Focused, intelligent trading game
Wastes nothing - every part of the game is useful and important
Incredibly attractive
Very fun and exceptionally interactive

Cons:
Theme worn out worse than a bald tire

Mundus Novus is very affordable, especially considering what a great game it is. Unfortunately, it's not out yet, so you'll have to wait until Asmodee actually releases it to buy a copy.

Lego Game Review - Heroica

2011-12-29T14:41:00.000-08:00

I love Legos. And I love dungeon crawl games. So it seems to me that Heroica, a dungeon crawl game using Legos, would be the absolute best of both worlds.

On the other hand, just because a person is particularly good at coming up with interesting ways to put plastic bricks together does not mean that the same person is a master of theoretical game design. Plus Legos are Norwegian or Danish or something. Cultural differences are virtually guaranteed, like naming all the sets weird stuff I can't pronounce.

However, the idea bears exploration. Of course, there are some obvious hindrances. For one thing, can you really expect to find a good orc warlord in a Lego minifig? And how much room would you need on the table to recreate the dragon's lair? And what rules do you use?

Happily, Lego saw all those potential pitfalls and dealt with each one. First hurdle - minifigs. They solved this one by not using minifigs, and instead substituting miniature versions of minifigs. These are very tiny, with just a small amount of art painted on them, and no moving parts. They are not as cool as a minifig, I can tell you that, but they are smaller, so that's something.

The room on the table - this was also solved, because with the tiny playing pieces you don't need much room to make dungeons. Each corridor can be assembled from just a few pieces, and with just a small box of parts, you can build quite an impressive dungeon. Plus you can mix it up and make your dungeon do pretty much whatever you want, and because of these little miniature rooms, you can fit the whole thing onto the table in your breakfast nook (or in my case, the counter in our hotel).

That just leaves the last issue, which would be the rules, and Lego conveniently solved this problem by pretty much not using any rules. Sure, it leaves something to be desired in terms of game play, but you have to admire the simple elegance of a game that you play with virtually no rules of any kind.

OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. On your turn, you roll a die that tells you how far you move. The die also has hit icons on it, so you roll it when you attack, too. If you hit (which you will, 2 out of 3 times), the monster dies. If you miss, you lose some life. You all run through the dungeon and try to be the first to get to the big bad guy and kill him.

The monsters are spiders and werewolves and golems and stuff, but unfortunately, the only real difference between them is whether their strength is one, two or three. Other than that, they have absolutely no differences of any kind. Fighting a flying giant bat is exactly as dangerous as battling a weak goblin, and that just is not as cool as it could be. I kind of like for my monsters to feel different - sure, they all die just the same, but some should throw sticky webs and some should shoot arrows and some should fly out of reach. Sadly, that's kind of hard to accomplish in a game with virtually no rules.

But that's also kind of the beauty of Heroica. If you were a ten-year-old with no exposure to Warhammer Quest or Descent or even HeroQuest, Heroica would be just the right amount of meat. It's light and pointless, but you still get to wander around and kill things, and I do really like to wander around and kill things (you know, in games. In real life, I prefer to sit on my ass and kill beers).

If you're a grown-ass man, or maybe just a kid who actually knows that dungeon crawls are supposed to be interesting, Heroica still has a lot of potential. Only now, you're going to have to make some rules of your own. The beauty of this game is that when there are practically no rules to begin with, there's plenty of room to expand it.

Personally, I love the whole thing. I got the biggest set for Christmas, and once I built it and loved it, I had to go get more. Now I have all four sets, and I'm putting together some rules that I plan to test with my daughter tonight. I can send my adventurers (there are six in all, if you buy all the sets) from the beach, into the forest, through the goblin fortress and into the mountain lair of the golem overlord. I can rearrange everything on a whim, and add or subtract potions, treasures, magic gates and locked doors. The giant, bouncy die is fun to roll, and once I develop some differences for the monsters, this game is going to be a hoot.

Of course, that exposes the biggest problem with a game like Heroica - once you start tweaking it, you'll never be done. You'll tire of defeating the goblin king, and decide you need a lich. You'll develop special abilities, but then you'll need tougher monsters. And with all this dungeon crawling, there's still no dragon. All of which means I will be modifying the hell out of Heroica for a good long time, until my daughter and I tire of creating thrilling dungeon crawls and battling for very small plastic trophies.

Summary

2-5 players (depending on the set you buy)

Pros:
Legos are bad-ass
Really fantastic modular dungeons
The pieces are pretty damned neat
Dungeon crawls are fun

Cons:
Practically no rules - certainly not enough to make a good game
Not enough variety

I can't believe it! Noble Knight Games carries Heroica! I'm actually really surprised, because Legos are not exactly hobby games. But here you go anyway:
CRAZY CASTLE BATTLES

Card and Dice Game Review - Carnival

2011-12-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

I just got this game called Carnival. Now, when I first opened the box, I was hoping it would have an 'e' on the end, so that it would be Carnivale, and it would be like that crazy HBO show and you would travel the US during the Great Depression and Satan would take on the guise of a Baptist preacher who also used to be the Kurgan from Highlander. But it's not.

It is pretty cute, though. It's got kind of a Reiner Knizia feel, but without boring math exercises. It's fairly simple, but it has some neat twists that you haven't seen before, and they force you to think on your feet while you make plans in your head. They don't have a blind guy drinking absinthe over a spoonful of sugar, but that's not really kid-friendly, anyway.

The idea of Carnival is that you're trying to build four out of your five rides before anyone else can get them done. Each ride needs banners, lights, seats and materials, and if you're paying attention at this point, you can probably spot pretty quick that the theme in this game is almost completely unnecessary. It's a set collection game with randomized actions, which is another way of saying it's a heck of a lot like a Reiner game, which I already said.

To build your sets in front of you, you'll roll some dice and put them on a card that will tell you what your actions are for that turn. This is basically how you get more cards in your hand, or how you steal cards from your friends, or how you screw up their sets so they can't win. It's not a mean-spirited game, but it is fairly competitive, and that's OK with me. It also went over alright with my family.

Of course, the dice can be pretty capricious, as anybody who has ever rolled dice knows full well, so to give you a little more control, each player also has three tickets. You can burn a ticket to manipulate the dice a little, or just reroll all of them. You can also throw one away to block some mean bastard's attempt to screw up your pretty sets. But you only get three for the whole game, and you're going to be sorely tempted to use them all in the first three turns. But don't. You're going to want them.

Now, I said the theme in Carnival was pretty disposable, and yeah, it is. But it's implemented so well that I would actually be a little disappointed if this were just played with a deck of regular ol' Bicycles. The art is charming and attractive, and while I certainly don't get the feeling that I'm a traveling carnie setting up hilariously unsafe sideshows for unsuspecting townies, I did find myself drawn to the simplicity and basic beauty of the game. It doesn't try to do more than it should, and the design manages to make the game easier to play and more pleasant to see.

Unlike the HBO show that I was really hoping this game would be about, Carnival is not terribly deep (it is also not frighteningly twisted and full of deception, and that definitely makes it more palatable to the average American family of four). It is a little on the light side, but still has enough meat to attract a serious gamer who wants to play with a couple junior-high kids and a visiting grandmother. It's engaging and smart, and fun to look at. The only part of the HBO show that was like that was Adrienne Barbeau. The rest was just weird (and really, so was Adrienne Barbeau).

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Fun and clever
Competitive without being mean
Delightful graphics
Great pacing - plays fast without feeling rushed

Cons:
Theme is just there to be pretty
Not overly deep, and very Euro

Carnival is one of those games coming out of the Game Salute deal, which means Noble Knight Games doesn't have it. The only place that does have it (and they just have it set for preorder) is Game Salute. It's a decent game, but I can't tell you where to save any money on it, because the only place you can buy it is charging full retail:
http://shop.gamesalute.com/collections/front-page-1/products/carnival

Board Game Review - Ninja

2011-12-23T22:18:00.001-08:00

You are ninja. Clad all in black and armed with poison, blade and shuriken, you creep silently over the wall of the daimyo's compound and into his palace. You glide silently through the corridors, hunting the lord of the land, intent on shedding his blood to fulfill your ancient contract. You creep like a shadow to the very door of his room, slip inside, and promptly stumble over a pile of folded clothes and fumble around the room like a drunk wildebeest. Then guards stab you.

OK, you're not really that bad at doing ninja stuff. Well, you probably are, because your asthma makes you wheeze and you are about as graceful as Ethel Merman stomping grapes. But if you play Ninja, you get to be a really bad-ass ninja, unless you're playing the guards, and then you get to be about as clever as a bag of ripe fruit.

I tend to be somewhat skeptical of hidden-movement games. There's no way to ever really know if your opponent is cheating, for one thing, and for another, one innocent mistake or misplaced pencil mark could completely screw up the whole game. Plus after I played Escape From The Aliens In Outer Space, I kind of wanted to swear off these mark-your-movement-on-a-hidden-pad games altogether.

But Ninja is pretty cool. For one thing, only the ninja player has to hide his movement. The other guy has nifty plastic minis to show where all his guards are. For another thing, most of the stuff in this game actually works, as opposed to Escape The Aliens, which was mostly just stupid.

As the ninja player, you'll have two bad guys roaming around the castle compound, intent on mayhem and discord - and they're trying really hard not to get caught. You can move faster than the wind, and strike with deadly skill, but the guards you have to outwit are not exactly mall cops, and they'll perforate you like a spaghetti strainer if you're not careful. You can run when time is of the essence, and when silence is more important than speed, creep slowly past the watching guard.

You'll have a handful of cards for each of your villainous intruders, cards that can be used to quietly dispatch the searching guards, distract them, or escape capture. These cards can be very powerful, but you don't have very many, and you can only use each card once per game. You never have to reveal your location until a guard stumbles across you, and if you use your cards right, you can take them down with a shuriken in the knee before they raise the alarm.

It may sound like the guards have a hard time of it, but remember, these are trained samurai walking the grounds. They're not just flashing a torch into the corners and yelling at kids to quit necking in the back seat. They'll stop every now and then and listen for intruders, and if the ninja player has been sloppy, you'll have a chance to go running off after the bad guys and throw down some steel justice.

Plus there are a ton of guards. You'll start the game with a decent handful, and as you go, you'll wind up with as many as 20 pipe-hitting warriors patrolling the grounds. Some of the guards are sleeping at the beginning of the game, but as the game progresses, they're going to wake up and start running aroung like the Keystone Kops playing lacrosse with the F-Troop.

The only thing is, where the ninja player can go wherever he wants, you're stuck using cards every time you want to make a move. At the beginning of the game, you'll have plenty of options, but by the end, you're going to be groaning when you discover that even though you know right where the traitorous fiends are hiding, your cards will only allow you to pick the lock on the outhouse and throw cherry bombs in the toilet.

Ninja is a hard game to win. For the killers to win, both the bad guys have to accomplish their hidden goals and get out. For the guards to win, they have to kill both of the bad guys. If only one murderer gets out alive, the game is a draw - and since that's about the most likely result, not very many games of Ninja are going to end in a decisive victory for anyone.

In fact, while I do like the mechanics of Ninja, and think that the pieces are simply brilliant, the end of the game is likely to be very unsatisfying. You'll maneuver around, playing cards and positioning your forces, and then after you spend an hour or so working hard to outwit the other guy, the game ends and nobody wins. That's incredibly frustrating.

But even though the end of the game can be a let-down, the part where you're playing is ridiculously tense. Over and over, the ninja player will be just one lucky move away from getting caught. And time after time, the samurai player will be hot on the trail, just to have his prey escape at the last second. Every time you play, you're going to want to go back over the events of the game and relate all the places where the good guys almost got the bad guys, the time when the ninja escaped by hiding silently in the corner, and how the patrolling guards were just seconds away from stumbling across the nefarious murderers.

There were a few other problems with Ninja, like the fairly confusing rules for the secret tunnel, but those will vanish after you play a couple times. My only serious beefs with Ninja are that it's too easy for the samurai player to wind up with nothing he can do, and the fact that far too many games end in a tie. If you like a game that will literally get your heart beating faster (and I am using the word properly - while playing Ninja, I could seriously feel my heartbeat speeding up), Ninja does a spectacular job of both telling a story and just plain being exciting. There's a lot of bluffing, sneaking, and outwitting, and those make for a pretty fun game where I'm from.

Summary

2-4 players (but it's really just meant to be 2)

Pros:
Really feels like a cat-and-mouse ninja home invasion
Spectacular components make the game more fun just by being pretty
Tense and exciting

Cons:
Poor card draws can cripple and frustrate the guard player
Too many games end in a tie

If you feel like creeping around in the dark, run over to Noble Knight Games and pick up a copy of Ninja. You can even save ten bucks in the process!
IF DO RIGHT NO CAN DEFENSE

Card Game Review - 51st State

2011-12-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

Neuroshima is the coolest setting that was ever ruined by a board game. And the crazy thing is, the games that ruin the setting are great games - but they suck at playing up the setting. Neuroshima Hex is a brilliant game of careful placement and long-term planning, but it has virtually nothing to do with killer robots or mutated plants, aside from some pretty pictures.

51st State does a better job of playing up the theme, but only marginally, and now it feels way too friendly to be a game about killing bands of roving marauders. It has a lot of similarities to Race for the Galaxy, and like that Puerto-Rico-in-space game, really does help to deliver the feeling of building a nation from the ground up. In fact, I would say it's even better than Race for the Galaxy, but it still doesn't address my main problem with either game. Namely, you can raise powerful armies and hard-hitting raiders, but you can't send them to hit other players. If I'm playing a game with bloodthirsty armies, I want to use them, and not just to beat up the cards.

The idea behind 51st State is that, in the wake of the nuclear destruction of the United States, you head up a nation attempting to build a new nation from the ashes of the old. Your opponents are doing the same thing, but only one of you can come out on top. So instead of having a race for the whole galaxy, you're really just racing for the East Coast.

There are so many great concepts in 51st State that I'm really only going to hit on a few of them. My favorite is how all the different locations can serve three different purposes. For instance, say you find a bar full of gun-toting wastelanders. You can ride up with a couple tanks and kill everybody, then steal all the liquor and guns. You can negotiate with them and get a regular supply of small arms. Or you can bring them into the fold, thereby allowing all your soldiers a place to fire guns in the air and disco until the bullets come back down and kill their dance partners.

However you decide to exploit a location, you're going to have to pay for it. If you decide to settle it, you'll need a different resource than if you decide to burn it down. Every faction has three cards they can use every turn to generate the specific resources needed for conquering, negotiating or incorporating - but you can only use them once. And to make things more complicated, you have to buy the resources on those cards with other resources.

The goal of the game is to earn victory points (so no, that's not all that original), but you don't just count up every turn. You can build up points with special actions that will be counted every turn, so early investments can pay off big down the road, as long as you don't screw it up and wait too long for your big play. You can hire leaders and use them to earn these recurring points, then kill off the leader and get another one - just to build up more points. There's a very delicate element of timing and planning that can pay off huge, if you exploit it, or ruin the unprepared.

Unfortunately, it's not all wine and roses. Nothing is easy in 51st State, and I don't just mean for the guys who live there. There's an unnecessarily complicated series of resource generation steps that means you have to invest in raw materials, then in ways to use those materials, then in ways to spend them. This is actually where 51st State starts to bog down. A typical transaction might go like this:

1) Discard spoils to gain workers.
2) Send workers to round up some gears.
3) Swap gears for negotiation points.
4) Spend negotiation points to play a card.
5) Wonder out loud why it takes four steps to do something that probably could have been accomplished in one.

This complication adds a few cascading downsides, too. For one thing, instead of having just two or three icons for resources, there are eight or nine. And since the icons relate quite a bit of information (and the game was originally Polish), there are no words on the cards describing what the icons mean. If you thought it was tough to remember what all the icons meant in Race for the Galaxy, you're going to need night classes to learn the pictures in 51st State.

Another problem is that a game that requires all those resources also requires tiny cardboard circles to represent them. You'll have a pile of chits depicting everything from indentured servants to clay bricks. And in a production decision that I can only assume still causes the publishers to shake their head at their own oversight, these chits are made out of fairly thin cardboard, making them virtually impossible to pick up. I finally broke down and stuck a piece of gum on the end of a ruler, and used the gum to pick up the pieces (I did not actually do that. Instead, I just dropped them all over the place).

But all these are secondar compared to the biggest complaint I have about 51st State - I want to shoot my friends. I've raised a howling, rabid pack of mutant ass-kickers, and I want to use them to burn down enemy encampments and get mud all over my friends' carpet. Instead, I have the option to send my guys to work for my opponents in exchange for a box of bricks. It's too damned cooperative. If I want peaceful coexistence, I'll play a game by Oprah Winfrey.

So I do have some pretty valid complaints about 51st State, and I haven't even mentioned how complicated the rules are. But I don't want to give the impression that I didn't like the game. In fact, I loved it. We played it a bunch, just because of how much fun we were having. We played it wrong, because we didn't understand a few of the rules, but we still had such a good time that we kept coming back for more.

Even with all the downsides, it really is quite fun to start with almost nothing and build up this powerful nation of ruined airplanes and mutant hamburger stands. It's an excellent blend of tactics and strategy, where you decide on a direction early in the game and then see it through with smart plays as the game progresses. The art is great, and the game has plenty of tension as you push to get just one or two points ahead of your opponents before you hit the finish line and the game ends.

If you hate Race for the Galaxy, you're probably not going to enjoy the amount of mental effort it takes to play 51st State. In fact, you might be completely confused for the first couple games, because all those icons really do take some learning, and can become an avalanche of indecipherable information. But once you get it down, you might find that all the complication and tricky rules make for a game that is wonderfully engaging and just a bunch of fun.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Build a nation out of nothing
A great mix of long-term planning and quick thinking
Fantastic art
Every decision matters

Cons:
Unnecessarily complex
Tiny pieces that you can't pick up without very sticky fingers
Not anywhere near as much interaction as it should have

I enjoyed the crap out of 51st State. If it sounds like your kind of game, you can pick it up from Noble Knight Games, and save yourself a few bucks:
BEFRIEND THE MUTIES

Event Review - Lighting the House on Fire

2011-12-19T19:01:00.000-08:00

In my never-ending quest to bring you reports of interesting things you could do with your weekends, I have found the most fascinating event - burning down your house. Unfortunately, I have to give this a negative review, as I must say it is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.

Honestly, I never meant to review a house fire. I always pretty much assumed it would suck, and I think most people would agree that a house fire is a pretty crappy way to spend your day. However, today my son made fireworks in his bedroom and succeeded at setting his mattress aflame. Shortly thereafter, the attic exploded.

OK, that's a dramatization. Only the windows exploded. The attic itself (where his room is found) did not explode, though one wall of the house was pretty well ruined, and was open to the rain when I left tonight.

If you do decide to burn down your house, I highly recommend having very good homeowner's insurance. That way, while the firemen throw every game you own out a second-story window because your office is next to your boy's bedroom, you will rest comfortably, knowing that all of your games will be replaced. Like, in three months or so, when the checks come in. And, of course, you won't have that cherry copy of Black Ops any more, since they only made 1,000 of those.

Also, if you do intend to burn your home, it's a good idea to take your computer out of the office first. Had I realized this, my computer would not currently be a mishapen pile of melted plastic, and I would not have to write the evening's review on my wife's laptop while in a hotel room.

Another good tip, if you decide to burn your home, is to save the Christmas tree. If you can grab any presents, that's also a good idea. We may be celebrating in a hotel room this year, but we will have our artificial tree and most of the presents (that is, the ones that were not water-damaged when the ceiling in the living room collapsed).

While the actual event of watching flames shoot out the windows of your home is actually quite exciting, it is amazing how quickly the excitement becomes very boring. Once the fire department finishes with the process of saving about half of your wordly possessions (the other half being claimed by hungry flames), you will have to wait for the insurance rep to show up. After that, you will have to wait for the guys who will board up your home. Then you will wait for the guys who will come out and see what can be salvaged. Then, for some extra good times, you will have to wait for the arson investigator who thinks that your son is working for Al-Qaeda and building a bomb in your attic.

So, all things considered, lighting fire to your house is getting a flat-out negative review. Not only did I miss the cool part where flames and smoke shot out my windows, but everything after that sucked. Not one part of my day after that was awesome. If you are desperate to do something destructive, just to break up the monotony, consider hitting yourself in the foot with a hammer. It will hurt an awful lot, but at least you won't have to wonder how long it will take you to paint all those Warhammer Quest miniatures. Again.

Summary

Pros:
No need to clean, if you're just going to burn everything
An excellent way to get your attic remodeled

Cons:
Half an hour of sheer terror followed by a whole lot of boring
Virtually guaranteed to lose something with considerable sentimental value

Board Game Review - Dungeon Run

2011-12-17T20:48:00.000-08:00

I've made a lot of friends because of reviewing games. For instance, I got a review copy of HeroScape, which I loved so much I had to find a fan site, which led to a trip to GenCon, and led to a lot more stuff, and eventually to making friends with some truly amazing people.

One of those truly amazing people is Colby Dauch, the creator of Summoner Wars and proprietor of Plaid Hat Games. He's not only a good game designer, but a savvy publisher and one of the flat-out best guys I know. And that's why it causes me all manner of anguish to have to review Dungeon Run, which I did not like very much at all.

The problem is even worse, though. See, not only is Dungeon Run published by my friend Colby, with whom I have sat until 4 in the morning talking about nothing in particular while I drank hard liquor and used extraordinarily foul language, but the game is also designed by Mr. Bistro (not his real name), who is ALSO a friend. Hell, even the guy who sculpted the miniatures is a friend. Hopefully all these guys will still be my friends when I finish this review.

Dungeon Run should be awesome. It's set in the world of Summoner Wars, where a band of competing adventurers dives into a dank dungeon to chase down a summoning stone. Monsters pop out of the woodwork, whirling axe blades pop out of the walls, and rickety bridges threaten to collapse. Plus it comes from the company that produced Summoner Wars, and that is one of my favorite games of all time. It is practically guaranteed to rule.

But then it doesn't rule. It is a randomized, dice-throwing extravaganza where strategy takes a back seat to just being lucky. I wouldn't go so far as to say it sucked, but I don't much want to play it again. There are some really cool ideas at work here, but they seem to be surrounded by things that just drag it down.

For instance, there's a seriously cool fighting mechanic where the monsters roll for hits, and then the hero rolls to attack, but some of his dice can block the damage, or he can go for broke and just berserk the ugly bastards and suck up a little pain. This is probably the best part of the game, and while it does get very dice-heavy, I really did like the way it worked.

The problem is, you only get two actions on your turn, and so if you roll fair-to-middlin', you'll maybe wound the monster once and block all the damage - and then your turn is over and the big sumbitch is still there. Then you get to wait until you get a turn again, and then you get to say, 'OK, roll', followed by, 'OK, roll,' and then your turn is over again. There are ways around this - you could run away, you could get all berserk, or you could hope someone else kills the beastie - but that doesn't mitigate the fact that there's a very dull and repetitive way to play the game, which might actually be the best strategy you could employ.

Then there are little things that pop up here and there. The deck of encounter cards has a ridiculously high number of traps, and not enough monsters, so you're far too likely to wander through room after room finding not one actual opponent, and a nearly endless supply of poison arrows and spears shooting out of the walls. I don't mind a trap now and then, but I would really much rather fight. I'm a violent dude, especially when I'm gaming, and my brand of excitement does not include continuously dodging clouds of poison gas (if I want poison gas, I've got plenty of gaming buddies who eat far too much fast food).

For another example of something I didn't like, look at the evil wizard (he's called the Filth). He's a bad-ass magic-slinger, and he can bust a cap in a cave mole or walking fungus like a West-Coast rapper. But when he gets to the final bad guy, if he finds himself fighting the dragon, he's up a smelly creek without a paddle, because that fire-breathing thunder lizard is immune to magic. Sorry, Filth, you're screwed!

Now, in all fairness, simply killing the dungeon boss is not how you win Dungeon Run. Once you kill the boss, you have to grab up the stone MacGuffin and make it out the door while all your friends come after you with howitzers and safety razors. If one of them can kill you, he can make a run for freedom, and everyone gets to kill him instead. This actually sort of works - you'll spend the first part of the game trying to get everyone else worn down to a nub, and the end game trying to finish them off.

Unfortunately, the rules for fighting your friends are not the same as the rules for fighting monsters. The rules work great for killing gross booger monsters, but they're clunky if you're fighting other heroes. And escaping a dungeon denizen takes more work, too - the best strategy for most Hero Turned Ultimate Dungeon Boss types is to just run away.

And then comes my biggest complaint with Dungeon Run - it's just not intuitive. Over and over we found ourselves going back to the rulebook and going, 'well Hell's Bells, how the crap does this work?' The rulebook is quite long, and while I'm not afraid of a rulebook, this one is really wordy. And you need all those words, because you're not just going to guess at how it works. It's not like you're going to pick up the basic premise of the game and then see everything else spin off from there.

I'm actually really glad that Dungeon Run is not the first game Plaid Hat has produced, because Summoner Wars put the company on the map in a big way and continues to keep it there. Dungeon Run is a pretty mediocre game leaning more towards bad than awesome, and there's no way Plaid Hat would have made as enormous a splash if they had entered the market with Dungeon Run.

Now, my negative reviews basically come in two flavors. The first flavor is the one where I tell you that the game in question was planted by dread Cthulhu to torment the minds of mortals, and nobody who values their sanity should ever consider playing. The second kind of negative review, which is the kind we've got here, is the one where I didn't like the game, but I can certainly see where someone would. In fact, I've heard a great deal of pretty good buzz about Dungeon Run, so I know that someone out there is enjoying the hell out of it. I'm not, but someone is, so maybe you'll throw me a bone here and buy the game just so Colby will still bring bottles of Crown Royal to my hotel room when we're in Indianapolis again.

Summary

1-6 players

Pros:
Great production - I liked the art, and the minis are sweet
Cool fighting concept
Really cool setting

Cons:
Too many rules, and some rules seem to be at odds with others
Too easy to get mired in repetitive, boring roll-fests
There's no strategy you can use that can't be undone by a few bad die rolls

I know that a lot of people are really digging Dungeon Run, and there's every chance you will, too. If you want to give it a shot, you can save a sawbuck on it and pick it up from Noble Knight Games:
STAB THE GOBLIN BEFORE HE STABS YOU

Card Game Review - Godzilla Stomp

2011-12-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

I want to know who came up with the term 'Kaiju'. I'm sure it was someone in Japan. It doesn't make sense that it would have been an American, because no American would have invented a term so cute to represent giant rampaging monsters who regularly eat pieces of Tokyo. The word sounds like it ought to be a cuddly little fantasy beast who has a magical sneeze that cures the common cold. But whoever invented the word, a whole lot of people who have never been outside the United States know that it means 'Godzilla and Friends', and so it gets slapped all over games about blowing up cities with twenty-story-tall lizards and mutated moths.

One such game is Godzilla Stomp, in which players compete to trash the most buildings. It's a very simple game that takes about as long to play as it does to explain the rules (which is about five minutes). Each player chooses a monstrous menace from among some fairly famous movie stars, like Mothra and Battra and of course the big man himself (or, I guess, big lizard), Godzilla. Then you get six cards with pictures of your favorite city-basher, and try to pick up some killer points. You don't train your adorable pet to evolve into a larger, also-adorable pet, because that's not actually what Kaiju means.

It really is simple. You have five cards numbered 1 to 5, and the last card says, 'Rampage.' There are a bunch of cards on the table, buildings with values on them, and everybody chooses a card at the same time. The highest played card takes the first building, and then everyone else gets one in order, unless you played Rampage, in which case you go last, but you get everything that's left. Also, there are power plants with variable values based on how many you have wrecked and a tie-breaker mechanic based on who got the last card.

Now you're probably going, 'that's it? That's the whole game?' And my answer is, 'yep, that's all.' Kaiju are fairly simple creatures, with fairly simple needs. They break things. They don't like to complicate it with fancified rules. They excel at mayhem, breathing lightning and eating cars and what-not. They don't like to be bothered with dice mechanics and turn order. They also don't require the love only a young child can offer. They would rather have the arms and legs a child can offer.

The thing is, while that simplicity might make them fun to watch on a rainy Saturday afternoon as they descend from the sky or rise from the ocean to turn Tokyo into a steaming ruin, it doesn't make for much of a game. Godzilla Stomp contains marginal decision-making at best. Calling it a light game is like eating a single popcorn kernel and calling it a light lunch.

I don't mind a light game, but I would like it to have at least a little meat on it. Godzilla Stomp isn't stupid, and it does what it means to do, as long as what it means to do is help you unwind between taxing rounds of tic-tac-toe. It just happens so fast that you'll finish the game and wonder if maybe the designer thought Kaiju really were pink furballs with electric tails.

Now, I'm sure that if I spoke Japanese as a first language, the word Kaiju would instill a sense of wonder and terror that can only be inspired by a creature the size of Mechagodzilla. And then maybe I would play a game like Godzilla Stomp and think, 'wow, that was terrifying!' But probably not. Probably I would be disappointed that the biggest, meanest motor-scooters who ever took a bite out of a big city were distilled down into a five-minute numbers exercise.

I didn't hate Godzilla Stomp. I also like popcorn. But I want more than one kernel of popcorn, and I want more out of a game than Godzilla Stomp provides. If you have to entertain some kids with very short attention spans, you might see a reason to pick up this game. But I play with grown-ups who are used to games that make our brains sweat, and we were all pretty underwhelmed.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Really cool art
Very easy to pick up and play

Cons:
Decided lack of meaningful decisions
Not much game in this game

If you really want to try out a game this light, you might as well save a buck on it and get it at Noble Knight Games:
NEITHER FUZZY NOR PINK

Total Retraction - Game Salute is Actually OK

2011-12-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm wrong a lot. Usually, it has to do with a game (probably because I review a lot of games). And usually, all I really have to do is edit the original review a little, and point out where I was wrong. Usually, there's very little egg on my face.

This time, however, I have cooked an omelette directly into my beard. That's how much egg is on my face. And now, to go with all that egg, I also have to eat some crow. I just hope I can find some fresh-squeezed OJ to wash it all down.

I completely misunderstood the Game Salute thing. Well, not completely, but I missed several very important distinctions, and came to some incorrect conclusions based on limited information. In other words, I jumped the gun, got egg on my face, and had to eat crow. If I can find another metaphor, I'll shoe-horn that sumbitch into this article, one way or another.

I talked to some of the Game Salute guys over the weekend, and considering how I compared their program to rotten fish, they were pretty darn nice. I would have been going through the files for a home address so I could hire a thumb-breaker who makes house calls, but they were very friendly.

So, here's the actual deal. Game Salute is not even remotely a traditional distributor. They don't buy the games from the publishers. They take a commission for every sale, which means if the games don't sell, they don't get paid. They are not holding a monopoly on anything, because they don't actually have anything on which they could hold a monopoly. They run the store front for the publishers, with the end result that however you buy the game, you're buying it from the publisher.

And they also have an entire host of things they do to help out the publishers. Like, they do an incredible amount of marketing to get game stores to pick up games they would have otherwise ignored. They even help stores promote the games so that the stores can sell what they buy. Where most traditional distributors are sort of faceless machines doling out product like a street-corner drug dealer, Game Salute puts a considerable emphasis on relationships.

To go one further, Game Salute vets the publishers they carry. They won't just accept any knucklehead with a self-published gaming disaster. They recommend printers (which I can tell you, having attempted to find printers myself, is a huge help all by itself), they consult on the graphic design, and otherwise make sure that stores aren't buying crappy games.

Heck, they even arrange international distribution for their publishers, so that game stores in Germany can get copies of Alien Frontiers. You still can't buy it online, except through the Game Salute or the publisher, but they've found ways to open the markets for their publishers.

So whatever smelled fishy about this entire thing was not Game Salute. It was probably the raccoon that died in my attic. Game Salute is not setting prices, so they can't do any price-fixing, and whatever market manipulation they're attempting is relatively benign. They're not screwing anybody.

Now, I'm not taking back everything I said in my last post. I still don't think eliminating online retailers is a good idea, because one website is simply never going to have the same market penetration as ten, especially when those ten sites carry a hell of a lot more games and are in locations all over the globe. Customers who can't get discounts online are going to be a lot less likely to buy, and when they can't bundle up shipping with products from nearly every publisher on the planet, some of those games just aren't going to get sold.

But I learned something else from my discussions with the Game Salute guys - they're old-school industry guys who have been in game stores since before you could buy games on the ol' interwebs. Not that Game Salute was a cover to ratchet up more dough for their storefronts, or anything, but I can sure see how a guy who owns a physical store would be interested in blocking online discounters. Everything about Game Salute is meant to make things better for physical retailers, because those are the people Game Salute understands.

The final score on this Game Salute thing, then, is that these guys are not profiteering assholes trying to rape and pillage their way to a quick buck (especially since they're not expecting to break even for a couple more years). They have a vision, one based in large part on their experience as physical retailers, and they're attempting to see it out. They've come up with some pretty innovative ways to make that vision happen, but they're not crooks. If they're guilty of anything, it's not telling irresponsible game reviewers how things work until those game reviewers go off half-cocked and start spouting off without knowing all the facts.

I still think it's ultimately counter-productive to cut out the online stores, and if I were a publisher, I don't believe I would consider signing with Game Salute. But that's not a moral decision, it's a business decision, and it's not even remotely sleazy. In fact, it's also a business decision I don't have to make, and it's not one I have to approve. I think it's safe to say it's not even really any of my business, except that the place where I personally prefer to buy games - Noble Knight Games - isn't going to be able to carry all the games I like to buy. On the other hand, there's a good chance my local game shop is going to carry those games that retailers normally wouldn't touch, because Game Salute is busting ass to make sure those store owners know how good the games really are. There's a trade-off, and a long-term investment in traditional game stores, and I think a lot of people are going to respond to that.

So after our lengthy conversation, the Game Salute dude said he was putting the new Flash Duel in the mail. Like I said, these guys were a class act. Not only were they not verbally abusive, as I most assuredly would have been, but they're actually sending out review copies right after I was all stupid and wrongfully accusatory (I'm not sure if those are actual words, and I don't know if used them correctly, but my spell checker didn't flag 'em, so I'm leaving them right there).

Only time will tell if this business model is successful. The Game Salute guys are putting a lot on the line to bet that it will be, though, and they've put their money where their mouth is. I, on the other hand, have put my foot where my mouth is, and while my personal guess is that those publishers might have been better served with a different strategy, I'm still rooting for them. Game Salute isn't bad. In fact, it might just be what this industry needs.

While we wait to see if Game Salute revolutionizes the way gaming works, I'll keep reviewing games and occasionally talking out of my ass. The Game Salute guys will be working 90-hour weeks, and I will be picking egg out of my face hair. You can just keep doing what you've been doing - ignoring your day job to read my ignorant boob jokes - and we'll all just keeping playing games.

Rant - Game Salute

2011-12-09T12:36:00.001-08:00

EDIT: Feel free to read this bit, to see what a jackass I am, but after you do, please read the next post, right here. Because most of this article is wrong.

I love to wallow in my hypocrisy. For instance, I fully endorse my son dating pretty much any girl he can catch (and since he's 6 foot 2 and full of muscle, he can catch a lot of them), but when my daughter's suitors come to my house, I make sure to be cleaning a shotgun at the coffee table. I complain about the environmental impact of fossil fuels, and I drive an enormous SUV. But there has to be a line somewhere. So I've decided that I will no longer drink milk right from the carton (though in all honesty, we buy those big gallon jugs, and after the third time I spilled milk all over my shirt, I decided I better get a glass, anyway).

The milk thing has been going so well that I decided I needed to find another way to practice what I preach. And so I've decided that I will not be reviewing games carried by Game Salute any more.

This was not an easy decision to make, and I don't expect it will make me very popular. But then, I'm not doing this to be popular, I do this to get free games. Yes, OK, I'm kind of screwing up that particular goal, but I can explain.

There's been a lot of talk recently about this new fulfillment/distribution thing called Game Salute. A bunch of small publishers have signed up with Game Salute, who acts as both retailer and distributor. The way this works is, Game Salute will not sell games to anyone who will sell them online. They're ostensibly supporting physical stores by not allowing online stores any access to the games they represent.

Now, maybe I don't follow this whole thing. In fact, it's incredibly likely. But I've looked at a lot of different sources here, and I gotta say, this Game Salute thing smells fishy. And I don't mean like the kitchen at Red Lobster, I mean like the pier where they unload the catch of the day. Maybe like the dumpster behind that pier where they throw all the fish they can't sell.

Here's the nitty gritty part, as I understand it. Game Salute agrees to essentially be the distributor and retailer for the games they carry, and the publishers agree that they will not sell their games to anyone else. Then Game Salute agrees not to sell the games to anyone who would sell it online. Then Game Salute is the only place in the entire known universe where you can buy these games. And they're doing pretty well - they've got some really impressive titles, like Yomi and Alien Frontiers.

I'm not an economist. I should say that up front (or halfway through, I guess, since that's where we are now). But I don't think it takes an MBA to know that monopolies are bad for everyone - well, everyone except the company that holds the monopoly. They set their own price to buy, and they set their own price to sell. Everybody in the chain gets screwed, except, as I said, the guy holding all the cards.

I can see why a publisher might think this was a good idea. From where they're sitting, online stores undercut their prices and devalue their products. So the publishers sign up with someone who promises to champion the cause of undercut prices, by not letting those nasty online retailers undersell their games. But there are some painful flaws in that line of thinking, flaws that really ought to be addressed.

For one thing, online stores have to discount. It's how they exist. Are you going to walk up to your virtual salesman and say, 'pardon me, electronic chat window, but can you direct me to something I might like?' You have to know what you want, because even if they advertise, the fact is, there's nobody in an online store who can tell you what you might dig. Physical stores have a huge edge in the interaction department, and without discounting, online stores would die right out.

Second, physical stores are not going to carry as many copies as online stores. They can't. A physical store has limited shelf space, and is generally only going to carry stuff it knows it can sell. Online stores have lower overhead, and keeping stuff online for a year only hurts if their warehouse is smaller than my tool shed. So not selling to online stores means you don't sell as many games. The Spanish have a word for a business strategy that sells fewer products. That word is estupido.

Third, online retailers will account for a hell of a lot more sales than a small publisher is ever going to get selling direct. What makes more sense, selling 10 games and clearing $500, or selling 100 games and clearing $1500? (Yes, I'm accounting for cost of goods sold. I did take some accounting in college.) I'll give you a hint - it's the one that makes more money.

Finally, and in my opinion, most important, is that you don't see the big guys signing up with Game Salute. And you don't see FFG and Days of Wonder signing up because they're not threatened by online sales. Small publishers will get up in arms about not being able to sell their twenty copies direct, where FFG sells 2,000 copies to a discounter in Brazil and laughs all the way to the bank.

Of course I know there is a difference between the big guys and the little ones. But the reason small publishers stay small is because they think small. Acting like the underdog means you get to stay the underdog. The big publishers don't do what they do because they like to waste money or cost themselves sales. They have very good reasons for selling to anyone who will buy a copy, and those reasons resemble small green pictures of dead presidents.

So up to this point, Game Salute isn't so much bad as it is misguided. Deliberately snubbing online retailers might seem like a spit in Goliath's eye, but it's really just kind of short-sighted. I would just shake my head at the poor business practice, and just keep playing some of my favorite games, but then we get to the thing that makes Game Salute look less Dopey Dwarf versus Goliath and more just plain rotten - the monopoly.

By persuading publishers that online retailers will steal their wallets, Game Salute has managed to be the exclusive distributor for their games. Game Salute sells online at full retail, because they can - they've created a market with no competition. Without lower-priced games available anywhere, however, fewer people will buy those games. Publishers will not sell as many games. And physical stores were unlikely to buy them in the first place, because they buy stuff they know they can sell. So your scorecard looks a little like this:

Online retailers: Just Plain Screwed
Publishers: Selling fewer games, so Screwed
Customers: Paying more for games, so Screwed
Physical stores: Not carrying the games anyway, so Breaking Even
Game Salute: WIN WIN WIN WIN

And that's the part that bugs me. To me, that looks like dirty pool. It looks like taking advantage of inexperienced businessmen for personal gain. It just looks sleazy. And I'm not going to use Drake's Flames to help promote sales for a company that I think is sleazy, so starting right now, I'm not reviewing anything else that comes from Game Salute.

This wasn't an easy decision. For one thing, I only write this stupid website so I can get free games, and deliberately cutting someone out of my supply chain means I get fewer free games. For another thing, those free games are some really good games. Alien Frontiers was one of my favorites from 2010, and I am a huge fan of Sirlin Games, and now I won't be reviewing anything from either of those companies. I didn't just jump into this without thinking, and for me to stop getting review copies means I'm pretty serious about this.

My hypocrisy has to stop somewhere. I'm still going to get furious at anyone who flips me the bird, even though I will most assuredly fly you the eagle if you cut me off on the freeway. But once my wife found out that I wouldn't drink out of a gallon jug and started buying the big milk, I have to find some other way to pretend that I have at least an ounce of integrity.

I willingly admit that I could be reading this wrong. There's probably something I'm missing. Please, feel absolutely free to point out my errors. Hell, I want you to. I want to believe that Game Salute is simply making an honest mistake. Because, really, I want that Puzzle Strike expansion. In fact, there's the gauntlet - I'm throwing it down. Show me the error of my ways, and I'll write another whole article about how wrong I was.

Expansion Review - Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack

2011-12-07T14:49:00.000-08:00

Usually, when I review an expansion, the end result is usually, 'if you like the game, get the expansion.' It's rare that I play an expansion and go, 'why the hell would you get this?' For one thing, people rarely need reviews to get expansions, because most expansions are basically whatever you liked about the original game, plus some more.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Consider, if you will, the Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack. After rooting through this expansion and playing it, I've come to the conclusion that there is virtually no reason to buy it.

Keep in mind that Puzzle Strike is my second-favorite deck-building game, right after Nightfall, and so I was very excited to get the Upgrade Pack. I'm not cursing the expansion because I hate the game - I love the game, and I really like the new chips that are in the upgrade.

The problem is, the upgrade only has three new chips. Three. As in, less than four. When I get an expansion, and have played the original into the ground, I want it to give me a bunch of new reasons to play. While these three new chips are really cool, there are only three of them. After a couple games, I will already be bored with the new stuff.

That's not all that's in the pack, of course. There are also cardboard screens and mouse pads with art on them, plus updated character chips. But the game I already had contains character chips, and I didn't need a completely new set. They're not new characters. They're just the same characters, but with some balancing. If you ask me, they should have been in the original.

And while it's great to have a mouse pad tell me where to put my discard pile, I never had a problem playing without the pads. I have always managed to remember which pile is my gem pile, and which is for discarded chips. These pads are not something I need. Of course, if you tend to accidentally throw your gem pile into your bag instead of your discards, the pads may come in handy - in which case you could draw a couple circles onto a sheet of notebook paper, and make your own.

Same with the screens. I've always managed to either hold my chips in my hand, or lay them down and cup a hand over them. I have not needed a screen to keep my chips secret. But now there are four cardboard screens, and if I really needed screens, I could have made them with a couple index cards. Basically, if you have access to office supplies, you don't really need this new stuff.

Which leaves me with an expansion for one of my favorite games that only barely expands it. The three new chips are really cool, I admit, and I am glad they're in the pack. But I don't need the other stuff. I won't use it. I don't see a compelling reason to pick up the expansion, unless you just really want those three chips.

I'm actually very disappointed in the Upgrade Pack, because of how much I enjoy playing Puzzle Strike. When I heard about an expansion, I was giddy, hoping for a wide variety of exciting new ways to play. I was looking forward to exploring new strategies, discovering new ideas, and playing new games. Instead I got a minuscule expansion surrounded by crap that doesn't even fit in the original box.

I can't say that nobody will want the Upgrade Pack. Two of the people who played with me were delighted with the player mats and screens. And I've heard from others who were very pleased with the balancing edits made to the character chips. And, of course, everybody agreed that the new puzzle chips are great.

I really hope that there's another expansion in the works for Puzzle Strike, and if I had my way, the only thing in the expansion would be more chips. More actions to buy. Maybe even different characters, or new crash chips, or a double-combine. Because I feel like this Upgrade Pack was a missed opportunity, and while it will definitely appeal to some fans, I just kind of feel like I ordered a Big Mac and got a McNugget.

Summary

Pros:
Three new chips are pretty damned cool

Cons:
I could have made my own play mats and screens
The updated characters should have been fixed before the original released

Noble Knight Games isn't carrying the Upgrade Pack. That's fine, though, because I can't think why you would want it anyway.

Board Game Review - Quebec

2011-12-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

If I were a history teacher, I would have a bunch of different ways to teach history. There would be all manner of interactive lessons, theme days, and stirring lectures. However, one method I would not employ in order to teach history would be to play board games.

At first glance, Quebec (the game, not the city) seems to be a history lesson in a box. You each play a different family attempting to stamp your name on the legacy of Quebec (the city, not the game). To do that, you'll spend four centuries building the city and jockeying for power, whether you buy off politicians, sponsor plays, or build churches. Personally, I think it would be more effective to simply let everyone in the class dress as their favorite Canadian.

As a historical reference, Quebec (the game, not the city) is unfortunately lacking. However, as a game, it is charming, thematic and full of depth. You will feel like a powerful magnate manipulating the future of a city. That city could be Quebec, or it could be Ice Station Zebra, or it could be a colony on Mars. Historically, you won't really care about how Quebec was built (the city, not the game), but you'll definitely have a vested interest in building the best city you can. If you want to find out how Quebec was really built (the city, not the game), you can have Canadian food day, and everyone will bring in bacon and beer.

In an ironic gesture, the game has no violence at all. This is ironic because the city most definitely had a lot of people die, especially since it's 400 years old. If nobody had died, it would be chock full of geezers who didn't have enough room to maneuver their oxygen tanks, and they would be actively bankrupting the social security program. And yet as you play Quebec (the game, not the city), you will never once kill anybody. However, everyone knows Canadians are peaceful people, so it's no surprise the game doesn't have a body count.

What it does have is a fantastic amount of intelligence. You'll form strategies right from the outset, and every turn will be spent advancing the plan you think will help you win. Everything you do has layer upon layer of consequence, too - you may just be helping to build that cathedral because it will let you move your workers into position for next turn, but it also means you're exerting more influence over the city's religious development, which could create a chain of events that scores you a bunch of points and puts you in a better position for next round - which won't happen for half an hour. It might also mean you miss a great opportunity to improve your standing with the city's political leaders, or hamstring yourself and allow an opponent to sweep in and turn that opera house you've been eyeballing into a motel that charges by the hour.

Another excellent feature of Quebec (the game, not the city) is that while there is a ton of interaction - in fact, you will rely on it - it's not overly confrontational. There's minimal amounts of screwing your friends, which is nice if you play with people who don't like it when you steal their stuff and leave them bleeding out on the sidewalk. Canadians are all about cooperation, which this game will teach us, though I think the lesson would have been better taught by having everyone team up to build collages on poster board.

In case you're not picking up this vibe so far, I'll be real blunt - Quebec (the game, not the city) is very European (obviously the city is not - it's Canadian). Where most games that earn the label 'worker placement' call their little wooden cubes meeples, soldiers, farmers, or disgruntled postal workers, this game actually comes right out and calls them workers. It's that European.

And it's not like it's a dead sexy game, either. The first night I got it, I opened the box, looked at the contents, said 'man, that looks boring,' and closed it again. It's a good thing I'm here to tell you about these things, because if you just judged Quebec (the game, not the city) by appearances, you might be very inclined to skip it. But that would be a mistake, because even though it does not look very fun, it's a really interesting game with a fantastic amount of interaction, virtually no luck, layer upon layer of strategic decisions, and best of all, it really does make you feel like you're building a city that may or may not be Quebec (the city, not the game).

I really do think that board games are a crappy way to teach things, and this particular game has not changed my mind. I do not know any more about the history of the city for having played the game. As an educational tool, Quebec (the game, not the city) fails completely. As a game, it's a masterpiece. Although I did learn one thing - I learned that before I die, I really ought to visit Quebec (the city, not the game).

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Feel like you're building a big historical city
Incredible long-term repercussions with every move
Exciting despite a complete lack of bloodshed
Lots of interaction, and most of it is helping each other

Cons:
Looks very boring
Teaches virtually nothing

Quebec is a little on the pricey side (the game, not the city - though the city might also be expensive). But if you want a copy, you can score a heck of a deal on it at Noble Knight Games:
THE GAME, NOT THE CITY

Expansion Review - Claustrophobia: De Profundis

2011-12-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

Claustrophobia has to be one the finest head-to-head dungeon crawl games you can buy. You've got brilliant rules that ramp up the tension and keep the game down to the wire. You've got really cool pre-painted miniatures. And best of all, you've got Dark Ages Crusaders romping around in the bowels of Hell and beating the ugly out of demonic hordes. I can't think of anything bad to say about the game, especially when I get to send ravening demons to chew the gonads off a bunch of self-righteous, Bible-thumping assholes who think they've got some right to perform home invasions just because the residents have horrible skin conditions and poor dental hygiene.

And it just got a whole lot better, with the inclusion of the magnificent expansion De Profundis. There's so much stuff in this box, you won't know how to store it all (I'm not exaggerating - I hate keeping two boxes for one game, but I can't fit everything into one box, and it's vexing me).

Basically, it's like the creator of Claustrophobia sat down and came up with every cool thing he could add, then added it. Then the publisher came and said, 'oh, we'll have to cut-' but the publisher never got to finish, because the creator punched him in the sternum, and the publisher wheezed for five minutes and agreed to let the creator have whatever he wanted, as long as there was no more violence.

There are new minions for the demon player in the form of Hellhounds. These are some bad-ass, mean motor-scooters who will tear up any humans who get separated from the pack. They're wicked cool, but they're kind of pricey, and the demons only get two of them. The new cards that go with these guys give them a ton of ways to be useful, too, and the demon player is going to have a great time taking these guys out for a walk. They are, of course, beasts from the pit of Hell, which means they are prone to starting fights with smaller dogs and pooping on the neighbor's lawn, but at least they're leash-trained.

To meet the added threat of Satan's pit bulls, the forces of humanity have their own secret weapon - the siccaria. If that word is new to you, don't worry, because it's new to me, too. Or it was, until I looked it up. It means 'assassin,' and because it ends with an 'a', it means chick assassin. You can ask anyone you want - chick assassins are awesome. And these particular chick assassins are freaking death machines. In fact, any scenarios that let the humans use the chick assassins has to give the demons even more monsters, because those siccaria will go through them like a hot knife through soup (I know the saying is about butter, but I think a hot knife would go through soup faster).

And let's just assume you were getting tired of tromping through the same old tunnels. 'Oh', you might say with a bored expression, 'another hallway lined with flesh-eating tentacles. Oh, another lair full of teeth-gnashing, murderous demons. How wonderfully pedestrian.' But now you'll explore some new places! Now you can find the sanctified zone, where demons who enter the room will be forced to change their ways and volunteer at the Salvation Army. You can also run across the demonic well, where seriously twisted monsters with horrifying dark powers like to spend their downtime. There's a pool table, and the bar has tons of imports on tap.

I could actually keep going, and describe every cool thing in the box, but that would just spoil it for you (one more spoiler - there's a baby troglodyte. OK, now I'm done). But the point is, De Profundis is full to the rafters of new stuff that will make Claustrophobia a whole Hell of a lot more fun. There are more scenarios than you're likely to play in a year. There are lots of new demonic events, holy gifts, and blessed artifacts. There aren't a bunch of new rules, or new ways to play the game. There's just a big fat pile of stuff that makes the original game a whole bunch better.

If you like Claustrophobia, and you play it more than once a year, you're going to want De Profundis. If you're offended by the theme, find the demons too blasphemous, or think the entire concept is completely absurd, then you're probably about as much fun as a wet diaper, and you should probably head back to the kiddie table, because the grown-ups are talking.

Summary

Still just 2 players

Pros:
More forces of Hell
More forces of Humanity
More places to die
More scenarios
More cards
More of everything that makes Claustrophobia such an awesome game in the first place

Cons:
Where will I put it all?

So if you read this site often enough, you know that Noble Knight Games sets me up with review copies. They get me review copies I couldn't get otherwise, which lets you read about the games you want to see. And so if you're going to buy your games, get them from Noble Knight, and give them a reason to keep sending them to me. Here, start with De Profundis:
FORCES OF EVIL IN A BOZO NIGHTMARE

Christmas - Bah... Oh, What the Hell

2011-12-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

As the Christmas season begins (well, it may be the first of December, but really, the season has been in full swing since just after Halloween, if you pay any attention to television commercials), the time is upon us for my annual 'how much do I hate Christmas' rant. It's that time of year when I complain about Christmas carols, bemoan the lines at the store, and bitch about the parking at the mall.

There are just two problems. First, I've covered this all before. It's not like it would be a grand revelation, and the jokes would mostly be recycled hash (I would definitely revisit the one about time-traveling to kill Bing Crosby). As much fun as it is to write an annual reminder about how much I despise Christmas in general, it would probably be more effective to just link to one I wrote a year ago.

The second problem is even more pertinent - I'm not really that upset about Christmas this year. I don't know what happened. Maybe the Ghost of Christmas Later stopped by and persuaded me in my sleep, so that I would run out and buy turkeys for everyone and cure the little crippled boy up the street (except that I can barely afford my own turkey, and I don't know any cripples, and I don't like turkey). Maybe I'm getting more tolerant as I age, though I find that particularly difficult to believe. Or maybe - and this is the most likely answer - being broke has freed me from my need to buy some worthless trinket for everyone I know, and so now I can just enjoy the pretty lights. We've already got a couple strands hanging in the living room, and they're really very nice.

It's confusing me, to be honest. Every year I dread the oncoming season, knowing that I will soon be feeling the pressure to get my wife something amazing, that I will be expected to appear jolly at the office Christmas party, that I will be subjected to hour after hour of relentless caroling. But this year, I didn't really care. I know I'll get something for my wife and kids, send out a card to my mom and dad, and completely ignore my extended family - but where that used to cause anxiety, for no reason I can completely understand, I just don't care.

Don't get me wrong - I haven't suddenly begun to actually enjoy all the Holiday crap. I still get annoyed when every single freaking thing I see has snowflakes glued on it. I have no greater tolerance for car commercials with jingle bells than I did last year (although, thanks to the wonder of DVR, I don't actually have to watch those commercials any more). And I still really don't like all the damned Christmas songs. While I'm at it, I'm not going to watch any inspiring tales of faith and joy on the Lifetime channel, because I would rather scoop out my eyes with a melonballer.

But I am starting to see cubicles wrapped in green paper, Christmas ornaments hanging from rearview windows, and people wearing ridiculous red hats, and unlike previous years, they just don't faze me like they used to do. I'm not planning on getting into the spirit of the season and wearing festive turtlenecks, but for the first time in more than a decade, I don't really mind if anyone else does.

I am looking forward to Christmas morning. I don't think I'm actually getting anything cool - my family doesn't have any more money than I do - but I love the quiet day and the tasty meal. I love spending that day with my wife and kids, especially because I usually start that particular morning with two shots of Johnny Walker Black and take a nap after lunch (sometimes, I take a nap shortly after the two shots of Johnny Walker).

So I hate to disappoint, but this year will not feature any angry grandstanding about the evils of mall Santas or the overwhelming desire to pummel a small child in the Target toy aisle. This year, I'll just review some games, and if I do anything cool, I'll let you know. Hell, I might even make a top ten list, or some game recommendations, or some other stupid thing like every other game reviewer on the Internet.

Before you know, I'll be taking my kids to get pictures with Santa. Considering my kids are in high school, though, that could be awkward.

Expansion Review - Babel 13

2011-11-29T16:16:00.000-08:00

I've wanted to play Neuroshima Hex since it was new, but it was a Z-Man game, and Zev has sent me, in the entire time I've been reviewing, exactly one game - and it wasn't Neuroshima Hex. So when I sold a bunch of games to Noble Knight and wound up with a hefty store credit, I used it to get the elusive Hex game and the first expansion. But even after playing several games of the original, I still had not played with Babel 13 until Thanksgiving, when I invited a friend to join my family for the holiday, and then spent the entire time playing games with him and ignoring my family (which, I should probably admit, works out great for me).

My biggest problem with Neuroshima Hex is that you have this cool setting with punk-apocalypse characters and scary powers, and the whole thing is reduced to a faceless abstract (the faceless part, actually, is fine with me. Can you imagine how disconcerting it would be to play a game that actually had eyes and nose and stuff? That would freak me out). Every battle takes place in the same symmetrical junkyard, with the same bizarre warriors who can be summed up with a couple triangles and an initiative number.

And now that I've played Babel 13, that complaint is forgotten. The new stuff in this box adds what the base game is missing - namely, a feeling of being there. Of course, since 'there' is a world dominated by monster robots and man-eating shrubbery, you may not want to feel it too much. But don't worry, you're still sitting comfortably in your living room, placing cardboard hexes on a cardboard map while ignoring your family and pretending that this is actually quality time. You don't have to survive sniper fire from mohawk-sporting road raiders. You just have to remember to take out the trash. That's not flowery prose - you literally need to take out the trash, or flies will start to breed on your discarded food wrappers and soggy coffee grounds.

Of course, the most important thing about Babel 13 is that it comes with two new factions. The New York faction is a team of reinforced warriors who can take cover in the shadow of their headquarters, while the Neojungle is composed of walking rutabagas that build a massive plant wall and attack with a terrifying hive mind. The two new factions just feel more unique and post-nukey, with special pieces and cool effects that help you imagine a running battle in the wasted ruins of America (and yes, I just made up the term post-nukey, and will be applying for a trademark shortly).

Only slightly less vital to the success of Babel 13 is the inclusion of terrain pieces. Now you don't have to fight over the same redundant slab of open landfill. Now you can fight through jungles and over hills. You can hide in reinforced bunkers and break into warehouses of supplies. There are more terrain pieces than you probably could have invented on your own, and they all do different things. Plus every piece of terrain could have different effects - the forest might be so dense that really big bruisers can't fit between the trees, or it could be so tall that it blocks attacks. A hill might provide cover, or it might add the ability to shoot over enemy troops and hit the scary guys behind them. With all the terrain in the box, you can create a huge variety of cool places to get killed.

The last thing that really makes Babel 13 a must-have expansion for Neuroshima Hex is the list of scenarios. There's an entire campaign in the box, one that will let you play a half-dozen games in a row, with each battle having consequences that affect the next. The angry trees might team up with the psychotic robots or make friends with the mutant zombies. The humans could discover a huge weapons cache that will give them a definite edge in the next fight, if they remember to use them and don't leave them gathering dust because they forgot they were there, having been distracted by the promise of pumpkin pie with an absurd dollop of whipped cream on top (which happened to me, because I really like pumpkin pie, and it was, after all, Thanksgiving).

Now that I've played Babel 13, I really want to go get the other expansion for Neuroshima Hex. If it's anywhere as cool as Babel 13, it's going to be a great purchase. Not only are the strategic and tactical elements vastly improved by adding Babel 13 to the original, but I finally have a sense of playing out a battle, rather than arranging geometric chits to create a waterfall of unpleasant consequences, including (but not limited to) bludgeoning, explosions, electrocution, and being called very insulting names by elementary-school students.

Not that any of those things are bad. But it’s nice to know they’re happening somewhere outside the dump.

Summary

Still 2 player (or up to 4, but really, still just 2)

Pros:
Really interesting new factions
Terrain opens up enormous possibilities for varying places to maim and murder
Campaign gives you a great reason to play a bunch of times
Lots of different games possible now
Really brings out the theme in the game, which was lacking before

Cons:
Out of print, which sucks, because it’s awesome

Babel 13 is a great expansion to a great game. You should totally go buy it... but it's out of print! Oh, woe is you! Where will you find this gem?

Wait, I know. Noble Knight Games!
WALK WITH THE SHRUBS

Expansion Review - Omen: Shattered Aegis

2011-11-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

It almost makes me hurt a little when I see enormous brilliance limited by small thinking. Look at Einstein - he thought big. If he had been content to make a couple theories in his garage, he never would have made the atom bomb, and then where would we be? In a world without Fallout, that's where.

Now, if we could just make John Clowdus see that he is depriving thousands of nerds the opportunity to experience his genius, maybe John could create the next awesome game setting, and we'll have even better video games. Or at least we could all play Omen.

I've already reviewed Omen. You can read about it right here. In case you're lazy, I'll sum it up - Omen is a card game about war where you will kill a bunch of ancient Greeks and lay waste to cities. Also, it is awesome. Sadly, if you didn't buy it when it was in pre-order, you're completely out of luck. You can't even find it on eBay. It's a fantastic game that everyone should play (unless you don't like war, in which case you should buy Monopoly), but you can't get it any more. And that makes me sad.

However, if you were one of the smart people who bought Omen when you had a chance, you should know that there's a really great expansion for it called Shattered Aegis. In case you were wondering, Aegis is a Greek word that means 'leg bone.' So the expansion is really about breaking peoples' legs, specifically ancient Greek people who are trying to keep you from dominating the known world with the help of half-naked chicks and one-eyed giants. (Please note that I may be making that up. Not the Greek part - that's definitely in there. But it's possible that Aegis might mean something else. Because, you know, I might have made that up.) (Also please note that while it might seem I inadvertently made a slight innuendo by combining naked women and one-eyed monsters, I absolutely did that on purpose. If you don't get it, then you're way to clean-minded to be reading this website.)

Shattered Aegis is everything an expansion ought to be. When Clowdus decides to give you more game, he doesn't play around. There are more new ways to play Omen than you could possibly use in a single day, unless you spent the entire day playing the same game over and over. Which, in the case of Omen, would be a very good way to spend your day.

The easiest way to use Shattered Aegis is to just shuffle all the new unit cards into the old cards, and just let 'er rip. Now, fair warning - John needs to have a serious heart-to-heart with his printer, because the cards don't match up as well as they should, so you can tell pretty easily if your opponent is holding expansion cards or original. However, it won't really matter, because there are a ton of new cards, so it's not like you'll know what he has. You'll just know it's new.

With all these new units, you're going to see the game take on entirely new dimensions. If you like going heavy with oracles and playing them for their ongoing bonuses, you'll love all the new ones. Before, the oracles were mostly pretty benign, and just helped you out. Now there are some nasty oracles in here, like the one who robs your opponent every turn, or the one that scares the piss out of the enemy naked chicks and sends them running home to their mommies.

The new soldiers are pretty awesome, too, and so are the new beasts. There will now be plenty of new ways to manipulate the table to your liking - play the Solemn Arbiter and use your opponent's oracles, or play the Masked Surrogate and make his soldiers work for you. Or throw down the Brazen Slayer, and get a beast card for free, or the Fortuitous Dryad, and score an extra feat card without having to work for it.

If the only new stuff in Shattered Aegis was a bunch of new units, it would be worth every penny. But like I said, Clowdus doesn't play around when he makes an expansion. There are also a lot more ways to play the game. You could always play a draft-style game, where you build your own deck before you start playing (and with all the new units, that's even better now), but now there's the pure deck-building variant, where each player has his own custom-made deck composed completely in secret before the game even starts. There's a really awesome four-player variant (using the extra feat cards in the box, plus some cool new hidden cards) that will let you break the legs of more of your friends at once. There's more, too, but this paragraph is starting to get really long, and it's wearing out its welcome.

But I still have one really enormous complaint, and it's one that John Clowdus should address as soon as possible - you can't get the base game any more. There's this amazing expansion that offers lots and lots of incredible options and awesome ways to play the game, and the only people who can use it are people who already have Omen. And that's sad, because Shattered Aegis makes Omen so much better that it would appeal to even more people, but they can't get it because it's sold out. Reprint, dammit!

This is where that thinking-small thing makes me sad. Just looking at his two most recent games, Omen and Hemloch, John Clowdus has a couple of games on his hands that could be household names, if only there were enough copies to be in everybody's house. If Small Box Games ran itself like a big-time publisher, with printers in Brazil and thousands of copies and full-color advertisements, I think it would only be a matter of time before the company was a major contender in the world of hobby gaming. Thank God he started using professional artists - the games are freaking beautiful, and are inherently more fun because they're better looking. Now if we can just get him to understand that everybody should be playing his games, maybe we can get him to make enough of them that he can retire to the Azores and sit around his cabana all day, drinking mai-tais and inventing brilliant games.

But then, even if that doesn't happen, those of us who know about Small Box Games can continue to be delighted at his genius. We know enough to buy anything Clowdus creates, because we know we'll never get another shot at it if we miss it the first time. And we'll get to play some really fun games because of it. Like Shattered Aegis - which, I just found out because I looked it up, actually means 'Shattered Dinner Plate,' which frankly doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Summary

2 or 4 players

Pros:
Stunning art
Even more strategy than before
Lots and lots of new ways to enjoy an already awesome game

Cons:
Low print runs!

If you already have Omen, and if you like it, you absolutely should buy Shattered Aegis. In fact, you should do it this weekend, because there's a Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale going right now at Small Box:
http://www.smallboxgames.com/blackfriday.html

Board Game Review - Neuroshima Hex

2011-11-23T19:52:00.000-08:00

Experts will tell you that a nuclear war will result in the near-complete decimation of the human race, with survivors slowing starving and dying of radiation sickness. But those of us who know better have a different scenario in mind. Namely, people will mutate into totally kick-ass monsters, probably with green skin, and have giant battles against evil robots in dune buggies. At least, that outcome would be a lot more interesting, and maybe even make it worth having a nuclear war just to see the sentient plants.

And if you play Neuroshima, the RPG about life after the end of the world as we know it, you can see all that stuff. You can fight mutants and robots and evil plants, and scavenge for supplies, and blow up monsters with plasma guns.

But if you play Neuroshima Hex, you won't do any of that stuff at all. You'll just put out hexes with arrows and symbols on them and try to point the right direction so you can win. It's almost a shame to see an exciting post-nuke fantasy turned into a game this abstract - or it would be, if the abstract game in question were not blatantly awesome.

There are rules in the book for playing with three or four, but the game was really designed to play head-to-head. You take turns putting out your soldiers, who do stuff like shoot or stab or throw nets. Then a battle breaks out, and you figure out who is smart and who is dead. The overall goal is to damage your opponent's base, but this can be a lot harder to do than you might imagine, especially if you're playing somebody who knows what they're doing.

When you place your fighters, you'll have the best intentions. You'll have a straight shot on the path from your sniper to the enemy base, but then the other guy will put a really fast stabby guy right behind your sniper, and since your sniper is slow, he'll die before he ever gets to shoot. But you've still got a chance, because if you can throw a net on that mutant bug with the finger claws before he cuts your assassin into tiny cheese cubes, you can bust out that killer shot and put a hole right where you need it. Of course, right after you do that, your opponent will throw a grenade at your netter and you're back to square one.

Before you're ever really happy with the layout of your fighters, one of you will end up playing a hex with an explosion on it, and then all that maneuvering is resolved. You'll start with the fast guys and start killing things, and if you planned well (and didn't get totally hosed somewhere along the way), you'll be able to do more damage to the other base than he can do to you. Once you run out of hexes, you get one more big melee, and then whichever player has a healthier base wins the game.

If you just look at the description of Neuroshima Hex, it might seem like a kind of fighting game or simulation of a battle. But it's really not. It's more like hexagonal chess. Every move has a counter move, but some moves are devastating while some are lame. The theme is there, and makes itself felt through the special abilities of the hexes you place, but this really doesn't feel like a fighting game. If you want a simulation, there are tons of games you can play, but this won't be one of them.

On the other hand, if you want a very smart, painfully vindictive game with abstract rules, Neuroshima Hex is brilliant. As the game progresses, you'll find yourself reenacting chains of actions in your head. Your internal dialog will sound something like this:

"So I'll play this guy here, and he'll make that guy fast enough to kill that dude, which will keep this guy alive to snipe at the net guy, but the net guy is holding a fast guy who won’t get to go, so then this original guy will be killed before he ever existed, which will result in a time paradox that will destroy the universe and bring us face-to-face with Gene Roddenberry."

In other words, there's a lot of thinking in Neuroshima Hex. You're not running and gunning and grabbing cover, you're placing and blocking and planning and analyzing. And then for good measure, you're analyzing a little more. This is not a game for people who want to recreate epic battles. It is, however, a game for people who like highly-abstracted games that make your brain sweat, and that still have bodies piling up all over the place.

So you won’t get to reenact nuclear frostbite if you play Neuroshima Hex, but you will get to exploit special abilities, plan five steps ahead, consider far-reaching ramifications and be totally mud-stomped when your opponent plays something you hadn’t considered. And that makes it good in my book.

Summary

2-4 players (but really, 2)

Pros:
Super-cool setting with groovy art
Lots of planning and thinking
Challenging and smart
Four different factions to play, and they all play different

Cons:
Theme seems a little bait-and-switch

Neuroshima Hex is an older game, and it can be tough to track down a copy - unless you shop at Noble Knight Games:
MOLOCH AWAITS

Board Game Review - Star Wars : Epic Duels

2011-11-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick anecdote to illustrate what a smart son of a bitch I am.

Several years ago, I was walking through the toy section of my local Target store and noticed a couple Star Wars games. These had pictures on the front featuring miniatures that were painted by aboriginal chipmunks, and a bunch of art cribbed off of movie stills. I was momentarily intrigued, but then I remembered that when I was a child, I had a game based on Captain Caveman, and it sucked. So I turned up my nose, insisting that I would only buy games I could find at hobby stores, because mass market games were clearly only for idiot children.

So yeah, I passed on Epic Duels and Queen's Gambit. I also missed out on Buffy, but in my defense, I was really broke when that came out and couldn't have bought a copy anyway.

I then spent years kicking myself for being an elitist asshole. But it was only in the last few weeks that I was able to redeem myself in some small way, by buying a copy of Epic Duels off an auction site.

To rub my nose in what a total douche I was for not buying Epic Duels the first time I had a chance (and paying like 20 bucks for it, instead of the small fortune it ended up costing me), the game had to go ahead and just plain rock my face off. Man, was I a tool. It's entirely possible that I still am, but at least now I will buy a game at Target. I've learned my lesson - Epic Duels clearly shows us that you can buy really fun mass market games, even if they are based on popular franchises.

I should have known right when I saw it that I wanted to buy Epic Duels. It's not based on Captain Caveman, it's based on Star Wars, and I love Star Wars (although in my defense, when I was a kid, I also loved Captain Caveman. The sidekick chicks in their skimpy bikinis made my prepubescent pants confused). You pick teams to fight each other, like Boba Fett and Greedo against Han Solo and Chewbacca, and then they battle to the death. In terms of a theme, you can't do much better. And to really mix it up, you can do Mace Windu and a couple clone troopers against Darth Vader and some stormtroopers, or Anakin and Padme against nobody at all, because no self-respecting Star Wars fan would willingly play the two lamest main characters in the entire Star Wars universe.

On the surface, Epic Duels doesn't look all that deep. You roll a die, which tells you who can move, and then you play cards to attack. If you're shooting guns, you don't even have to worry about range, because any gun in Star Wars will at least shoot across a room.

But it's not that easy! For one thing, you can only attack in a straight line, which means even if you've got the range, you need to position yourself for a shot. And if you do line up a shot, you're leaving yourself open for a counterattack, so it might be a good idea to send your lackeys out front, so they can get killed instead of losing Luke Skywalker to a two-bit battle droid.

The cards also provide a fantastic layer of tactical play. You get two actions every turn, and each action can be to play a card, heal your main guy, or draw a card. Since you can't attack or defend if you don't have cards, you'll need to time your big moves so that you don't wind up with Yoda standing right in front of Darth Maul with his pants around his stubby green ankles. Not only that, but you'll want to watch your opponent's hand and rush in when he's low on cards, while still leaving yourself enough defense cards to avoid losing your hero just because you couldn't throw up a force shield.

On a completely different level, every set of characters plays differently. Darth Vader's lackeys are just a couple of cannon-fodder stormtroopers, but the big man himself is a total bad-ass who will absolutely throw heavy boxes at you from across the room. Han Solo is nowhere near as impressive, but Chewbacca is no slouch, and between the two of them, they can give Emperor Palpatine a run for his money.

I could go on about how well the special abilities on the cards bring the characters to life, or how you can sacrifice your minions to save your main guy, but all of that discussion is academic compared to the most important thing about Epic Duels - it's really, really fun. When Han Solo blasts a hole right through Greedo's face, you'll stand up, all cocky and full of swagger, and say, 'boring conversation anyway' (I know, that was on the Death Star. Still a great line). When Vader force-chokes a clone trooper into an early grave, you'll throw your voice really deep and say, 'I find your lack of faith disturbing.' And when Chewbacca throws a battle droid out an airlock, smashing it into a dozen pieces, you'll stand up on your chair and let out a wookie roar that will make your wife yell at you to keep it down, she's trying to watch Real Housewives.

I've started on my penance for not buying Epic Duels. My first step is to visit big-box stores and look for fun games. Right now I'm trying to decide between a Harry Potter retread of Candyland and something with My Little Pony. I'll probably just settle on some Cars 2 licensed pap designed to appeal to small children so that their parents buy the game just to shut them up.

For the second part of my penance, I'm going to play Epic Duels again. Sure, that's like telling an alcoholic that he has to drink a fifth of whiskey to make up for being a drunk, but I'm comfortable with it.

Summary

2 players (or 4, if you like the team game)

Pros:
Simple rules that end up being surprisingly robust
Really damned fun
Lots of different characters let you play almost any fight you want
It's freaking Star Wars

Cons:
Pretty darn expensive now, thanks to being both out of print and awesome

I would tell you that it would be hard to find a copy of Epic Duels, but Noble Knight Games specializes in old games that are out of print. They've got a copy, right here:
LET THE WOOKIE WIN

Expansion Review - Blood Country for Nightfall

2011-11-18T22:44:00.000-08:00

Nightfall has one of the cheesiest settings I've ever seen in a professionally published game. Not only that, but the setting has almost nothing at all to do with the actual game you're playing. And yet I have absolutely no problem at all overlooking the thematic flaws, because Nightfall has grown on me like a fungus, and is now barely edging out Puzzle Strike to be my number-one go-to deckbuilding game.

And if there's one thing that games like this need to really shine, it's more cards. More cards mean more variety, more strategies to uncover, more combinations to try. So every time Nightfall comes out with an expansion, I get all excited (of course, since Blood Country is only the second Nightfall expansion, it's not like there's a longstanding precedent). And every time I am delighted.

Blood Country takes the three-way monster mash of Nightfall and moves it into the country. New vampires have mullets, new hunters sport trucker caps, and new werewolves ride motorcycles. There's even a card called Wight Trash. I am not making that up.

But honestly, the theme for Nightfall is completely discardable. It could be flying monkeys and cowardly lions, for all I care. With Nightfall, the game is what counts. Attacking your friends, chaining your actions, building your combinations - that's what makes Nightfall so awesome. And so for Blood Country to be a success, it has to make the game better. I could care less if there are hillbilly bloodsuckers, as long as they give me more ways to have fun.

And so I am pleased to state unequivocally that Blood Country is awesome. In fact, I think it's potentially better than Martial Law, if only by a little. It does introduce a big random factor, but at the same time, it also gives you a lot more ways to exploit kickers and create wild combos, even building off your opponents' plays to improve your own.

For a more concrete example, consider the new card Shotgun Party. The chain effect lets you get more minions in play, but that's not the best part. The best part is that the next card gets its kicker - twice. This is really cool if the next card lets you throw some pain around. It's less awesome if it says you have to kill some werewolves, and you're the only guy with werewolves. Then you get to feel stupid. Trust me - you will feel stupid. I can vouch for that.

I also like Shut Up and Soldier. This one lets you choose an effect in play - anywhere in play - and make it happen, with you choosing all the targets. This has the potential for madcap hijinks if played at the right time. You could use somebody's monster-damaging effect against their own guys, or damage an opponent with his own cards. That's pretty fun, and really opens up the possibilities for creating wild combinations and Machiavellian card plays.

Another neat new element in Blood Country is the specific wound effect. That sounds like a medical school term, but all it means is that a lot of cards are keyed to the type of wound you can get. Up to this point, the only reason you cared what kind of wounds you were getting was if there was a tie, and in the 50 or so games I've played of Nightfall, that has never happened once. But now a Bleed wound might reduce the damage you take from an attack, or a Burn wound might let you strike again. It's capricious, of course - you might buy a Vampiric Turning, hoping to use Bite wounds to grab up enemy minions, and then spend the whole game earning Burns and Bleeds, so that you never do get to use that cool stealing ability.

Lots of the cards in Blood Country are more powerful than what we've seen before, but they tend to come with downsides. For instance, that Wight Trash I mentioned earlier hits like a freight train, but gets discarded before he can attack, unless you time it just right. The Infected Ghoul is a really great defender and a dangerous attacker, but unless you get the kicker, he dies as soon as he hits the table. There are some really impressive cards in Blood Country, but to exploit their power, you have to be fairly good at this game.

If you're new to Nightfall, or just haven't played at all, you don't really have any reason to pick up Blood Country. But if you're as big a fan as I am, and you play it anywhere near as often as I do, you should be ordering Blood Country the next time you can afford it. Just keep in mind that Blood Country only comes with new order cards - no starters or wounds - so you'll still need either the original Nightfall or Martial Law if you want to play Blood Country. But then, if you're in the market for Blood Country, you probably have everything, anyway. This isn't an expansion you would bother buying unless you already know you love the game. But if you do like Nightfall, you should get Blood Country, pronto.

Summary

Pros:
New cards for Nightfall - that's a Pro all by itself
Neat new ways to mix up combos and power up other cards
Exciting new possibilities for kicking your friends in the privates
Some interesting powerful cards that come with instant drawbacks
Specific wound effects add more meaning to the various wound types

Cons:
Specific wounds also add a greater random factor than the game has ever had
Theme continues to be pointless - but now it's pointless and wearing bib overalls

If you like Nightfall as much as I do, you should get Blood Country. And you should get it from Noble Knight Games, so you can save money and so they keep thinking I'm good for business.
GETERDUN

Expansion Review - Leaders for 7 Wonders

2011-11-17T17:46:00.001-08:00

If I ran an ancient civilization, it would be called Drakatonia, and I would rule it with an iron fist. I would be an immortal god king, sending bloodthirsty soldiers to every corner of the globe to bring me back tasty exotic fruits and the heads of my enemies. I would have a harem the size of Madrid, and a collection of rare action figures (all of which would be carved out of stone, because this is pre-plastic).

And if I had a card in 7 Wonders: Leaders, my special ability would give you one extra victory point. As a leader of warriors, I would rock. As a Leaders card, I would be underwhelming.

But then, most of the cards in Leaders grant an incredibly minor benefit, so I would be in good company. Sure, it's great to have King Solomon let you root through the discard pile now and then, but am I the only one who remembers that he was the guy who would cut babies in half just to shut up their mothers? Compared to what these leaders did in real life, I'm a little underwhelmed by their translation to board gaming.

However, the purpose of the Leaders for 7 Wonders is not to show off what total bad-asses the real people were. The purpose of having the Leaders cards is to make the game more fun to play, and in that regard, they're absolutely successful. They create an additional layer of strategy that will alter the way you play the game.

For instance, if you have Aristotle, he adds victory points for building scientific resources. This means, obviously, that you will want to do more science. You may want to do more science anyway. After all, if the movies are to be trusted, science can help you create Kelly LeBrock in your attic, and she will make you very popular and also shower with you.

Different leaders provide different effects, too. Many, like Amyitis or Nefertiti, have silly names, but can also grant additional points at the end of the game. Some help out right up front, like Hannibal, who is worth one extra point of warmongering, and who loves it when a plan comes together. Some cards help you build stuff, like Hammurabi, who will help you build blue cards as long as you can pronounce his name properly. Others just provide one-time bonuses, like Croesus, who just gives you a bunch of money and then goes off to cry in the corner because he isn't as cool as Leonidas.

You only get three chances during the game to play leader cards, and every time, you have to pay for them. That makes sense - nobody works for free, except Doctors Without Borders and the guy who washes your windows while you're waiting at a stoplight (and he would really like a tip). So you'll have to balance their worth against what they can offer - Archimedes can help you come up with science stuff on the cheap, so he would be good early in the game, while Alexander offers extra points for winning battles, so you wouldn't want to play him until the end.

In typical 7 Wonders fashion, you won't get to pick your leaders. You'll have to do the standard pass-around-the-table at the beginning of the game, so you might not get the best combination of brilliance. That's part of the game, though, and adds to the litany of painful decisions you're going to have to make while you play. Keep Vitruvius and get paid when you build for free, or pass him along and keep Caesar, so you have someone to stab in the back when you lose (that's not his actual ability, but you never know, it could come in handy)?

If you hate 7 Wonders because it's so wildly popular and wins so many awards, then you're probably not going to be rushing the gates to pick up the expansion. But if you're a fan of one of the most clever games to hit the market in 2011, Leaders should be in your online shopping cart (or you could get it at a game store, assuming you like paying retail). It's actually a pretty simple decision - if you like 7 Wonders, Leaders will make the original better. If you don't like 7 Wonders because you would actually like some interaction in your games, Leaders isn't going to change your mind. And if you want to join Drakatonia, just bring your driver's license, some exotic fruit, and the head of someone I hate. I'll be at the job fair in the Howard Johnson's.

Summary

Pros:
Adds new layers of strategy to the game
Focuses your play style a little, so you're not just slapping down random cards every turn
Same great art that makes the original game so much fun

Cons:
Doesn't add any more interaction than was already there

If you've got the guts to be a Drakatonian shock trooper, then you probably have enough sense not to pay retail for your games. You can visit Noble Knight Games and get Leaders, and save a bunch of money. Smart soldiers don't pay retail.
RECRUIT YOUR LEADERS

Card Game Review - Kamakura

2011-11-14T17:02:00.000-08:00

Gamers as a group tend to be biased against really small games. I have a few theories about this. See if any of these make sense:

1. You don't want a tiny game because you will lose it behind all the big box games you've got stored on bookshelves lining your basement walls.

2. You don't buy the tiny game because when you get to the store, you're dazzled by all the enormous boxes covered in sexy art drawn by people with more talent than is easily explained.

3. The value you place on a game is directly proportional to the cubic feet the box consumes.

4. Small games frighten you, the way snakes scare Indiana Jones.

Personally, I think it's option four. There are some really strange phobias out there.

I mention this bias because if you skip over games on account of them being too damned small, you'll totally miss out on Kamakura. And that would be a shame. It's not often you get a lovably violent game with tasteful art and clever rules, all packed into a tuck box you could conceal in your underwear. Why you would feel a need to hide the game in your drawers is none of my business. My point is, you could.

And it's deceptively simple. On the surface, Kamakura looks like a fighting game, where you send your soldiers out to grab up territories in feudal Japan, and then ninja assassins strike down on them with great vengeance and furious anger, and then there's blood. But it's not really that. I mean, that's in there, but until you play, you won't see that there's a heck of a lot more to do in Kamakura than send brave men and women to their untimely deaths.

The game is really straightforward. Each player has four territory cards face-down in front of him, valued from one to four. On your turn, you lay down a soldier and a weapon on an enemy territory, with a strength determined by the weapon in question. If you've got a play, you have to make it, even if you're virtually guaranteed to get your ass kicked. Then the other guy looks through the cards in his hand, picks a soldier and a weapon, and tries to defend his homeland. That, or he just gives up and you take the land.

It gets interesting, though, because there are three different soldiers. The samurai is a bad-ass who makes every weapon hit harder. The ninja can use a holdout blade on the attack and turn a loss into a full-on carjacking win. And the most interesting soldier, the geisha, can persuade the attacker to go back and steal land from the aggressive jackass who sent him over in the first place. So when you're picking your cards for your turn, you have a lot more to consider than just picking the strongest combo and going in heavy. You don't want your geisha on offense, if you can help it, but then, if you think your opponent is coming in hot next turn, you'll want the samurai who can bust him one to stay in your hand. You might send the ninja and hope to use the hidden blade, but if the other guy just pulled a fresh hand of cards, he might have a sneaky knife, too, and then your ninja is going to wind up wearing that knife for a monocle.

To really complicate matters, you only get to draw cards when you can't play. That generally only happens after your hand is almost empty, and it means you want to hold on to some really good defensive cards just in case you get jumped when your hand is empty. It also means you may want to choose a losing combo, just for the chance to use a couple extra cards and run out sooner. It also means you have to time your plays just right - you don't want to be empty when the next player runs out, but you don't want to leave yourself open right after everyone draws new hands.

Kamakura is a very clever game that combines two of my favorite things - violence and tough decisions. I mean, in games. In real life, I like easy decisions. And between my bad back and my creaky knees, anything more violent than painting the cabinets would put me in traction. But in games, tough decisions are more fun, and the violence all happens to fake people, so it's OK.

So it's small. It's like 52 cards in a tuck box, which makes for a game you could lose under the fridge. But it's smart and it's fun and it's fast. Kamakura packs a hell of a lot of game into a tiny little box, which makes it more valuable than a lot of games that come in boxes big enough to hide dead cats.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Excellent art that shows admirable restraint
Easy to learn
Lots of subtlety and tricky decisions
Plays lightning fast and leaves you knowing you did something fun

Cons:
Really small (only a con if your a size-ist)

I can't figure out how you could go about buying a copy of Kamakura. Maybe if you cruise around the Dyad Games website, you can find a hint:
http://dyadgames.com/

Board Game Travesty Review - Terrax Warriors

2011-11-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

I hate having to give bad reviews to guys who are trying really hard. It's hilarious fun to slam the piss out of a Reiner game - after all, he can have a bowel movement and wind up with a new game. But when a guy is really putting out the effort to create something, and just doesn't have the sense to make it an actual interesting game, it's a little sad.

On the other hand, I did warn him. I showed him some of the reviews I've written that were downright uncomplimentary. I told him, 'there's a real good chance this happens to you.' I told him not to send me a game if it wasn't a good game. But they never listen.

The game we're discussing is called Terrax Warriors. And it's really not very good at all. It lacks all the basic components that would make a game popular, fun or interesting. The art is hideous, and at points, makes the game hard to play. The premise is derivative and uninspired. The mechanics are total retreads. Basically, Terrax Warriors is a blatant crime against gaming. The best thing the creator can claim is ignorance, because he certainly cannot claim to have made a good game.

Terrax Warriors is a skirmish battle in an absurdly generic fantasy world. While it is not impossible to create a decent fantasy skirmish, this one is an abysmal failure. I can name several fantasy battle games without even thinking about it, and every single one makes Terrax Warriors look as fascinating as an empty toilet paper tube.

If nothing else, he could have put a little thought into the factions. If your factions were giant wolf things, mutant zombies and musketeers, at least your setting would be interesting. But Terrax Warriors gives us elves and dwarves, men and orcs. There was absolutely no attempt to be the least bit imaginative. At least put your goblins on dinosaurs.

And the rules are about as exciting as the races selected to participate. You move, you attack, you roll a few dice, and that's it. Sure, there's more stuff, but there's nothing you haven't seen dozens of times before. Spells for the wizards, bows for the elves, boredom for the poor bastard who says, 'yes, you can send me your game, and yes, I will write about it.' No consideration at all for the sad sacks who had to play it with me, either.

I take it back - there is one thing that's new. It's the end conditions. When your army drops below a certain point value, you're out of the game, even if you have a bunch of people left on the field. And since that number is actually higher than the army you start with, it's not very difficult to knock someone out of the game. To be honest, we were actually relieved by these end-game conditions, because it meant we got to stop playing before the game should have ended. Drop a couple berserkers and steal a couple gold mines, and the orcs disappear. We could have called that an arbitrary rule that ruined the game, but instead, we just called it mercy.

Even if you could get past the thoroughly bland races or the completely uninteresting rules, Terrax Warriors is still hard to play just because of how tremendously bad the art is. The game is played with cardboard tokens, but the art on many of these tokens looks like horribly miniaturized clip art. And then the art is reduced down so far as to make it all look like colored blobs of spilled paint, and you can't tell which guy is which. I can see a scenario in which you defend one position for ten minutes before someone realizes that the Amazon warrior was actually behind the forest, and you've been rolling dice for a mustard splatter.

If the designer of Terrax Warriors considers what he's got, completely retools it, adds some interesting elements, and hires an actual artist, he might have something he could sell. But as it stands, this is one of the worst games I've played in 2011. I cannot imagine any reason I would play it again. If I were stranded on a deserted island with my friends and this game, we would invent an abstract played with coconuts and use the cardboard from this game to create a ham radio. I would also be responsible for bedding Ginger in my hammock while the skipper smacked people with his hat.

Come to think of it, now that I'm at the end of this review, I don't feel that bad any more. Terrax Warriors is an exercise in laziness. The races were stolen from every generic fantasy setting ever created. The mechanics are cribbed from every half-popular war game published since 1960. The rules need an editor like I need a shave (and by Sunday, I start to look like a cross between a homeless bum and a German Shepherd). The game shows virtually no effort to be interesting, original or inspired, and I can only hope that nobody ever buys a copy of this derivative, tasteless pile of ugly.

Summary

2-4 idiots who can't find anything better to do

Pros:
This space intentionally left blank

Cons:
Boring theme
Boring rules
Butt-ugly art
Poorly written rules
No reason whatsoever to play

Under no circumstances should any sane human being buy a copy of Terrax Warriors.

Event Review - Surgery

2011-11-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

Surgery today was a beating.

No, not me. I'm fine. No surgery for me, at least until I get prostate cancer or my kidneys throw in the towel and decide that thirty years of diverting hard liquor to my bladder is two years too long. My wife had surgery today, because she has lupus and she's been getting sicker for the last several years. Her doctor is pretty confident that it was caused by a body part I don't understand doing something it wasn't supposed to be doing (which I also do not understand).

So today, they went in with a camera attached to a razor blade and took some part out of her gut. This offensive part was originally supposed to do something useful, like guarding the refrigerator or gassing up the car, but had recently begun to work with the Russians on secret plans for world domination. This diabolical organ had been turned by the KGB and was slowly infiltrating my wife's body with sleeper agents designed to poison the water supply and double-dip in the guacamole.

If you've never had the chance to spend an entire day sitting around an outpatient surgical center, I really can't suggest you go out of your way to try. For one thing, it's rather expensive. Insurance pays most of it, but even ten percent of ten grand is still enough that I could have refurnished my living room with my co-pay. And because they know damned well that a lot of people are going to stonewall them, you have to pay up front. It's understandable, really. It's not like a car, where they can repossess if you don't pay. What are they going to do, put the parts back in?

It's also kind of annoying. The thing about medical facilities is there are so damned many sick people. You're sitting there trying to ignore the rasp of the octogenarian with the oxygen tube, and it would be working if only the family of five could have found a babysitter for Mom's most recent spawn while she's having her fallopian tubes tied up like a theme park pretzel.

And there's really nothing to do for a huge part of the day. You sit around the waiting room while they prep your wife (or friend, or sister, or postal carrier), then you go into the room in the back and say, 'have fun! If you die, I'm keeping your stuff!' Then you go back to the waiting room, where you sit around for another hour or two while doctors who make more in a week than you make in a year root around in her insides with a robot filming a YouTube video.

It doesn't get much better when she comes out, either. When your loved one finally emerges from the operating room, she is on enough drugs that she believes you are not a person at all, but a gas bubble caused by a badly digested frozen burrito. Eventually she will recover from her dementia, and then be so weak that you will spend the next four hours hand-feeding her crackers and water.

To make matters considerably worse, if you are in one of these day-labor surgery houses, the recovery area is basically a hallway with curtains. Every time anyone within thirty feet talks about how they just had a mechanical bladder installed, you get to hear all the details. And not everyone who gets surgery is as stoic about it as my wife - or as quiet. There was a woman a few booths down who, to hear her talk, must have had her toe eaten by zombie squirrels. I'm sure she was in some pain, but at least nobody stuck a Roto-Rooter through a hole in her stomach and came out with internal organs. My wife was hurting, but she managed to do it quietly, and with as much dignity as a person can manage while wearing one of those ridiculous medical skirts whose sole purpose appears to be making you look like you just wandered out of an orphanage for the mentally retarded.

Of course, I really have no business complaining. I left with the exact same set of body parts I had when I went in. The only pain I had today was from sitting in crappy hospital chairs, and maybe the headache I got from listening to old people blather at length about the boils they had lanced on their lower intestines. I have my health, or as much of it as I have left after decades of poor life choices and spicy Indian food.

My wife is home now, resting comfortably and not complaining at all. In fact, if I don't make her sit down, she'll probably get up and start cooking something. I'll tell you right now, if a doctor scoops out my guts with a melon-baller on a string, I'm going to bitch like I just got stabbed in the scrotum. I'm really proud of her, though I guess having her ass kicked by her illness every day for the last five years has toughened her up.

Just wait until my appendix bursts. I'm going to make you all bring food by the house.

Card Game Review - Hemloch

2011-11-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

Odd characters in a wacky world battling for control of a decade of sunlight makes for a pretty bizarre backdrop for a game, but it sure is imaginative. John Clowdus has pushed the envelope on interesting settings with Hemloch, a game about - well, it's about that odd-characters-in-a-wacky-world thing. It's basically a card-based worker-placement game, but instead of workers you have rotten bastards who manipulate the city's denizens while all the commoners are just trying to get drunk in peace.

To expand on the background, each player in this two-man game runs a family of malcontents and creepy people. Gravediggers and owls with face tattoos are only the opening act. These nefarious do-badders have shared control of the city of Hemloch for the decade of night, but now the night is coming to an end. And when the sun comes up, there just won't be room in this town for two ruling families. Especially two ruling families who employ evil hags with noses the size of lawnmower blades.

At first glance, it doesn't seem like there's much to do in Hemloch. There's a party every night, but your warty minions aren't invited, so they have to wander around the rest of the town. You get two actions on your turn, and your possible actions are 'play a card' or 'draw a card.' That's not much, right? Except that John Clowdus also realized that would make a boring game, so he added a whole bunch of stuff to mix it up. Then he put it on the cards.

Say you're staring at a hand with Hootie the Diseased Owl and one of those big-nosed crones. You're going to need more cards, but if you draw, you'll hardly have anything to do. So first you play the old hag, and pick up a potion. Then you play the molting freak of a bird, and his ability lets you draw two cards, because when your unsettlingly bizarre minions see owls with crap on their faces, they come crawling out of the woodwork. But now your turn is over, right? No! You can use the potion to get one more action, and then play the busted-ass C3PO robot, who will pretend he's an owl and let you draw two more cards! You must be a genius.

The end goal behind all this card play is to exert control over the locations in town. At the end of the week, you'll see who has done the best job of influencing the locals (or, if you're playing enough of the scarred assassins, who has done the best job of killing off everyone on the other team). If you've played right, you'll seize control of the city and rule unopposed until the sun goes down - in, like, ten years. If you played wrong, your opponent will break out the tarp and shovel so he can hide your body. Metaphorically, you understand.

As a game designer, Clowdus just keeps getting better. Hemloch is one of his best games to date. It's easy to understand, once you get the hang of it, and more intuitively straightforward than 90% of the stuff he's done so far. And as a publisher, he's finally starting to understand that people like to play games that look good. The art in Hemloch is as good as anything you'll see from Fantasy Flight Games, and it really helps build the atmosphere of twisted dark forces battling in the shadows.

Hemloch is quick, fun, and smart. There are tough decisions to make at every turn, and a great combination of strategic planning and smart card play. The art is absolutely fantastic, the theme is darkly hilarious, and the cards are just plain dead sexy. If you're looking for a two-player game you can enjoy with someone smart, you can quit looking. You want Hemloch.

Summary

2 players

Pros:
Absolutely fantastic illustrations
Smart and fast
Leaves you wishing you had just one more turn

Cons:
Might be a little too Euro for fans of bloody games

You can order Hemloch right now, but you need to haul ass. Small Box Games doesn't do big print runs, and when the games are gone, they're gone. Get over there and do it now:
http://www.smallboxgames.com/hemloch.html

Card Game Review - Expedition Altiplano

2011-11-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

Ohio Bob slipped past the ancient guardian statues and made his way through the jungles surrounding Machu Picchu. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he entered the gloom of the ancient temple, eyes casting about for clues to the location of Maco Capac's mummy. There, in the darkness, he spotted the ancient treasure. He grabbed it and ran for the door.

Then a jaguar ate him.

That's about how it goes when you're playing Expedition Altiplano. You'll concoct intricate plans designed to grab the treasures before your opponent can assemble his team of raiders and archeologists, and then he'll throw down some mishap and totally hose everything you were doing. But then next turn, you'll do the same to him, so you can't be mad for very long.

Expedition Altiplano is reminiscent of the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Two rival groups of treasure hunters will enter the South American jungle searching for ancient artifacts, and the first to recover two treasures will win the day. Along the way, you'll be attacked by angry natives, hungry anacondas, and villainous rivals. You'll also fall in a hole.

It might seem like the various misadventures in the game could make Expedition Altiplano an exercise in random frustration. After all, the entire thing is played with a shared deck of cards, and if you happen to pull all the treasures, you'll have a heck of a lot easier time winning the game.

But it's not really that simple. For every move your opponent makes, there's a way to screw him out of his win. For every attack you make, there's a way for him to turn it around. And for every counter that he makes, there's a way to negate it. You don't have to be the luckiest player to win this game - but it couldn't hurt.

Short turns let you do no more than two things, so you're never going to build some runaway strategy that nobody could ever stop. Every time you make a little progress, the other guy is going to get a chance to knock you down a peg. Every move you make is important, especially because you can only add cards to your camp on the second (and final) action of your turn - so you better make them count.

The theme of rival archeologists pursuing ancient treasure in the jungles of Peru fades into the background pretty quick, but there are a few things that keep the story alive when it threatens to turn into a back-and-forth festival of card-based screwage. The art is fantastic, for starters, and doesn't pull any punches. If a giant rock falls on your head, after all, there's going to be a lot of blood. That's not coming out of the carpet. Your wife is going to be pissed.

The story also plays out through the card actions. Even though some of them don't make a lot of sense (why does Marcus Vidor store cards like a portable storage shed? I don't know. He's not even that fat), most of them have really cool abilities that make plenty of sense. The hunter negates animal attacks (presumably by turning the angry beasts into throw rugs) and the black-hearted rogue will steal treasures right out of your opponent's hand, then say, 'Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away'. Lots of stuff that happens makes sense, from both a narrative point of view and just good card play.

One advantage to Expedition Altiplano is the time you'll spend playing. Like many of my favorite games, it ends before it wears out its welcome. You can sit down, explain the rules, deal the cards and do ridiculous amounts of murder in the name of archeological progress. And when one of you finally manages to capture the final priceless relic, you'll look over at the clock and be amazed that half an hour has passed. Time flies when you're having this much fun, and yet you can still finish the whole thing while you're waiting for the pizza guy.

Expedition Altiplano is a fast-paced, attractive game that does a nice job of balancing solid game design with an exciting tale. The longer you play, the more you'll see the strategy unfold, and when you have a good grasp of the cards you can expect to see, you'll be more prepared for the unexpected mayhem your opponent will throw at you. It's a great two-player game that you can enjoy when you have half an hour to kill, and if you've got more time than that, you can always play it again.

Summary

2 players

Pros:
Very cool art
Subtle strategies and tactics emerge as you learn the game
Tells an exciting story, if you bother to pay attention

Cons:
The theme is very important to the game, and game play can overshadow it

Noble Knight Games has a pretty good deal on Expedition Altiplano, so if you're in the market for a fun two-player game that you can finish in a hurry, check it out:
HA HA DOCTOR JONES YOU FUNNY

Board Game Review - Super Dungeon Explore

2011-11-02T15:02:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, I like to kill things. Real men play games where people die, because games where people die are more fun. This explains why I like dungeon crawl games so much - guaranteed body count. Until last weekend, my body count game of choice was Warhammer Quest. But then I got Super Dungeon Explore, and given how much I like to kill things, it's no surprise at all that I absolutely adore the game.

Super Dungeon Explore doesn't look like it should have violence in it. The heroes all look like little kids drawn by Japanese artists on mushroom benders. The kobolds are actually cute, and that's not a word I use a whole lot. There's a huge angry bear in the box, with claws and fangs a very irritable expression, and he looks downright cuddly. Even the baby dragons are adorable. So when you explode into a violent orgasm of death, dealing slaughter like a Texas abattoir, it might come as something of a surprise. But then, everybody in the game is armed with something sharp and heavy, so maybe it's not such a shock.

The concept isn't tough to grasp. A handful of heroes go into a dungeon to find bad guys, and then they kill them. It's beautiful in its simplicity. Monsters pop out of spawning towers located throughout the dungeon, more every turn, and they try to gang up and murder the heroes before they can smash all the spawn points and shut down the bad guys for good. It reminds me of an arcade game from the eighties, actually, only you don't have to starve just so you can use your lunch money to spend the whole night at the arcade.

The rules are also deceptively simple. It doesn't look like there's much meat here, at first glance - basic move rules, an intuitive dice-off combat system, and a few twists here and there. But when you look deeper, you'll see all the intricacies that make this a serious contender for my new favorite game. For starters, every character in the game, whether monster or hero, has special abilities or attacks that make it fun to play. For instance, the one baby dragon can knock you down, and the hatchlings get a bonus for biting heroes who are on the floor. Kobolds can mob you, so there's a huge percentage in holding back and rushing in waves. And since most of the interesting dungeon dwellers have multiple abilities, it means you've got lots of different ways you can use them.

The heroes, of course, are the most interesting. They've got abilities and attacks far beyond anything else in the dungeon, and so there are plenty of options every turn. The coolest thing, though, is the potion system. When the paladin uses a potion, he can heal people (and if they're on fire, he can put it out, which is handy because you're going to get set on fire a lot). When the mage uses a potion, she can throw far more powerful fireballs. And if you use the right potion, you might be able to summon enough energy to sit down and paint all the miniatures that come in the box.

The problem is, you're going to use those potions an awful lot. The heroes are going to take a dreadful ass-kicking, and they'll spend so much of the game bleeding, burning, concussing, or laying on the floor that you're going to wonder why they don't all look like Freddy Krueger being run through a paper shredder. You'll need to heal a lot, and boost a lot, and otherwise rely heavily on those potions - but you can only carry one per character. Lucky for the heroes, a bunch of the dice have potions on them, and if a hero can roll one on an attack roll, the good guys can get a resupply.

This presents an additional element of strategy that isn't obvious when you read the rules. Do you go for the big fistful of blue dice that you can roll three times, or do you pick up the two reds that you can only use once? The reds hit more, so there's that, and the blues don't have any potions on them. If you're lucky, you can find weapons or armor that let you roll the bad-ass green dice, and then the decisions actually get more difficult. Playing the odds versus going for broke, cutting down kobolds like summer wheat or running for the spawn points (and probably taking some painful blows to the head). The best move is never all that obvious, and even if you play like a genius, the dice can always pop up and drink your milkshake.

As if I needed yet another reason to love Super Dungeon Explore, all these strategic decisions are made more poignant by the fact that they're not mired in extra crap. You could almost see the designers having a conversation that went like this:

Designer One: So how do we handle heroes swapping equipment?
Designer Two: That sounds like a pain in the ass. Let's throw it out.
Designer One: OK, how about range on potion effects?
Designer Two: What a beating. Throw it out.
Designer One: Half steps for diagonal moves?
Designer Two: BORING!! Throw it out.
Designer One: But all these other games have that stuff!
Designer Two: They suck. Throw 'em out.

Seriously, for a game with a ton of stuff in the box, there's a lot that the designers decided you just didn't need. And they were right. Every time I got to a part where I said, 'ah, but how do you handle this recurring problem?' the answer was, 'we threw it out.' The rules might not be realistic, but there's a good reason for that - real life is boring. After all, you're going to be killing like a cross between Dexter and Tarzan of the Apes. Do you really want that to feel real?

Instead of feeling like a realistic journey into the Heart of Darkness, Super Dungeon Explore feels like a retro video game, the kind I would have spent a completely indecent amount of time playing as a young man who had virtually no chance whatsoever of getting laid. It's fast-paced, with bodies flying right and left, and tension mounting between the player running the monsters and the guy playing the forces of Wholesome Family Values. The villain might have a never-ending horde of bad guys to throw at his opponent, but the heroes are tough and resilient. For a game this lopsided, it's incredibly well balanced.

However, even though Super Dungeon Explore has enough balance to be enjoyable from either side of the table, it's not a think-heavy wargame. There's thinking to be had and choices to be made, but at the same time, it's light enough that you can play even after you down a couple beers. It's the epitome of a dungeon crawl, boiled down to just what makes a game awesome, without buckets of what makes a game dull.

If you still need a reason to pick up Super Dungeon Explore, let me tell you that it comes with more than 50 miniatures. They're made from a really sturdy but surprisingly flexible plastic (upside - they won't break very easily; downside - you'll have to use lots of super glue). And they're incredibly endearing. Not everyone will love the silly Japanese look, but it really works here.

If there's one thing keeping Super Dungeon Explore from knocking Warhammer Quest out of the top spot in my collection, it's the fact that there are no expansions yet. You can play any size game with what's in the box, but you'll always be hunting kobolds and dragons. Not that there's anything wrong with killing kobolds and dragons, but I can see myself getting pretty darn tired of them. I can play Warhammer Quest over and over and over, because I have a ridiculous number of minis I can use to swap out the monster deck. But Super Dungeon Explore is going to need more monsters very soon if it's going to keep my interest, and so I can only hope there are more coming, and fast.

If you like dungeon crawl games, Super Dungeon Explore delivers what you need in crazy Japanese spades. It's streamlined and fast, with plenty of opportunity to play smart (or, in my case, stupid). The miniatures don't have to be painted, but I defy anyone with a soul to see these figures and not want to see them with a coat of paint. If the publishers come out with more monsters real soon, I can see this one taking over as my favorite game ever.

Summary

2 players (you can play more, but I can't see why you would bother)

Pros:
Rules that make sense and don't clutter up the place
Fast and smart, with plenty of strategy and tactics
Clever enough to be engaging, light enough to fun
Lots and lots of killing

Cons:
Needs more monsters, right away

You are so lucky right now, because Super Dungeon Explore is not out yet. Which means that if you hurry and preorder from Soda Pop Miniatures, you can get the Candy & Cola promo. I don't have that. If you get it, I would definitely trade you something for it. And I mean something really good.

https://store.sodapopminiatures.com/product_info.php?products_id=72

Event Review - Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

2011-10-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

Since I was old enough to hold a crayon, I wanted to be an artist. As a kid, I went through drawing books like a teenager with a stack of Playboys. I learned how to draw superheroes from a book called How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Starting college, I announced that I would draw comic books for a living.

There's just one problem - I'm really not very good.

Happily, you don't have to be good if you want to draw. There's no policeman who confiscates your sketchbook as a penalty for your lack of God-given talent. So I keep doing it, and when I heard about Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, I knew I had to at least give it a whirl.

Here's the theory behind Dr. Sketchy. There's a bar, right, and they do regular bar stuff, like serve drinks and smell like stale cigarette smoke and have dirty bathrooms. Then once a month, they bring in models. I don't mean like 'leggy supermodel' models, I mean like art models. But these are generally hot women models, and they pose in costumes that range from publicly indecent to g-string-and-pasties. And they pose, and you draw them. Then, after a couple hours, you leave, mentally exhausted and sexually frustrated.

Now, if you don't draw, this probably isn't entirely your cup of tea. I mean, I draw fairly poorly, but I do draw, so I thought it was a hoot, but if you're not prepared to spend a couple hours scribbling in your sketchbook, it might not be your bag. You might wind up just spending two hours looking at a nearly naked woman and drinking. You know, now that I think about it, this might still be your bag. Mostly naked chicks and booze? Where's the downside?

I went to Dr. Sketchy's Halloween Special last night, and they stepped it up even more than the usual. Instead of one model, there were three, and they dressed in costumes inspired by Rocky Horror. One chick came out in Tim Curry's costume, which I must say works a lot better on a dame. Another was wearing a cute little number with a hat and blue socks. The third was dressed like a dude, but with hot pants.

And these chicks were wild. Not like pole-dance wild, but just full of great ideas for ways to stand around while we drew their pictures. We started out with some two-minute warm-up poses, which was a little like trying to tackle a greased pig while you're wearing a straight jacket. The five-minute poses were somewhat better, but still left me cursing every time the buzzer went off and the model left.

The best stuff I did was in the ten-minute poses. I can do quite a bit of drawing in ten minutes, and while I probably could have worked for forty minutes on just one pose and really tightened it up, I was still able to work out some nice details and make a couple pieces I could brag about later.

The twenty-minute poses were particularly interesting, because they had two models. Of course, since I was struggling like hell to draw just one, having two of them just made it worse. I got one decent piece out of the twenty-minute poses, one that was passable, and one that would have got me thrown out of art school. Which I guess makes it lucky that Dr. Sketchy's is an Anti-Art School.

I learned a heck of a lot in those three hours. I learned how to quickly build a framework before I start trying to fill in details. I learned how to focus on the parts of the drawing that would improve it. I learned how to draw what I see, instead of what my mind is telling me should be there. But most of all, I learned that if I really focus on creating art for three hours, I start to draw like an amputee with a pencil taped to his foot.

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School might not be the first pick for most people. It's wacky and off-beat, with loads of sexual tension that nobody acknowledges and a room full of artists who don't want anyone to tell them how to draw. It's a little disconcerting to be sitting in a crowded bar where not one person is saying anything, but at the same time, there's a tremendous energy to the room. You can almost see the creativity flowing out of people's heads (and considering the fact that this is a bar full of artists, there's a good chance someone was high enough to actually see the creativity flowing). I had an absolutely fantastic time, and I even won a prize for drawing one model with an alien chest-burster exploding from between her boobs. I'll be going back, I can tell you that.

Now, you might be reading this and thinking, 'Man, I wish they had one of those in my town!' And the thing is, they probably do. There are branches of Dr. Sketchy in nearly every major city in the US, a bunch in Canada, the UK, Europe, and even Australia. Sadly, there are none in Antarctica, so for my readers stuck down at Ice Station Zebra, you'll have to make do drawing each other. For just about everyone else, check out the website and find out how far you would have to drive to draw nearly-naked dames while you swill booze:

http://www.drsketchy.com/

Board Game Review - Five-Fingered Discount

2011-10-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

I'm running a low-grade fever and just generally feeling run-down, like the Energizer Bunny just left my house and took all the batteries with him. I know that making jokes is going to be harder than normal, and that would have me concerned, except that Five-Fingered Discount is going to do me a big favor and supply all the jokes for me. I am grateful.

Five-Fingered Discount is one of the new crop of games from Minion Games, a plucky little publisher making a good solid run at being a contender. They're not really all that small, either, and they're not shy. They made several solid games, then turned around and made several more. So I had high hopes for a game about a bunch of teenage asshats who trash their employer's convenience store on the day they all get pink slips. Whenever you've got a game where one possible action is to urinate in the coffee, you've got potential.

The goal of Five-Fingered Discount is to get up to as much teenage hijinks as possible before you get fired, because at the end of the day, everybody is unemployed anyway. I guess using standard teenager, short-term mentality, you might as well trash the place if you're not going to have a job. That's the same sort of mindset that leads youngsters and hooligans to throw toilet-paper all over the school on graduation day. It's embarrassingly stupid, but still ridiculously gratifying.

So you'll wander around the store, stealing stuff and insulting customers and generally making a nuisance of yourself, until the boss catches you having a fire-extinguisher fight in the stock room and sends you packing. Of course, since you're an idiot teenager with a horrible attitude and no loyalty to speak of, you'll also rat out your fellow employees so that the boss runs off to yell at them for taking all the money out of the cash register. That way you'll have time to break into the ATM machine.

Reading through the rules, it's pretty obvious that Five-Fingered Severance is a funny, light-hearted game with plenty of potential to be horrible to your friends. What is not obvious until you play is that it's also a cluttered mess. It's actually kind of a shame, because I love the campy drawings and the idea of making out with old ladies in a convenience store restroom, just because it's better than mopping up the mess in aisle three.

The game starts out OK, with a few actual jobs you can do to avoid getting fired sooner, a couple customers to mock, and maybe one or two ways to completely blow off your duties, like watching a movie in the boss's office or stashing Slim Jims in your drawers. But it very quickly escalates into a sloppy disaster, as tasks like sweeping and inventory start to crop up everywhere and customers invade the store like the Visigoth hordes. After just a few turns, there's so much to do that you couldn't possibly keep up with everything, the board is covered with cards, customers are everywhere, the boss is getting irate about the mess behind the register, and all the employees are trying to steal the computer or blow up the walk-in freezer.

Some games give you such limited options that it can be tough to find anything meaningful to do. Five-Fingered Severance gives you the exact opposite problem, because you can only do two things on your turn and there could be twenty different options on any given turn. You're faced with an almost unrestricted array of options, and not nearly enough time to do it.

I went into Five-Fingered Severance with nothing but high hopes. Show me a game that asks me to choose between throwing a Slurpee on a co-workers pants and deliberately microwaving a can of Pepsi, and I'm all over it. The rules are funny, the art is hilarious, and the overall theme of teenage amorality reminds me of when I used to work at Shakey's Pizza and we made Shrinky-Dinks out of the take-out salad lids by cooking them in the giant ovens. But with all the thought that went into the concept, not enough work was put into the execution. Five-Fingered Severance is fun to play for the laughs, but not a good enough game to be played more than once.

Summary

2-6 morally bankrupt players

Pros:
Funny art
Funny stuff to do
Funny theme

Cons:
Too many options create clutter and eliminate meaningful decisions

Five-Fingered Severance isn't a bad enough game that I'm going to recommend you avoid it like the plague. If you think it sounds like a hoot, you can pick it up from Noble Knight Games:
STEAL A BAG OF CHIPS

Board Game Review - Eclipse

2011-10-26T14:14:00.000-07:00

It seems that these days, so many games are half-hour throwaways that try to simulate a serious game with light rules and quick play. Games like that can be fun, but too often, they remind me of eating a tofu burger (my wife is a vegetarian, so yes, I have eaten a tofu burger. I would rather eat my sock). They're like imitations of serious games, like getting a patty made out of soy beans when what you really want is a half pound of ground cow.

Eclipse, on the other hand, is a giant double-meat-double-cheese with bacon, lettuce, tomato and sauteed onions on a kaiser roll with a side of steak fries. And maybe a milkshake. When you finish this game, you'll know you just played a real game, a game that separates the men from the fans of farming games, a game with so much meat on it, your colon will whimper for mercy. It's not a game for people who can't commit to a three-hour game, and it's not for people who just want to fly around and blow stuff up. It's a man's game. Or a woman's game. Whatever, it's not for the kids.

Of course, games where you build civilizations tend to be a little on the heavy side. A game like Eclipse that lets you research technology, explore space, build starships, battle ancient aliens and discover hidden artifacts is not going to fit into half an hour, not if you want it to feel like you did anything interesting. You need to prepare for a game this heavy, and be ready to stay a while.

You can tell Eclipse is a beefy game as soon as you open the box. The rules, for starters, are damned sturdy and downright intimidating. There are dozens of sheets to punch, plus multiple bags of wooden pieces and plastic spaceships and a ludicrous number of dice. And everything has a matte varnish, and the player aids are the size of place mats, and the art is engaging and useful at the same time. Just the stuff in the box will blow your mind.

And when you start building your galactic empire through conquest, exploration and scientific progress, you'll start to figure out just how much weight you can handle. You'll need to plan for the future while you maneuver for the present. You can't just start sending out the troops and letting the chips fall where they may. Build a ship this turn that you won't be able to use until next turn. Research technology that won't even come into play until your civilization reaches the point where you can use it. Order a slice of apple pie even though you won't be eating it until you can finish your milkshake.

So many things make Eclipse not only a seriously heavy game, but also a game that I would consider nearly perfect. Actions are taken by going around the table and just doing what you want - but every time you do something, you'll have to pay for it. Do more stuff than you can afford, and you might just bankrupt your entire space-faring empire, and become little more than a footnote in the annals of space history. Sure, it would be great to build a few ships, research some fusion drives, and send them off to war, all in one turn, but if you do, you're probably setting yourself up for financial ruin, followed shortly thereafter by having to take a job cleaning toilets. And if everyone else has been eating those giant hamburgers, that's not going to be a pleasant task.

Space combat is a riot. It's very dependent on good die-rolling, but there are ways to mitigate the luck factor and balance the odds. Upgrade your computers, for instance, or buy better guns. Build some cannon-fodder ships, or give your ships really strong hulls so they can take a hit. Then soar into battle against the forces of evil (or good. Depends on your angle, I guess).

But while there is copious opportunity to do violence and rack up a body count, there is so much more to do in Eclipse besides get into fights. Exploration and colonization is key to your future, and studying advances in economic theory could be just as valuable as equipping a dreadnought with mass drivers. You can't think in one dimension if you want to succeed, or you'll wind up trying to carve your empire out of the backwaters of the universe, while the smart player is gobbling up planetary systems like curly fries.

Going into all the brilliant rules in Eclipse could take all day, and you would be bored as hell before I finished. But it's fair to say that this game was tested a heck of a lot, and if you really want to see everything it has to offer, you're going to have to play it half a dozen times - or more. You can try out new alien races just to kick the tires. You can focus on colonization over exploration, bloody warfare over peaceful expansion, or mix up your play style and be the alien aggressors you were born to be.

Eclipse is about as perfect as a game could be, though that doesn't mean that everyone will love it. Not everyone is tough enough to eat that half-pound of giant hamburger. You might be a tofu guy. Don't be sad. Some people just don't have the appetite to handle this much game. But if you've got the stamina to survive a game this refined, deep and diabolically clever, then you're in for a treat. A really big treat that will harden your arteries and clog your pores, but a treat nonetheless.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Heavy, both literally and figuratively
Incredibly deep, with lots of long-term decisions and short-term tactics
Beautiful, and full of fantastic components
Just a big, delicious, satisfying meal of a game

Cons:
Don't bother if you're not ready to invest some time

Eclipse is one of those Essen releases that won't be stateside for a while. Keep an eye out, and if you find a good place to preorder it, get your order in early, unless you don't have the stomach for this much game.

Card Game Review - Timeline

2011-10-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder about game publishers. I know there's this constant race to publish more stuff in an ever-running race to keep up with the Joneses (and by 'Joneses' I mean 'Fantasy Flight'), but I am often distressed at the poor judgment shown in choosing titles and themes. I don't think many people would be interested in watching a riveting television show about people who arrange cardboard boxes for a living, but for some reason, publishers seem to think that would make a fascinating board game.

By way of example, here's an idea, and you decide for yourself whether it would make a super fun game:

Which came first, the lightbulb or the electric can opener?

If you thought, 'man, I would love to answer questions like that for, like, half an hour!', then you're in luck, because there's a game that does that. If you thought, 'who gives a rat's hairy ass?', then Timeline is almost certainly not going to appeal to you. Me, I don't care whether the cannon preceded the airplane. I just want to know if I can use the former to blow up the latter.

Maybe it's just me. I prefer games that would make cool movies. And a painfully academic discussion regarding the creation dates of various advances in humanity is not anywhere near as interesting as a bunch of robots blasting at each other with laser cannons. I'll take the robot game every time.

I can tell you that Timeline has considerable educational potential, as long as you just want people to learn if the wheel predated campfires. You'll take turns placing your cards in the line on the table, and if you can figure out if the astrolabe comes before the cuneiform, then not only will you probably win, but you probably don't need to play. Because if you know what an astrolabe is, and you know what a cuneiform is, you're probably too smart for Timeline, anyway. You're almost certainly too intelligent to be reading this knuckle-dragging website. You're probably just slumming, checking to see if I'll make a boob joke. (Hint - I probably will, sooner or later.)

Timeline confuses me. It's got tons of beautiful art. It comes in a metal box with an embossed lid. And yet the entire game is only a pile of small cards, and the only thing you do in the game is try to remember pointless tidbits of data you may have learned in seventh grade and have since forgotten, because you don't actually have any reason that you would need to know when someone made the first Dutch windmill.

I do have to admit that some of the stuff I learned surprised me. For instance, did you know that spectacles predate whiskey? That was actually pretty lucky, because if you're going to get totally sideways, it's super handy if someone has already invented a way for you to see the road you'll travel to stagger home. If you play Timeline, you're almost guaranteed to learn something. The only problem is that unless you're a junkie for dates, you probably won't care about anything you learn. And sadly, you probably won't have a very good time learning it, which makes it about as entertaining as eighth-grade US History, but without having to listen to the soporific droning of the girl's volleyball coach who got roped into teaching the class.

Summary

2-8 players

Pros:
Great art
Beautiful metal box
Reasonably educational

Cons:
Not really very fun
You'll probably forget everything you learn before you finish the game

There's every possibility that you might actually want to know all these dates. It might come in handy if you're ever abducted by aliens who will determine your fate based on your knowledge of your home world. You might also be a teacher who wants to try to trick kids into learning things. Either way, you can get Timeline from Noble Knight Games, real cheap:
GIT SOME LARNIN'

Board Game Review - Commander-in-Chief

2011-10-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

Publishing a game in a market glutted with games takes a certain amount of hubris. I mean, you have to hang on to the belief that what you're developing really is as good as your mom told you it was, and ignore the guy who asked you why in the world you thought this was a good idea. But there's a point at which you really ought to question the visions you had where Jesus came down and told you to self-publish.

Commander-in-Chief is a self-published game that takes itself far, far too seriously. The creator of this game must really think he's a gaming messiah, because you when you make a simple chess variant and decree that it is not only the third classic game ever made, but the final chess variant that will ever be created, you've gone from 'cocky' to 'cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.'

Commander-in-Chief isn't a bad game, really. It's a military-themed twist on chess using amphibious landers instead of pawns and helicopters in place of knights. For a real twist, you play it diagonally. And it comes with a box full of seriously chunky plastic vehicles that must have cost a mint to make, especially since I would wager the game's creator now has a garage full of games he can't sell. I'm sure if he holds onto them, they'll be worth a mint when everyone realizes that they've missed out on the last chess variant that anyone will ever create (that is, until a bored tenth-grader makes a chess twist using seeds he extracts from his marijuana).

There are some mildly interesting alterations to chess in Commander-in-Chief, like the fact that the middle of the chess board is water, and so your tanks can't go in there. Airplanes can go anywhere, but boats can't leave the sea. You'll play a dumbed-up version of chess where the board is turned on its corner and you have to make sure you don't lose all your submarines before you take out that last fighter plane. How plastic airplanes make a game the culminating pinnacle of chess variants is beyond my grasp, but I'm sure the creator has a handle on it.

The problem is not that Commander-in-Chief is a bad game. The problem is that if I want to play a game that's a lot like chess, I'll play chess. What I will not do is spin the board a little and turn all my guys into plastic tanks. Chess is a classic that I've played thousands of times. Commander-in-Chief is not a game I want to play twice, especially when I could, instead, play chess. I guess I'm old-school. The now-and-future king of chess games is too modern for my old-fashioned self.

But all is not lost! If you want to play regular chess, you can use the pieces in the box to play chess. You just have to remember whether the amphibian is a rook or a knight, and what the hell do you do with the submarine? I have an even better idea - I'll use chess pieces. And I won't pay forty bucks for them, unless they're the kinds of chess pieces that rich people leave out on glass coffee tables to let other people see that they know how to play chess.

I can't imagine what it must be like to invent a chess variant and decide that it's so good that nobody will ever make another game better than yours. I am at once awed at the brazen ballsack it takes to make such a claim, and dismayed at the complete departure from reality required to actually write that on the box. Commander-in-Chief is not a classic in any way that matters, and will be promptly forgotten by nearly everyone, except the creator's wife, who will be questioning his judgment in taking out a second mortgage just to fill the garage with boxes full of plastic war toys.

Summary

2 players (or 4, because there are team rules. Yes, really)

Pros:
Reasonably attractive
Cool plastic army vehicles
Fun, if you don't know how to play chess

Cons:
I'll pass, thanks, and just play chess

You're probably wondering, 'hey, where can I get a copy of a game that's almost just like playing chess?' Well, you're in luck. I know just the place.
http://www.thechessstore.com/

Kick-Ass Game Review - Summoner Wars Master Set

2011-10-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

If you need an example of how to release a reboot, just take a gander at Plaid Hat Games (incidentally, 'taking a gander' was originally a phrase that meant 'urinating on a goose', and when done properly, tended to draw a crowd). (Also incidentally, I made that up.)

Plaid Hat Games makes Summoner Wars. In fact, the company was created to sell Summoner Wars, although they're branching out now with a new game coming out real soon and more in the pipeline. But Summoner Wars is still the flagship, and when Plaid Hat decided to break out a new introduction set, they did it with some serious style.

Some companies, when they want to remake an older-but-successful game, just reprint it, and maybe add some rules. Not the case with Summoner Wars. The new Summoner Wars Master Set can be used as-is to play the game, but it's also a must-have if you're a fan of the game. If you've never bought any Summoner Wars, the Master Set is a great place to jump in, and if you're already a fan, you're going to want it badly enough to donate sperm (or eggs. I'm not sexist. Well, OK, I kind of am sometimes, but if I was always sensitive, I couldn't call the site 'crassly opinionated' could I?).

The first thing you'll see when you dive eagerly into the Summoner Wars Master Set is that the board is simply fantastic. My biggest problem with the original game was that you had to play on this big paper mat that would never lay flat, and I had to remove a window in my house just so I could put the glass on top of it (that part, I did not make up. I really do put an old window on top of the paper mat when I play Summoner Wars. Or I did. Now I have this new kick-ass board, so the window is retired).

Once you get the board out of the box, though, you'll see the real reason you simply have to own the Master Set - six complete decks with six brand new factions. This isn't just a reboot. You're almost doubling the number of factions in the game, and in what I personally consider a nearly impossible feat, every new faction is not only balanced, but incredibly interesting and brand spankin' new.

Take, for instance, the Benders. Every character in this faction can shoot, which makes them uniquely dangerous. Unfortunately, they're not all particularly strong, and they are terribly fragile. But the reason you're going to play the Benders is because their psychic abilities will completely ruin any chance your opponent might have to make a decent plan. You'll steal his warriors and use them against him. You'll swipe his best actions right out of his hand. You'll move his guys and rearrange the board until his own guys are bumping into each other. And then it won't matter how fragile your Benders are, because nobody is ever going to get close enough to swing at them.

Of course, if your opponent is playing the Shadow Elves, he'll give your Benders a run for their money. These guys are all cheap as dirt, so they'll spawn all over the place and run amok. They're fast, too, and while most of them fall down pretty easy, they do have one powerful secret weapon - a four-headed dragon that is the most frightening champion I've seen so far.

There are new goblins and orcs, but they're a cool tweak. The Sand Goblins are actually a little on the pricey side, and while they're still conniving, cowardly little cretins, they're also bad-ass motor scooters. They have a fascinating array of interesting abilities, and present an entertaining and balanced faction that can play offense or defense in equal measures.

The Swamp Orcs, on the other hand, are a thoroughly fascinating faction with a fairly narrow scope. Their talents derive primarily from the use of vine walls, an addition to the game that is exclusive to this new faction. They can use their event cards and some of their abilities to bring in these vine walls almost anywhere, and then hide in them for cover, jump out of them to ambush foes, and practically cheat your opponent right out of his win. Also, they're a blast to play.

If you prefer a more defensive game, the Mountain Vargath are tough as nails and will do a great job of wearing down your opponent. They'll smash opponents back to their own side. They'll protect their side of the board with terrifying efficiency. And when they decide to break loose and bring the pain, the Vargath are a magnificent juggernaut of violence.

If you're keeping a count, you can probably see that I'm on the sixth faction. And I saved the best for last. The coolest new faction is the Deep Dwarves. And the reason they're the coolest is because they're probably the hardest to play well, but they're going to be wicked tough to beat if they're played well. Every card has an ability that relies on you having magic, which means that you're going to have to bank magic every turn if you're going to make them work. Happily, the summoner for the Deep Dwarves can automatically generate magic right out of your discard pile, as long as you don't mind going easy on the attacks for one turn. Basically, if you play these guys wrong, you might as well line them up and shoot them, but if you play them right, the Deep Dwarves are going to open whole shopping carts full of whoop-ass.

Basically, the new Summoner Wars Master Set is a no-brainer, gotta-buy-this game. If you haven't played before, this is the perfect place to jump in. If you have every card made so far, you're going to need the cards in the Master Set. If you play casually and just pick up a little here and there, the Master Set has so much variety and replay value that you can get months of enjoyment just out of the one box. If you like games, you should get Summoner Wars. It's that damned good.

Summary

2 players (4 if you want to play partners, but you'll need another board)

Pros:
Six new, brilliant factions
Fan-freaking-tastic art
Balanced and interesting, the new stuff brings more to the table than you would think possible
The new board is really nice
You can fit everything you've bought so far into the box

Cons:
No. There are no cons.

Want to know how hot this Master Set really is? Noble Knight is sold out of them. But if you watch their listing, they'll have it back, and they'll have it at a discount.
WAIT FOR IT

Board Game Review - Imperial 2030

2011-10-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

World conquest is one of those themes that just about anyone can understand. You just gather a bunch of troops, send them out to war, and grab anything that isn't nailed down. Kill all the men, rape the horses and ride off on the women. Or, you know, whatever it is that you do.

But in real life, taking over the world is way trickier. If you piss off enough people, sooner or later they all band together to deliver bloody kidney blows until you cry 'uncle' and have to cut Berlin in half. These days, if you want to take over the world, you have to get permission.

This kind of global warfare is what you're going to see if you play Imperial 2030. It's not just a bloodbath dice-fest where everyone competes to take down everyone else. You're not representing a particular color or nation. You get to be a big player, a behind-the-scenes puppetmaster driving the governments of the world to war for your own personal profit. So is everyone else at the table, so at least it's a level playing field.

You'll start off the game by giving Russia so much money that they make you the shadow government, while your buddy buys up India and the other guy who never washes the mustard out of his beard stakes his claim in China. The person with the most investment in a nation gets to decide what that nation does, and can hire troops, levy taxes, call for investors or just run out and start grabbing up land.

But here's the awesome part - other people can give money to your nation. It's not easy to manipulate, and sometimes you get the chance to invest into Brazil when they've been reduced to a third-world nation bordering on bankruptcy, but sometimes you get the chance to buy a huge chunk of China right as they're running roughshod over the populations of three different continents. You win the game by having the most money in the best countries, so even if you're not controlling the winning country, you can steal the win right out from under the guy who thinks he just should have won just because he spilled the most blood.

This is actually where the game starts losing fans. When I described the game to my son, he said, 'any game where 'tax Russia' is an option - I'm out.' Imperial 2030 has lots of war, violence and general mayhem, but it's not a game about war. It's a game about smart investing and clever manipulation. The guy who buys a lot of everything and barely manages to make India a second-stringer could win the game just because he has a big chunk of the nations that actually end up dominating the planet.

Another element that could dissuade the warmonger is that you don't get to fight every turn. There's a big wheel that you travel around, and it makes sure you don't do the same thing every turn. If you build a factory one turn, that's all you do, and then next turn, you won't really have the option to do it again. Launch your warships and go to war, and next turn, you'll be taxing the nations you control instead of following up with a brutal blitzkrieg. This can leave the militant bloodletters in your group a little aggravated, though the serious thinkers are going to love it. Time your warfare to disrupt enemy plans when they can't strike back, or delay the investment phase until it's most advantageous to you. Since Imperial 2030 is all about manipulating markets, and really not about imperialism or world dominance, those players who want to pile corpses like recycled newspaper are going to get restless.

There's one final problem that might send your mayhem-prone merchants of war running for the door - a complete lack of dice. Battles take about two seconds, because when you roll up on your foes, you'll each lose the exact same number of troops. The winner is always going to be the guy who brought more. There are no cards, either. There is essentially no random factor in the entire game. You win or lose based entirely on how you play.

Now, I am a huge fan of spilling the blood of wooden soldiers, but I also love to play games that are massive, protracted battles of wits. Imperial 2030 takes two or three hours (or more), and when you're done, you'll need a nap. It's exhausting to play a game this involved. Every decision has to be carefully considered. You have to watch every other move that anyone makes, because you can't afford to have your plans disrupted by a single Indian cargo tanker steaming through the South Atlantic. The values of nations will rise and fall, treaties will be formed, and your long-term plans will be put to the test. This is not a game you should play if you're short on time or just want to get drunk and throw some dice (there are plenty of other games that are great for that. My favorite is called Get Drunk And Throw Some Dice. It's even better if you can call it Get Drunk And Throw Dollar Bills at Strippers, but my wife doesn't really like that one as much).

The thing is, every element of Imperial 2030 that one person would see as a shortcoming, I see as another reason to love the game. I love the fact that you're playing a world war game that's not about world war. I love the strategy that goes into timing your turns. I love making a smart short-term sacrifice for a powerful long-term benefit. Everything that would make a more visceral player angry and bored makes my brain crank up and get all excited. Imperial 2030 is heavy on the thinking, and can last all afternoon, but that makes it awesome for me. You, on the other hand - I can't make any promises.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Every move requires strategy and planning
Delayed actions make every turn count
Subtle manipulation and clever investing trumps bloody warfare
This is just a whole lot of game

Cons:
Every move requires strategy and planning
Delayed actions make every turn count
Subtle manipulation and clever investing trumps bloody warfare
This is just a whole lot of game

Noble Knight Games is carrying Imperial 2030, and holy crap, their price on it is amazing. You can save a whopping 30% off retail. That's a steep discount, kids, and if you like your games with some meat on 'em, you should jump on this one before it's gone.
WORLD CONQUEST WITH MEAT

Mind Game Review - Double Agent

2011-10-12T16:50:00.001-07:00

Different people like different kinds of games. That's not exactly breaking news. No need to stay tuned for live updates at ten. But I have seen very few games that fostered split opinions like Double Agent.

Double Agent is not a board game, and although it is played with cards, it's not really a card game. It's more like a mind game, where your goal is to get inside your opponent's head and sucker him into a bad play. There are six secret agents on the board, and you'll hand over files to these agents until they have enough that they have to give them to someone. The trick is, you never know which side that agent is actually working for. Every one of those sneaky sons of bitches is working both sides, and until their loyalty is actually called into question, they could hand over your favorite documents to the other player.

Playing the game isn't hard, and requires only a modicum of explanation. You'll assign loyalty scores to agents, then give agents secret files. If you think a particular agent is going to sell you out, hand him the dry cleaning bill and tell him it's a troop deployment agenda. If you think that agent is on your side, tell him where you keep the nukes. But the only way to know how loyal a spy is to the other side is to guess based on where the other player puts down his best cards, and since you both have plenty of ways to confuse and obfuscate, that can be tricky. Add in the fact that you both have cards that can screw up the way the cards are working, by doing stuff like swapping loyalty scores or checking the documents in an agent's briefcase, and you've got some mind-screw mayhem.

So that's how you play the game, but it's not really how you play the game. You play this game by getting into your opponent's head and screwing around. You read his mind. You fake him out. You set traps to make him think he's winning, and then throw down a sudden reversal that leaves him reeling. It's tricky and subtle, and if you're not naturally tricky and subtle, it's freaking hard. Prepare for an ass-kicking.

And here's where the great divide happens. There are people who will play this game and say, 'why would anyone even create a game like this?' Not because they didn't understand it, but because they just plain really didn't like it. Some people don't want to play head games when they're playing board games, and frankly, I don't blame 'em.

On the other hand, people who really like to burrow into their opponents' skulls like that nasty-ass worm thing from Wrath of Khan are going to love Double Agent. The feints and bluffs and surprise maneuvers can get a little intense, and result in some actual anxiety. Some people love that anxiety. Some people just don't see the point.

Me, I'm somewhere in the middle. I've discovered that I have a much higher tolerance for nearly any kind of game than just about anyone I know. I really like Agricola, and I really like Risk. I like card games and dice games. I've said before that I'll play anything if it's fun, and fortunately for me, I find lots of games fun.

But while I see a lovely amount of twisted strategy and deliberate mind-screw in Double Agent, that kind of game is not always my bag. When I play a game, I like to be able to tell my opponent the moves I see, so that he has the same information I do. For instance, here's me playing Risk:

"If you don't reinforce Alaska, I'm going to come through Kamchatka like the wrath of a dying god. If you invade Europe, you'll stop Blue from gathering his continent bonus. If you wrap up Peru, you'll score the bonus for that, and then you just have to reinforce Brazil to keep out Red. Purple has two territories left, so you could totally wipe her out and take her cards."

To which many players will reply,

"What am I, retarded? Shut up and let me play."

I've never been the kind of player who hides information so he can win. I don't see the value in a win if you had to leave the other player in the dark to make it happen. But if you're playing Double Agent and you say, 'hey, I just gave that guy a 4, so it's likely that he's got a high loyalty to me,' you might as well just concede.

So like I said, Double Agent is going to seriously split the masses. I think it is a very smart game, and if you play it with the right person, you'll love it. Play it with the wrong person, and you may not even see that it's a very smart game. Saying that a game is not for everybody is so obvious that it's idiotic, but this is still a great example of what that is supposed to mean. Many people will hate Double Agent. Lots more will absolutely fall in love with it. And people who like to play almost anything will be happy as long as they're playing something fun.

Summary

2 players

Pros:
Subtle and clever
Outstanding art
Short but still intellectually demanding

Cons:
Might leave you wondering why you didn't just skip the game and put your finger in a blender

Noble Knight Games is carrying Double Agent. If you're into games that rely more on your ability to mess with your opponent's head than your intelligent distribution of armies, you might really dig it.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD

Dumping My Stuff Review

2011-10-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

I have too many games. This may sound like a good problem to have, but in my house, games are a little like that one episode of old-school Star Trek where those cute Tribble thingies fill up every corner of the Enterprise. I've got more games than I can store. If someone walked into my office without knowing me, they would think they just entered the home of some decrepit old lady who hasn't thrown out a newspaper since 1927.

Now, maybe this isn't a problem with which you can empathize. But if you're reading Drake's Flames, there's a very good chance you can understand this next problem: I want new games. I want to review games that I can't get from publishers. I want to play stuff my kids might like. I want to try all the hot new games that the cool kids are talking about, but that I can't play because they're published by some Japanese company who can't even read my emails.

But I recently discovered a solution to both problems, one I didn't even know was out there. It turns out, Noble Knight Games (the sponsors for this site) don't just sell like, everything. They also buy everything. You can send them a list of games you wish would disappear, and they'll tell you what they'll pay for them. Then you send the games and get store credit, which you can then use to buy more games. You can also get cash, which is great if you need food rather than games.

I have been meaning to discuss this option for a couple weeks, but before I just said, 'hey, Noble Knight will buy your games,' I wanted to try it for myself. So I picked out a half-dozen games that I wished were not in my house any more, and emailed away to see what they would give me for them.

I did have a concern when I sent in my list. Not every game I was selling was worth a pile of warm spit. I was a little worried that they would weed through the garbage, make me an offer on the ones they wanted, and leave me stuck with a copy of that ridiculous Pirates board game with the plastic map that would never lay flat. But no, they replied back with what I thought was a reasonably generous offer, and gave me a quote on every game I offered them. Even the really crappy ones.

Now, I like getting money for things I didn't buy, so I was generally inclined to accept whatever figure they offered. But I wanted to see how they measured up to just selling my crap on eBay, so I compared all the prices and was surprised to find out that they were actually fairly competitive. Sure, you might make a few more bucks on eBay, but only a few. After all, these are used games, and eBay prices on used stuff are crappy.

I've tried the eBay route before, and I can tell you this - it's a gigantic pain in the ass that is not remotely worth the effort. Just the part where you build the listings is a headache. Add in the parts where you collect money from total strangers, box up every game separately, print multiple shipping labels, and cart the whole shebang to the post office, and you'll wish you had just decided to throw them away. Especially when half the games I sold on eBay went for less than two bucks.

Compare that to Noble Knight. Once I said I liked the quote, they sent me FedEx shipping labels. I boxed up the games, slapped the labels on the box, and took them to Office Max, where they went on their way without me buying so much as a postage stamp. Yep, on top of sending all the games to one place and not having to bankrupt my checking account for online postage labels, I shipped the games away for free.

One week later, Noble Knight contacted me to let me know that they had unpacked the games, and that my account was credited. This was obviously easier than selling them individually, but it was also potentially more profitable. In fact, it was so painless, I'm about to sell another dozen games (which reminds me - send in your review suggestions now, because I'm going to buy a whole bunch of review copies).

The cool thing about having store credit at Noble Knight Games is that on top of having an incredible selection, they have an absolutely jaw-dropping amount of old stuff. Looking for an out-of-print copy of Neuroshima Hex? No problem. Want a couple books to round out your Legions of Steel collection? They've got 'em. Their selection impresses me on a very regular basis, which would explain why I've spent so much money in their store.

I should obviously point out that Noble Knight Games is the sponsor for Drake's Flames, and they do provide me with lots of review copies just for mentioning them now and then. But I can tell you this - I've done a lot of online game buying in my day, and I've never had better customer service or more honest dealings. If I didn't care for Noble Knight as a shop, I wouldn't promote them, even if they shipped me crates of games every week.

Of course, if they did ship me crates of games, that would just exacerbate the first problem. So it's probably just as well.

If you have games you don't play, and would like to get some new games, cruise over to Noble Knight Games and they'll hook you right up:
http://www.nobleknight.com/#

Pyramid Game Review - Ice Dice

2011-10-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

It's been almost two years since I first reviewed Treehouse from Looney Labs (you can read about it here), so it was about time to score another set of brightly colored translucent triangles and play more wacky abstract games. Well, maybe it was past time. It's hard to say, because I can't figure out how to set the clock on my cell phone (I have a new kick-ass Android phone, that keeps track of my budget and plays games and reminds me to take out the garbage, but I still can't reliably make phone calls).

The new Treehouse game is called Ice Dice, and it's got so much going for it, Looney Labs should be charging a lot more. Seriously, when you get this much awesome crap for twenty bucks, you should check to see if your Delorean has accidentally been set to 1986.

The new Ice Dice set has two full pyramid sets, all in technicolor shiny plastic. That's actually ten pyramids, total, each composed of three nesting pyramids. That's less than a dollar per piece. Plus you get two wacky dice (which I suppose is where they got the name) and rules for two games, with summaries for lots more.

But it's more than that, too. With just the pieces you get in Ice Dice, you can play a half dozen different games. You can add in one or two more boxes of pyramids (they're cheap, too) and play a whole hell of a lot more. If you need rules for some new games, Looney Labs has a baker's dozen on their website - and those are all free. Seriously, this is a great bargain.

But the coolest thing about Ice Dice, my favorite part of the whole package, actually is the package. Ice Dice comes in a pyramid-shaped zipper bag that will store all the pyramids you'll ever need, and keeps them all in a handy, instantly identifiable bag that you can shove in a coat pocket and take anywhere you go. If you ever like to travel and have games that go with you, Ice Dice should be at the tippy-top of your pyramid-shaped list.

There are two games inside the bag - Ice Dice (duh) and Launchpad 23. The title game is a clever little push-your-luck game for two players, and you can add more players if you have more pyramids. If you're just itching to play with four players, Launchpad 23 is a cutthroat maneuvering game where you'll routinely frustrate and counter your friends, if you can decide who to pick on. Both are fun, easy, abstract games that will entertain for fifteen minutes while you wait for the waitress at Denny's to bring your Moons Over My Hammy at a Barstow truck stop.

Of course, there are really more than two games in the bag. There are at least a dozen - all you need is the rules. And like I said, those are freely available at the Looney Labs site. My new phone will download those rules anywhere I go, and let me read them in the front seat of the car (though after I finish, it will probably butt-dial my boss who thinks I'm out sick, so he can listen to me sing along to Van Halen on the radio).

There are lots of games out there. Thousands, really. And of those thousands, hundreds of them will travel really well. But for my money, the best investment the traveling gamer can make is a couple sets of pyramids and some wacky dice that can be chucked into the glove box and dragged out when we get to the giant ball of twine, so me and the kids will have something to do while my wife takes pictures for her scrapbook.

If she does takes pictures, she's probably using my new phone. If I could figure out how to see the pictures, I would show them to you.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Attractive, fun shapes
More games than you'll probably have time to play
Light and easy abstracts
Insanely portable
Really good value

Cons:
Once you get started, you'll want more, so they're a little like heroin

Did I say Ice Dice was twenty bucks? I lied. If you got to Noble Knight Games, it's even cheaper than that.
CHEAP FUN ON THE GO

And if you need rules to more of the pyramid games, here's a good-sized pile to get you started:
http://beta.looneylabs.com/content/rules-guide

Card Game Review - Star Fluxx

2011-10-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

I think we need to start a campaign to tell Looney Labs what settings to use for Fluxx. We've got zombies and pirates, Martians and potheads. We've got Monty Python and eco-friendly shrubbery. Looney Labs cranks out another Fluxx version about once a year, and so I think we need to offer some ideas. I think maybe Dino Fluxx, Balanced Diet Fluxx, and Porn Fluxx (my personal favorite idea) should be added to the lineup.

At least this year, we won't have to worry about what the new Fluxx is called. It's already called Star Fluxx, and riffs off so many science fiction tropes you may not even recognize all of them. Like you can win the Landing Party goal if you have the captain, the scientist, and an expendable crewman. In case you're wondering, yes, the expendable crewman is wearing a red shirt. No, the captain is not pictured with a hot alien chick. Or Khan.

One thing that's really cool about Star Fluxx is that most of the Keepers have special abilities. In other versions, the Keepers mostly just sit there and draw attention, which gives players a really good reason not to play them until the last minute. However, in Star Fluxx, the captain can recruit crew members from other players, the brain parasite can attach itself to the captain, and the laser sword can chop the captain in half and rid you of that pesky space monster. For the first time that I can remember, nearly any Keeper card is good for something, so you'll probably want to throw down as many as you can.

The surprises in Star Fluxx are also fun. You can counter other players, change goals before other people win, and otherwise screw with your friends. My favorite card is called It's A Trap. I don't even care what it does (though it is pretty fun). Mostly I just like to channel Admiral Ackbar when I play it, and yell 'It's a trap!' while sounding like someone cut off my lips.

Star Fluxx is not my favorite Fluxx so far. That would be Martian Fluxx, which does a great job of making you feel like you're playing a bunch of alien invaders harvesting Earthlings. But Star Fluxx pulls a close second, because on top of having a bunch of recognizable sci-fi gags that make me feel cool because I get the joke, it feels the most like you might have some impact on the end result, rather than just playing cards at random and hoping you don't lose before you get another turn.

Fluxx is still about the most random game you can play, although I think Star Fluxx does the best job so far of letting you feel like you have any ability to influence the outcome. I don't play Fluxx very often, simply because it is so random, but Star Fluxx might actually get played more often now that I know it's actually got some smart plays to be played. The new art is a hoot, too, so there's that.

At least for this year, we don't have to worry about what to call the latest Fluxx. But I think pretty soon, we will need to put our heads together and come up with the next Fluxx. I think it's important that we start on this idea very soon. For now, try Star Fluxx and see if you're inspired.

Summary

2 or more players

Pros:
Great art
Lots of special powers let you feel like you can actually set up card combos
More potential decision-making than any previous version (which is not saying much)
Cute sci-fi references
Better than any other Fluxx except Martian Fluxx

Cons:
Still wildly random and chaotic
Could end in two minutes; could take an hour and a half

If you want a cheap, portable, fun game that you can take anywhere and play with nearly anyone, Star Fluxx is a great choice. Want to save a few bucks on it? Try Noble Knight Games:
LUKE I AM YOUR FATHER

Dice Game Review - King of Tokyo

2011-10-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

Transcript from a private conversation that may or may not have occurred in my head the other day:

Me: I wish I could find a really cool game that I could break out quick, play in fifteen minutes, then put it away when everybody finally shows up.
Also Me: Yeah, but those tend to be so empty and crappy and boring. Half the time they're just abstracts, and I never feel like I did anything, and the other half are about medieval France.
First Me: No kidding. What we need is a quick game with something awesome, like giant robots or monsters.
Responding Me: Yeah, and they need a stupid amount of violence. I have a pretty short attention span, and need constant bloodshed to keep my interest.
Me Again: Sorry? I wasn't paying attention.
Second Me: Ass. I'm going to punch you in the teeth. That should wake you up a little.
Original Me: Sure, stupid, but they're your teeth, too.
Angry Me: Know what? Your breath stinks.
Snarky Me: Well you're the one who had to have onions on your burger!

I don't often have very productive conversations with myself, and this is one example of why I can never get anything done. Maybe if I could focus, I could come up with games as fun as King of Tokyo, and afford some professional psychiatric help.

King of Tokyo is the coolest filler game I've played in a while. It's got an actual story, more or less - giant monsters and evil robots competing to claim domination over Tokyo. That's more than most fast games can claim. Plus there's the hilariously awesome art, the enormous chunky dice, the nifty cardboard standups and the seriously entertaining cards. Before you even read the rules, King of Tokyo beats the pants off most filler games.

It's a pretty easy game, too. You roll dice that will tell you if you do damage to other monsters, gather energy, heal your wounds, or smash the piss out of Tokyo to get some victory points. Then you use your energy cubes to buy cool mutant abilities, like parasitic tentacles or an extra head (extra heads are very handy if you shoot lightning out of your mouth, as long as you're not trying to make out with your other head when you fire).

You'll keep track of your health and victory points on a cool little spinner card in front of you, and when you hit someone hard enough, you may be able to move into Tokyo. Staying in Tokyo has proven to be hazardous to your health, so you may not want to stay very long, but there is the upside that if you're in Tokyo, you get to smash stuff. Now, for you and I, stuff like money or power indicates that you're doing really well, but giant monsters measure success by how many buildings they can eat in a minute. So wrecking buildings and staying in Tokyo is how you win, unless you get killed doing it. You can't win the game if you're dead. Duh.

There's not an enormous amount of strategy or difficult decision-making in King of Tokyo, but that's fine with me, because you can spend twenty minutes pounding the crap out of each other and then take a break when the pizza guy shows up. You roll the dice, keep some and reroll others, and try to get the dice that get you what you want. If you really need to beat up your enemies, you want the damage, but if you're trying to mutate into a super-booger, you need the energy. Take a beating in downtown Tokyo, and you'll need to run off and roll those hearts.

Of course, the dice almost never cooperate, so what you do with your turn is not entirely up to you. That's actually just fine with me, because whatever you do, it's going to be fun. Eat a fuel tanker and get some energy. Throw tanks at your enemies. Cower and lick your wounds. It doesn't much matter what you're doing, because it's all fun.

I can see control freaks hating King of Tokyo. It's extremely random, and you don't have a whole lot of control over what you can do. If the dice won't show you what you need, you could wind up with a handful of nothin'. And if you don't really care for giant monsters destroying Tokyo, then you definitely aren't going to like this game (also, you may not have a soul).

I've complained in the past about games that are too random, but there are reasons that King of Tokyo is good random, and other games are bad random. In this game, the random stuff is a hoot. Maybe you don't get what you need, but you'll probably still get to punch King Kong in his oversized reproductive organ. So you didn't roll any hearts, and still can't heal, but you managed to get some energy cubes and trade them in for a commuter-train snack cake.

Another reason the luck doesn't bother me is because the game ends before it can start irritating you. On top of being madcap hilarity and violent hijinks, King of Tokyo's random factor doesn't wear out its welcome by taking all afternoon. This is not a serious game for serious people. It's a giant-lizards-destroy-Tokyo-and-eat-small-children game for people with a sense of humor, and it plays so fast, you'll be done before anyone gets tired of it.

I'll be keeping King of Tokyo for a good long time. It's fun, violent and hilarious, and it's perfect to break out while one guy is out on a beer run. If I could create my ideal filler game, I'm pretty sure this would be it. The voices in my head agree on this one.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Great art that really brings the game to life
Doesn't take itself at all seriously
Fast and furious and full of old-fashioned monster beatings
Splendid components make it even more fun

Cons:
Extremely random
Not a lot of depth (which works great for this, actually)

I reviewed King of Tokyo specifically because a reader asked me to. But Iello still won't return my emails, so the only way I could get this game was through Noble Knight Games. If you want to read more reviews of requested games, you gotta tell Noble Knight. The best way to do that is shop at their online store (it doesn't hurt to mention my name). If you're going to be King of Tokyo, get it here:
THROW ME A BONE HERE

Card Game Review - Conquest Tactics

2011-09-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

There are a few things that you can put into a game to make me want it without knowing anything else about it. Rhino-men and fireballs are two of those things. Conquest Tactics has both rhinoceros people with throwing axes and wizards with the capacity to burn down your house, plus demon goblins and a bunch of other cool things.

When I first heard about Conquest Tactics, I was pretty stoked. It looks great, and I really like the art style. It's an expandable card game where you play out your battles on a five-by-five grid and your cards are the warriors who cave in skulls with chunky bits of sharpened metal. That's pretty appealing - combining tactical positioning with smart card play appeals to me, and you don't have to do much else to sell it to me.

So I was dismayed when I played Conquest Tactics and didn't instantly fall in love. I didn't hate it, or anything, but I wanted it to be a lot better than it was. It does so many things right that it would seem like an instant love affair - just add bloodshed. But it also does a few things that I didn't really like, and after every time I play it, I kind of go, 'why don't I like this more?'

Playing Conquest Tactics is straightforward enough, though it's a little involved. To keep track of what part of the turn you're in, the designers of the game invented a clever acronym - TRIUMPH!! (I added the exclamation marks. I felt two of them would be more exciting.) Each letter stands for a segment of a turn, and each player participates in each phase. That means a turn is… not very fast.

But if there's enough tactical challenge, turns don't have to hurry. Give me some depth and difficult decisions, and I'll thank you for making the turns last. And there is a pretty decent amount of stuff to do, assuming you can afford it. You get these tactical points every turn, and you spend them to buy new guys and to send them all over the place. There are a lot of factors to consider, because you're going to run out of points before you run out of stuff you wish you could do. That's a big positive, if you ask me, which leaves me slightly more confused as to why I'm not flat-out apey for this game.

Combat is exciting enough. One bruiser will hit the other as hard as he can, and then the other guy will counter-attack him back, and then someone else will hit someone else or shoot an arrow or throw flame or heal or maneuver into position to block or otherwise come up with some cool thing to do. For a game that's played out on a grid that maxes out at 25 combatants, there's a lot going on.

In fact, that may be the first real problem I have with the game. There really is a heck of a lot happening. There's a lot to track, and yet it doesn't feel like it means as much as it should. It's like running five miles on a treadmill - you know damned well you did a whole lot, but it didn't get you anywhere. In the game, there might be some bodies piled up (hell, there probably will be some bodies), but it took too much slogging through stuff to make those corpses.

Another problem, and it's not even one I'm willing to confidently say is an issue, is that it feels imbalanced. The starter comes with two decks, the Kaborha (rhino dudes) and the humans. And the rhino dudes always beat the stuffing out of the humans. It's not that the humans are pathetic - you can cast spells and stuff, and your archers tend to be impressive - but the rhinos are freaking brutal. They're a little more expensive for a lot more deadly.

I could just be playing it wrong. But every time I play, it seems like the humans are playing better, with more impressive combos and good placement and better maneuvering, and the Kaborha just come charging down the field and stomp a mudhole in them. I may be missing something, but it seems like there are problems with balance. When I outplay my opponent in a game that doesn't even use any dice, I want to win, but it just seems like the better player only wins if he's the one who picked the rhinos.

I can see that a whole hell of a lot of testing went into Conquest Tactics. It's got a lot to like. I love the mobilization of troops, the varying victory conditions, and the art is just plain fun. I like that the combat is brutal and the body count is high. But to really make this a sleek, exciting game, Conquest Tactics should be streamlined, and I mean a lot. There are too many pieces I don't really like, too many spots where things don't work as well as I want them to work, and too many times when I wonder why I didn't just play the rhino dudes so I could win.

Conquest Tactics has all the makings of a really fun game. I can't say I hate it, but I also couldn't admit to wanting to play again. A very analytical gamer with a taste for fantasy might love it, and I'm confident that there are plenty of fans who enjoy building decks and playing the game. It won't be a big hit at my house, but it might be at yours. I wish I could be more definitive, but Conquest Tactics falls squarely in the middle of the road, and it's hard to form a black-and-white, yes-or-no opinion when I just kind of don't care either way.

Summary

2 players

Pros:
Sweet art
Lots of great parts
Conceptually intriguing

Cons:
Sort of fails in execution
Possible balance issues
Needs some slash-and-burn streamlining

Right now, it looks like the place to buy Conquest Tactics is at their site.
http://www.conquesttactics.com/store/

Tiny Game Review - Galapa Go!

2011-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

So much for the afterglow.

Monday I reviewed Risk Legacy, a game that I am still thoroughly enjoying and cannot wait to play again. To temper the excitement of that incredible game, I've decided to flip it backwards and review a game that I hope to never play again, ever.

That game is called Galapa Go! It's one of those unfortunate games whose titles end in exclamation marks, which I find terribly irritating. However, I am more than willing to forgive the inopportune punctuation if the game is good. Since Galapa Go! is not very fun, I have chosen to criticize the game for its title. I will also criticize it for being boring.

The game is cross between a matching game and spoons. There will be a bunch of cards on the table, showing pictures of various animals on tiny islands. There are regular animals like gorillas and elephants, and then there are mutant animals, like gorillas with elephant heads. Then you'll flip a card that will tell you if you should be hunting giraffes, or making sure you don't get any blue starfishes. Then there's a madcap race to put your island card on top of a card that fits the bill.

That's about it. There are a few other rules, basically the special ones on the special cards that make you look for special things, but they actually make the game worse, so I'll pretend they're not there. Besides, everyone has to learn what all the symbols mean, because there are no words on the cards, and so if there are a bunch of complicated symbols, you're just going to flip that card and everyone is going to start staring at it until one guy says what it means:

"OK, so, no giraffes or giraffe parts. And you have to have a red starfish. And he can't be a mutant, so no lions with gorilla heads. And - hey, wait till I finish! Dammit!"

It's not that Galapa Go! is some really horrible game. If I were eight years old, I would probably want to play Stratego with my dad again, because I got bored with Memory when I was four, but maybe somewhere, there are young kids who would like this. My point is, it's not horrible. It's not like there are giant flaws in the game, or misleading rules, or confusing imagery. It's just not really very interesting. We got bored of playing the game after we read the rules, and by the time we finished our first game, we kind of quit paying attention and started talking about consuming rubbing alcohol.

I will say that if I had a classroom full of snot-dripping third-graders, I would probably stock Galapa Go! so that I could distract them long enough to flirt with the cute, recently divorced art teacher down the hall. I can see how you could say Galapa Go! is good for developing quick logic skills or teaching kids to pay attention or something. Maybe that's why I didn't like it - it was almost educational. It was certainly boring enough to be educational.

So here's some advice - don't get Galapa Go! unless you have a regular need to entertain children who are easily distracted. Instead, play Risk Legacy! Oh, wait, that's not out yet.

I don't know, go outside or something.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
The art is cute, and gets the job done
Kids can play it

Cons:
Adults will not want to play it

If you regularly find yourself entertaining young children, you might get some mileage out of Galapa Go! But be sure to tell them how to properly use an exclamation mark. Noble Knight has it pretty darn cheap:
MIXED UP CRITTERS

Board Game Review - Risk Legacy

2011-09-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Since Risk Legacy was announced, Internet prognosticators have had a field day of bitchery. I have seen completely ignorant responses vary from calling it a disposable game to saying that Risk Legacy is Hasbro's blatant attempt to steal money from stupid fans. These claims are based on the worthless knowledge one gains by using the same website as someone who knows something. As my good friend Sam Jackson likes to say, allow me to retort.

All those people are slack-jawed, stooped-gait, mouth-breathing, drooling idiots who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about in any way, shape or form, and their arguments are based on conjecture and an obsessive-compulsive desire to treat their board games as if they were priceless collectibles, rather than boxes of cardboard that will be worth less than ten dollars by this time next year.

I have played the game eight times now, and can confidently say that Risk Legacy is the most exciting game release since the turn of the century. It changes everything about the way games work and is more fun than I can remember a game being in more than a decade. If I did rate games, it is with no hesitation whatsoever that I would rate Risk Legacy as the number one game I have owned since I started playing games.

I will now attempt to address some of the blatant, knee-jerk ignorance I have read to date. First, I have seen more than one graduate of the Internet School of Self-Importance announce that Risk Legacy was asking us to destroy the game. That is a load of horse manure. You will destroy elements of your game as you play, but for every element that you throw away, you'll add two more. You're not ruining you're game, you're building it, and the decisions you make will shape your world to make it different from every other copy of Risk Legacy. Your board will not just have different names. It will be functionally original to you. When you finish a game of Risk Legacy, you will leave your permanent stamp on the game.

Creation is not a solely additive process. Sometimes, for something new to be created, something else must be destroyed. Consider, if you will, the creation of the Michelangelo's David. This amazing work of art was created from stone, and that stone was removed, chiseled away, and for the purpose of being a useful cornerstone, effectively destroyed. There was considerable destruction in the creation of such a work of art, but in the end, something amazing was created. Risk Legacy might not be a classical sculpture, but after you play it a few times, it will begin to be your own personal creation, and it will take on a bizarre and rugged beauty full of nuance and memories.

Allow me to answer the assclowns who say that Risk Legacy is disposable. After you play Risk Legacy a handful of times, you will be less inclined to dispose of it than any other game you own. You will unfold the board, see the changes you have made to it, and laugh as you recall the events that created this world. You'll remember the enormous missile exchange that altered the world forever, or the hilarity that ensued when you named your first major city. You'll think back on epic battles, sweeping maneuvers, and bold moves that fell short. You would no more dispose of a game like that than you would dispose of your family photo albums.

And the concept that you can only play fifteen times? Completely, irrevocably absurd. After fifteen games, you're probably about finished with the wildly game-altering changes that could occur - but you've still got a copy of Risk that is better than any other Risk ever made. Once you've played fifteen times, what you own is as replayable as any other game you own. You don't complain about Agricola being disposable, do you? And you can't ever change that game! The first time you play Agricola, the rules will be exactly the same as the fifteenth time. You can't say that about Risk Legacy.

A friend was concerned that if he played Risk Legacy with me, I would have a decided advantage because I had already experienced all the wild twists and turns the game has to offer. This concern was wrong on so many levels that it will take a couple paragraphs to answer them all. First, of course I'm at an advantage. The same friend is an expert at another game we both enjoy, and he wins three out of four times because he knows the game better. Nobody complains that Puerto Rico is flawed because the guy who has played fifty times always beats the new people.

Second, when the big events occur and new envelopes are opened, the sweeping changes affect everyone at the same time. Sure, I could attempt to position myself to take advantage of a change I know is coming, but not only would that probably hurt me more than it helped, it would also be incredibly difficult to engineer on my own. To add to that, there's no guarantee that the upcoming change will actually be in my favor. There's every possibility that decisions made in the spur of the moment could alter the world and hamstring me for every game from then on. It happens. And it's awesome.

Third, consider a movie with a surprise twist that nobody saw coming. Who would you rather be, the guy who has seen the movie a dozen times and knows exactly what to expect, or the guy who is about to have his jaw hit the floor? Me, I would rather be the one surprised. I would rather be the one discovering amazing new developments in Risk Legacy, the one who has no idea what's in the hidden box and who gets to be delighted at the brilliantly unfolding story.

So that's my answer for all the jackanapes. For those of you who haven't made snap decisions with virtually no information available, I'll go ahead and tell you how this wild ride actually works. Don't worry, I won't spoil any of the surprises.

Risk Legacy operates on the theory that every game you play should affect the games that come after it. Decisions you make in one game will irrevocably change the game from then on. Snap decisions made for short-term gain will create permanent alterations that you may regret for the next twenty times you play. And whatever changes occur, they'll happen because of decisions you made. This isn't just randomly changing. It's changing because you changed it. When you play Risk Legacy, you've got a stake in it.

There are lots of ways that this works. The most notable example is that the winner of each game will sign the board, often with a nickname or catch phrase. The winner gets a reward for winning, too, which could be anything from founding a big city or naming a continent to destroying a territory card or erasing changes that were made before. Then the losers get their rewards, which are basically just smaller cities or making some territories more valuable.

But that's not the only way the game changes. When certain events occur, like a player getting eliminated or nine minor cities being founded, you open up an envelope that completely changes the game. I told you I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say that once you open an envelope, your game will change forever. And since there are six envelopes in the box, that's six chances for your game to make a wild left turn that makes everyone learn the game all over again.

You'll change the game as you play, too. You might be under attack and decide to create a bunker - but that bunker is permanent, and next game, someone else might be in there. Or you might need a territory badly enough that you inflict an ammo shortage on the land, only to find out next game that you just can't hold that territory long enough to get your continent bonus because your own people can't get enough bullets.

As the game goes on, more and more developments will occur. The map will change. The factions will change. The rules of the game will change. And every time there's a change, Risk Legacy becomes more fun. This is why it's so ridiculous to read complaints about destroying the game - after five or six games, you'll have so much more game than you started with.

Now, the biggest complaint I've ever had about Risk in general is the time investment. Even the new Risk, with objectives, still take a while. And I'm not going to pretend that Risk Legacy will never go long, especially if nobody is particularly aggressive. But this is the first Risk I've played where I've ever finished inside 45 minutes, and it's very rare to see one go over an hour and a half.

The reason you can finish a game so quickly is because the winning conditions are different than they've been before. To win the game, you need four victory points. You get one point for each HQ you control (including your own), and if you haven't won the game before, you get one handed to you for free, just for showing up. This means that in a game with all new people, you're halfway to the win before you put down your first recruit. And that makes the game go pretty darn fast.

Of course, after a while, most people will have a win under their belts, and so you would think the game would slow down. However, as the game changes, more ways to earn victory points will be available. Once again, I can't tell you what they are, but suffice to say, they're a lot of fun, and add new dimensions to the way you play. They also keep that break-neck pace that makes Risk Legacy both the fastest version of Risk and the most fun I've had playing a board game in as long as I can remember.

I could keep going, and regale you with stories of sudden assaults, surprise comebacks, desperate gambits and legendary failures. But you don't need to hear about my stories. You need to pick up a copy of Risk Legacy, gather some friends, and create your own amazing tales. Don't worry about the resale value of your game. Don't get worked up about permanently changing things. Relax, roll some dice, laugh your ass off and kill a whole bunch of people. Once you start playing Risk Legacy, you'll be forced to agree that this is not just a whole new way to enjoy a game. This is the most fun you'll have for a really long time.

Summary

3-5 players

Pros:
Reinvents board gaming
Every decision has the potential to change the game forever
An exciting, thrill-packed ride
Exceptionally impressive production
Ridiculously well tested
Insanely fun

Cons:
Not out until November

You'll have to wait to get your hands on Risk Legacy, but believe me, the wait will be worth it. You're going to have more fun with this game than you even thought was possible.

Board Game Review - Chaostle

2011-09-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have been reviewing games for a long enough time that I can usually spot a really bad game just by looking at the box. I am rarely surprised, though Cambridge Games Factory surprised me routinely by having ugly games that were actually really good. Chaostle, on the other hand, did not surprise me. The art would be good, if this were 1986. The box is absurdly huge. The components are almost painfully obvious for being pointlessly excessive. These are all neon signs that add up to 'you will probably not enjoy this game.'

I sure wanted to like it. For one thing, it's friggin' huge. If you kill a midget hooker in your apartment, you could hide her body in the box. It has 16 plastic dudes in the box, including a unicorn and a dragon. The cardboard used for the character cards is almost a quarter-inch thick. There are more than a dozen plastic walls cast from Hirst Arts molds, and they look pretty cool. Somebody paid a Brooklyn fortune to make this game, and with that much money put into the production, I really wanted to love it.

Unfortunately, there's not a whole heck of a lot to love. Chaostle is like Parcheesi with orcs. Now, you could make that a playable game, but not the way this one happened. This one is just a sloppy, inconsistent, random, man-made disaster movie.

The idea behind the game is that you have a team of warriors, and you need to get them to run around this big board and get into the basement of the crazy castle so they can get to their weed stash behind the furnace. Your team is made up of a variety of warriors, like dragon slayers and rogues, wizards and minotaurs, circus monkeys and outlaw bikers (I think the monkeys and bikers are in the expansion). They all have different abilities, which are described on character cards that are used to track hit points and movement points and upgrades and stuff.

Every turn you roll one die, and it tells you what you can do. Each roll does something different, so if you roll a four, you don't have to do anything, and if you roll a one, you can put out a new hero to start his run for the middle of the board. If you roll a three, you get to go again, and if you roll a five, something absurd happens.

Various signs pointed to the game going poorly right out of the gate. We all picked our warriors, completely at random, and then we grabbed the rulebook to look up our abilities. Each character has three abilities, and we had twelve characters at the table. That means we had to spend half an hour reading aloud from the book to describe the 36 different abilities we had at our disposal. Yes, 36. Three dozen. And we were supposed to keep track of these abilities so that we could remember to use them later, when they were good for something.

Some of the abilities are very useful, like the one that lets you time-travel to the future to grab a death ray and disintegrate your foes. That's a pretty handy ability, but I have to wonder if maybe he could just jump forward to when he was already in the sanctuary. That seems like it would be more efficient.

Some abilities are ridiculously narrow in scope, like the one that gives you three extra points of damage if you're fighting a dragon. There is only one dragon in the game, and while you'll probably get in lots of fights as you play, there's no way to know if you'll actually meet up with the dragon. And since the dragon has like 40 hit points, three extra is not really all that impressive.

We were stalwart, though, determined to play this game so you wouldn't have to. We're givers. So we soldiered on and began the game, taking turns rolling a single die until one of us could get a guy on the board. This took five minutes. For five minutes, we just took turns rolling one die, looking at the result, and saying, 'your turn.' That was another good sign that Chaostle was not going to be awesome.

After about fifteen minutes, we managed to all have guys out, running around and jumping gaps and picking fights. It didn't take very long for us to run afoul of the five, which when rolled, makes you roll your die into Harry Potter's Chamber of Stupid. You might get a blessing, and suddenly make your character far more powerful, or a genie might pop out and offer to give an opponent a wedgie. You might also be turned into a pile of smoldering ash and just take your guy out of the game forever. What did you do wrong? Nothing. You just rolled a five.

We were quickly becoming more and more certain that Chaostle was an insanely stupid game. After we had been running around this plastic monstrosity of a game board for 90 minutes, we began to wonder who had tested this game. There were so many mistakes that it seemed like nobody had really played it before it went to press. So we decided to take that opportunity to examine the credits for the game.

The author of the game is credited. The illustrators are credited. The writer who created all the fluff copy is credited. Notably not credited, on the other hand, were playtesters of any sort. There was not even an entry describing who had played the game and helped round off the corners and clean up the messes. We were thus led to believe that the playtesters of this game were, in fact, nameless garden gnomes. That, or nobody actually played this one. I actually am more likely to believe that it was gnomes. Everybody knows that gnomes like rolling dice.

Shortly thereafter, my dragon made it close to the end goal by virtue of being the best character in the game. He was then attacked and killed, which sort of sucked, but also gave my opponents a great reason to say, 'hey, if we give up, can we leave?' We noted that we were of one accord on this point, and even if my dragon did manage to get to the sanctuary, he still had to battle the inanimate castle a dozen times before he could win. Which meant that had I managed to win the fight, the game still would have continued to cause us mental anguish for at least another forty-five minutes.

So we quit.

If you like games with lots of plastic, well, Chaostle has lots of plastic. If you like smart games that favor the better player, well, Chaostle has lots of plastic. If you like your games to be fast-paced and fun, well-designed and exciting, or even just not entirely horrible, well, Chaostle has lots of plastic.

I simply fail to understand how someone could have sunk such a tremendous amount of money into a game this huge without at least letting someone else try it. Maybe he was scared someone else would steal the idea (which is crazy, because nobody else could afford the idea). Maybe he did play it with someone, and they lied and said it was fun. Or maybe he just took a page from the American Idol reject playbook and, after having been told he was really bad at this, ignored the feedback and said, 'I'm going to follow my dream!' Whatever the case, the result is a monumentally expensive disaster, and while I feel bad for the creator, I couldn't possibly recommend this game to anyone with an IQ over seventeen.

Summary

2 or more players. The upper limit is a little vague.

Pros:
Lots of plastic

Cons:
Too many to detail. Simply imagine an explosion in an oil refinery caused by a passenger jet crashing into an avalanche over an earthquake that swallows the Titanic in a fiery nuclear holocaust.

I wanted to post a link to an image that would help to describe the level of disaster found in Chaostle, but had trouble finding any that would not cost you sleep.

EDIT: I probably should have seen this coming, since it tends to happen with small-time publishers who make crappy games. The creator of Chaostle emailed me to let me know all the mistakes we made while playing Chaostle. Here's a summary:

1. Apparently, you get to start with a guy on the board. That tidbit is not actually in the 'setup' portion of the 40-page rulebook - it comes later, in the section describing how the die rolling works - and so we missed it. So we started off a little slow. Sadly, the game did not improve once we did have dudes in play, so this was more like the difference between slowly removing a band-aid in the shower and ripping it off your leg hair all at once.

2. According to the email I got from the creator of the game, when you roll a five, you get to put a dude on the board. That was obviously our bad, but in my defense, it might be that we missed this rule on account of it not actually being in the rulebook.

3. The abilities are for advanced players. We should have just ignored them. To be fair, once we figured out that we were going to have to spend the next three hours flipping through the rulebook, we did ignore them. Our mistake was in trying to learn them in the first place.

4. According to the email, you can't actually remove a character from the game completely. When it says, 'remove the character from play,' that doesn't mean he's out of the game. Obviously, again, this was our failure to interpret 'remove the character from play', because it really means 'do not remove the character from play.' We will try harder next time, and we apologize for the misinformation.

All of these errors, however, do bring me to one point I forgot to mention the first time around - this is a very bad rulebook. The garden gnomes should be embarrassed for allowing it to go to print.

And that brings me to another point. The mistakes we made were minor compared to the act-of-God-natural-disaster that was the rest of the game. You still just roll and move like Candyland for retarded D&D fans. You still get in ridiculous fights. You still have completely game-changing events occur simply because you rolled a five. In short, mistakes or not, Chaostle is still a sloppy, disjointed, over-produced train wreck. It's just that now, I can add that it also has a terrible rulebook.

Dexterity Game Review - Sorry Sliders: Cars 2

2011-09-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes an idea hits the market that's so good, you wonder why nobody thought of it before. Like the guy who came up with a worldwide swap meet, called it eBay, and then got richer than God. Now, from anywhere in the world, you can buy somebody's used crap. That's awesome, because previously, if you wanted a beat-up plaque announcing to visitors that they were currently in Mom's Kitchen, you had to get your kid to make one in woodshop.

Another awesome idea started with Sorry Sliders. This hilariously entertaining game has weighted pawns with ball bearings in the base, and you flick them, and they slide all over the place. And then you take that cool sliding pawn, slap it on a race track, and BAM! kids everywhere will want a copy (especially if you license it with some mega-popular cartoon movie).

I would like to think that's how Sorry Sliders: Cars 2 was created, but to be honest, I doubt it. Probably the guys at Pixar went to Hasbro and said, 'make us a Cars 2 game so we can get more kids into the movies.' That, or the Hasbro people said, 'we need a game to get on this Cars 2 bandwagon.' Either way, Sorry Sliders: Cars 2 was probably a result of aggressive marketing, not brilliant game concepting.

Either way, though, the game is cool. Where Sorry Sliders has you trying to get your pawns into a scoring area in the middle of the board, the Cars 2 version has you speeding around a track and trying to avoid obstacles that will send your pawn/car spiraling through the air to smack someone straight in the forehead and put them directly into a coma. It still adds a few of the Sorry Sliders elements, like zones where you get to flick your racer again or areas where, if you get stuck, you have to shoot with your eyes closed. But mostly, you race. And that makes it fun.

You might be thinking, 'yeah, I kind of liked that idea the first time it came around, when it was called PitchCar.' And I would have to agree. This is pretty much just like PitchCar. You build the track you want from the pieces you have, then you race around it. But there's a huge difference here. The PitchCar cars are wooden discs, and they don't slide anywhere unless you shove the crap out of them. The Sliders cars, on the other hand, glide like they were covered in water-based lube, but without all the mess. You can send those cars flying with a simple motion, which makes them easier for kids to use and makes the game move a lot faster. Plus you get more hilarity when the cars go careening off all the other cars and bust the other players in the eyeteeth.

Of course, the Hasbro version comes with exactly eight pieces of track, and if you ever played PitchCar, you know damned well that's not enough. Sure, it might amuse a handful of kids for an afternoon, but if you want to really have fun with it, you need a lot of track. It might help to have jumps. Tunnels would be great. In other words, PitchCar still beats Cars 2 because even though it's WAY more expensive, it's also a heck of a lot more flexible. If you get the expansion packs for Pitch Car, you can add ramps and jumps, overpasses and intersections, and other stuff that will make you want to play a bunch of times just because you can keep trying different tracks.

There is a solution, however. What you can do is, you can buy two copies. Then you can make all manner of windy tracks! But then, this doesn't work so well, because the real advantage Sorry Sliders: Cars 2 has over PitchCar is that it's half the price. Buy it twice, and you could have just bought PitchCar. Dammit! Stymied again!

But I actually have the best solution yet, based on the fact that I really do love how well the Sorry Sliders pawns work as cars. It's a simple three-step plan:

1) Sell Sorry Sliders: Cars 2.
2) Build a PitchCar track.
3) Use the pawns out of my copy of Sorry Sliders instead of wooden discs.

Genius, right?

Come to think of it, maybe this Sorry Sliders racing thing wasn't as awesome as I thought.

Summary

2-4 players (or 1 adult who stayed up late so he could play with the game himself)

Pros:
The cars are really cool, and move really easy
Cool obstacles to mix it up and make things more interesting

Cons:
Not enough track to make you want to play more than two or three times

If you want to entertain your movie-junkie kids and give them something to do besides get fat watching cartoons, Sorry Sliders: Cars 2 really is pretty darn fun. You can find it practically anywhere that sells toys, too.

Card Game Review - Barons

2011-09-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

Cambridge Games Factory has impressed the hell out of me so far. While Glory to Rome was easily the best of their games I have played so far, North Pole and Zombie In My Pocket were both a heck of a lot of fun. Sure, all the games are about as pretty as a puddle of dog vomit, but they're good games. So when I sat down to play Barons, I knew I was going to be playing a fun game.

Barons is instantly identifiable as a Cambridge Games production because it's powerfully unattractive, and because it comes in a plastic clamshell package that may have previously been used to sell frozen fish. But I've learned by now that when it comes to this particular company, you can't judge their books by the cover.

Unless that game is Barons. Then you can judge away, because Barons is a surprisingly disappointing game. It seems like it should be a smart, enjoyable game, but then you play it and realize that despite having the framework in place to be a fun game, it's actually kind of a dud. The art actually goes with the game in this case, because neither is very good.

The goal in Barons is to build a cathedral in your lands. You do this by laying down cards from the four separate decks, either as land or for the buildings on the front. You pay for the buildings by discarding cards from your hand, which you get from collecting cards for the land. The buildings have special powers that can make your ultimate power grab more successful, so you develop a plan of carefully balancing the development of new land with the need for income-generating real estate.

Or you would, except that every time I've played, the player who won didn't play any buildings at all. You can scheme and plot and manage this great strategy and wind up losing to the guy who just put down land every turn until he could go, 'Hey! Look at that! I win!' Then you throw your cards into the air and wonder what possessed you to bother in the first place.

The reason I kept playing after the first few games was because I felt like there had to be something there. The beginning of the game really looks like it should be smart. 'Ooh, if I build this building, I can trade cards with other people!', you'll say, until you stop to wonder why in the world you would do that. 'Hey, this one lets me draw an extra card!' Know what else lets you draw an extra card? Playing the building as land. And that's free.

Basically, the oversight is that there's a lot of cool stuff to do, with knights who will go over to your neighbor's house and urinate on his living room furniture, or buildings that create cool combinations of effects, or clever ways to place your land. And then you do all this cool stuff, and it doesn't add up to anything. You have a barony that is protected against foreign incursion, with prosperous buildings and lovely city gates, and you lose the game to the guy who just put his cards face-down until he won.

I'm still a little puzzled by Barons. I have seen a couple people say that the game was di-no-mite (I may be paraphrasing). And yet I can't see any reason that I would want to play it again, because there's just nothing in the box that calls to me. If it looked really great, I could understand wanting to play just to see the cool display. If it played great, I could overlook the ridiculous art and eye-gouging design. But instead it's an oddly boring game with art that looks like they gave it to the church secretary so she could apply the decorations with her Windows 95 Art Explosion CD, and I wind up incredibly disappointed in the whole thing and wanting to go back and play Glory to Rome again.

In fact, I think that will be my plan going forward. I will not play Barons again, and I will use the box to store frozen fish. Furthermore, I will pretend it never existed, because I want to preserve Cambridge Games Factory in my mind as the creators of fun games that are very hard on the eyes. And one day when I have an unlimited amount of free time, I will volunteer to decorate all their games so that the church secretary can go back to making hideous Sunday bulletins.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
There's a strategy hidden here somewhere

Cons:
That strategy doesn't actually work

Because I am now pretending that Barons does not exist, I will not provide you with a link to a place where you could buy it. I can't link to a game that doesn't exist, can I? No. I cannot.

Card Game Review - Nile Deluxor

2011-09-09T14:58:00.001-07:00

The Nile Valley had to be the absolute worst place in the world to be a farmer. That damned river flooded all the time, and wiped out crops left and right. The worst thing was that you never knew what would get ruined - one week you're fat and happy with a great supply of flax, and the next week, all your papyrus is under water and black mold is growing in your barn.

Actually, I have a funny feeling that might not have been exactly how it worked, but if the only education on the topic that I ever got was from the game Nile, I would be of the opinion that the only job worse than being a farmer in ancient Egypt would be the slave who had to build all those national treasures. And since the guys who made Nile (the game, not the river) wanted to recap every crappy job in North Africa, they made a deluxe version with pyramids and sphinxes and obelisks. That way you could not only be a frustrated farmer whose crops keep running down the river, you got to experience the thrill and exhilaration of seeing all your stonework eaten by grasshoppers.

I've already reviewed Nile once (read it here), and I liked it. It's a very European-style card game with some nice friend screwage and a clever scoring mechanic that makes sure you can't just score the lucky win. But the original suffered from a few painful problems, the worst of which was that the cards would fall apart. Happily, the cards are really nice now, and the Chinese printer in charge was probably executed for making the government lose face.

The upgraded version, and the version you want to get, is called Nile Deluxor, which actually has no relation to the casino in Vegas. It's still essentially the same game, but the inclusion of the monuments makes it a great deal more interesting and provides even more tricky decisions. Now on top of all the other stuff you could figure out, you have to decide whether or not it's worth your time to invest in stone bricks to build a sphinx.

My biggest complaint about the gameplay in the original was the locust swarm, which would show up now and then and wipe out the best crop on the board. However, now that I've played it a bunch more, I actually really like the locusts. They make you plan ahead, prepare for contingencies, and occasionally make slightly desperate gambles. I thought the locusts were equalizers at first, but they're really not. They're more like one more knife the really good player is going to stick in your kidney. And so now I like them.

The further plays of Nile proved another thing to me - this is not a game that you'll master after just a couple games. There are too many subtle elements working together, even if it is a very simple game. Nile is a game that you have to want to play several times, and that's a pretty good reason for a lot of people to avoid it. I am generally of the opinion that the responsibility for getting me to play twice lies with the game, not with me, but Nile is one game you'll need to try a couple times before you make up your mind.

Of course, if you just hate Euro games, or if you need some bloodshed to make your games worth playing, there's no reason you should play Nile in the first place. You're not going to like it. It's one of those games that is mostly an abstract, and that uses just a couple basic concepts to make a wonderfully subtle and interesting game. That sounds an awful lot like a Reiner Knizia production, actually, though I think Nile has too many rules to be a Reiner game (there are almost a full page of rules, compared to most Reiner games that can be read while you're starting the car).

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Much nicer now that the cards don't fall apart
Monuments make an interesting game even more interesting
Still tricky decisions, still neat art

Cons:
Pretty darn Euro-y

Looks to me like Noble Knight is sold out of Nile Deluxor right now, but that's usually a good sign. They'll get more in soon.
GO WAIT FOR IT

Party Game Review - Reverse Charades

2011-09-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

Charades is one of those games that everyone actually likes playing, but nobody will admit to it. It's pretty fun to act out silly phrases and make people guess what you're doing, but the downside is that you look a bit like a horse's ass while you do it. I would say it helps to be drunk, but then, if you're drunk, it's a lot harder to think of ways to act out 'Swiss Family Robinson.' All your audience is going to guess is 'roadside sobriety' and 'oral sex'.

The worst part is, it's not even fair. Everybody gets to sit on the couch and make fun of the one guy rubbing his elbow and spinning his finger to try to get them to say, 'first word'. That one guy is humiliated and mocked, while the rest of the gang sits comfortably and sips their adult beverages. It's lopsided and just plain wrong.

But now there's an answer. Thanks to Reverse Charades, everyone gets to look like an idiot, except one person who has to look even stupider because he can't figure out 'sideburns' from four people pointing to a picture of Elvis. Instead of everybody laughing at one person, now everybody gets to laugh at themselves. Obviously, that's an improvement.

Basically, Reverse Charades is very similar to regular charades, in that Reverse Charades really is just charades. You just have more people doing the acting. So you see, now it's a totally new game.

Honestly, the best thing about Reverse Charades is the cards that come in the box. The theory is fun enough, and allows multiple people to be mocked at the same time, but the upside to the game is that you don't have to spends half the night trying to think of something the other team can't guess. This leaves more time for playing, which translates to more time spent looking like a baboon with a cattle prod stapled to his shiny blue ass.

Another thing that the cards allow is a kind of speed charades. Since the phrases are pretty easy, you can blow through a turn quickly, and allow the actors to play out 'handcuffs', 'lick' and 'tattoo' in less than a minute (these are actual cards in the game, which leads me to believe the designers may have been into fetish porn).

If you need a way to entertain a good-sized crowd of people who have very little self-respect or a very high tolerance for public humiliation, consider picking up a copy of Reverse Charades. The way the game works means you have to have six people to play it, but if you can all relax and let yourself look like dorks for a little while, you could have a really good time.

Summary

6+ players

Pros:
Silly fun
Pre-made phrases let you skip right to the silly parts
Speed charades is more fun than slow charades

Cons:
Basically just charades, but with more goofballs

Hey! Look at that! Noble Knight Games is carrying Reverse Charades, so if you're going to buy the game, do me a big favor and buy it there. And tell them I sent you:
LOOK LIKE A BABOON

Board Game Review - Zombie In My Pocket

2011-09-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

Before I began reviewing for Cambridge Game Factory, I knew about Zombie In My Pocket. It was a free print-and-play game you could download at Board Game Geek, a solitaire game where you run around a house full of the undead and try to stave off the zombie apocalypse by burying an evil totem in the graveyard installed behind the storage shed. Cambridge bought the game, and added rules to turn it into a multi-player game, which I must say, is way more fun.

That's not to say the original is bad. In fact, the original is one of very few solitaire games that I actually like playing. It's campy and fast and entertaining, and I win it about as often as I lose. There's even a javascript version you can play on your computer. There are tough decisions to make about fighting and running, and sometimes you'll want to search or take a breather just because you don't realize how fast that event card deck can wind down and leave you dead at the hands of the zombie hordes. Run too fast, and you'll wind up zombie food as you run out of health and resources. Slow down to pick up some gear or heal up some wounds, and the next thing you know, the clock strikes midnight and you turn into a pumpkin (a pumpkin that tastes like banana pudding for zombies).

So I liked the solitaire game, and was pretty excited to try the version where you brought several of your closest friends along to get eaten by the walking dead. And I was right to be excited, because what was a clever solitaire game becomes a hilarious romp when you play with more people. Because if you all die, you all lose, but if you succeed at stopping the apocalypse, only one of you wins. And that makes it the back-stabbingest cooperative game ever.

For the most part, when you're playing Zombie In My Pocket, you take turns being the leader and wandering around the house. But when zombies jump out of the refrigerator or from underneath the sofa, you individually choose to run away or fight. If you fight, you could get hurt. If you all run, you all get hurt a little. But if some of you fight and some of you run, the chumps who stuck around are going to have zombies gnawing on them like steak dinners, and you'll actually get healthier.

The reason this is so terrifically nasty is because if you do manage to bury the totem in the graveyard next to the swingset (that's where the graveyard is in the game, though I suspect that all the other people who have graveyards in their back yards put them by the hibachi), the player with the most health wins. If you can manage to kill off everyone else and still defeat the zombies at the end, you get to gloat at your horribleness as you celebrate your victory.

Of course, all this treachery and cowardice plays best with other people who are willing to turn into limp-spined jellyfish at the drop of a hat. If you play with a bunch of people who are all ready to man up and take their licks, then you're probably going to win and they're all going to call you the kinds of names usually reserved for creatures you might dig up in your garden. It's fun to win, but if everyone else says you're a crotch-sniffing weasel, it does kind of deflate your victory a little. But then, if they had any sense, they would have run away that one time when you chainsawed four zombies all by yourself, and let a couple of them chew on your face.

I like the kind of base and dishonorable turncoatting that games like Zombie In My Pocket can generate, and I don't think I've ever played a game more outright treacherous. That's why it's so fun. But if you like your games a little more honest, and if you can't bring yourself to betray your friends for personal gain, you will probably not have any fun at all. And if you play this game with a trusting five-year-old, you will almost certainly leave psychological scars that may never heal.

So the mass-market version of Zombie In My Pocket is a fun game, but as the third Cambridge Games Factory production that I've reviewed, it continues to drive home one core point - those guys desperately need to hire an adequate graphic designer and spring for some art. This game is fun, but it is brutally ugly, and not just because there are zombies in it. The first step in improving every game from CGF would be to remove the 'gradient' button from every piece of software their current artist owns, and the second would be to throw their clip art collection into the landfill full of toxic waste and used rectal thermometers. You know, so they wouldn't be tempted to go get it back.

If your eyes can handle the assault and your friends can handle your self-serving betrayal, you'll get a kick out of Zombie In My Pocket. It's light, mean-spirited fun that will leave you laughing as you worm your way to the finish line. As long as you don't take it too seriously, and try to get all noble or some other silliness, Zombie In My Pocket is a half-hour of evil giggles that you'll want to play again.

Summary

1-8 players

Pros:
Light, fast and fun
Lots of back-stabbing
Finishes quick, so you can play while you wait for that jackass who never shows up on time

Cons:
Near-lethal dose of cowardly treachery (not a con for me)
Super-duper ugly (definitely a con for me)

It's been a while since I really plugged Noble Knight Games, so I think it's due. Noble Knight Games sponsors Drake's Flames, and sends me games I couldn't get otherwise. I don't ask for money here. I don't post a bunch of ugly Google ads or respond to ridiculous affiliate link requests. The only support I ask is that if you're going to buy a game, get it from them. So here's a link for Zombie In My Pocket, and if you're thinking of dropping the twelve bucks for this game, just follow the link and get it here:
THROW ME A BONE HERE

(By the way, it helps a BUNCH if you mention Drake's Flames when you order.)

Word Game Review - Word on the Street

2011-09-02T10:59:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, hobby gamers tend to get so focused on the 80 dollar releases full of plastic monsters and illustrated game maps that we forget that lots of normal people play games, too. Only they don't play games with plastic monsters and illustrated maps, they play games you can buy at Target and that have a 3X5 card for a rulebook. And the crazy thing, the improbable truth, is that they actually have fun with those games.

And when I play Word on the Street, I have fun, too. That just seems wrong, because there's no area control, worker placement, or resource management. There's no long-term strategy, careful planning, or brilliant tactical maneuvering. You just think of words, then you spell them.

Everyone playing splits up into two teams. Then you whip out a card that says something like, 'A lake,' and one team has about 30 seconds to come up with the name of a lake. They spell the word, and every time they get to a consonant, the letter tile slides one space closer to their side. If they can pull a letter off the board, they get to claim it, and you can't move it any more. Claim eight letters, and your team wins, and can then gloat and throw popcorn at the losers.

For those of us who spend our weekends sequestered inside shuttered buildings playing tactical recreations of obscure wars for alien planets, the idea of spending an hour playing a game that we could have bought at Wal-Mart might seem downright insane, unless we're playing with our cousins who just bought Scrabble and think they're game nerds now (quick aside - owning Scrabble does not make you a nerd. It makes you just like the other billion people who own Scrabble. Owning Claustrophobia or all the Dominion expansions, on the other hand, is a completely different story).

And yet this simple, bland-looking game with a cliche of a name and a board composed largely of gray squares is so much fun that you might wind up blowing an entire evening on it. You don't even have to be a language geek (though it helps - my family loves to play around with vocabulary, so we tend to come up with some pretty wild words. I want to believe that the average family, when presented with a card that says, 'animal sound,' would not come up with 'onomatopoeia').

Word on the Street starts off deceptively easy. After the first few rounds, we were ready to ditch the sand timer, because nobody was having any trouble at all. The words flow like wine, and tiles are moving all over the place. Everyone is laughing and saying how much fun they're having. The mood is light and all is well.

And then a couple letters get captured. If someone already has the 't' and the 'l', 'flatulate' only moves one letter. You need a different fart joke, and you need it fast. And then you sit there looking at each other, stumped and trying like mad to come up with a word for 'something that scratches' that will use the letters 'p' and 'g' before the timer runs out. And then all you can come up with is 'wool', but the 'w' is already gone, so you just pull the 'l', and then the other team starts laughing and goes, 'how about Grandpa!' This is especially embarrassing if Grandpa is on your team.

By the end of the game, only a tiny fistful of letters is left, and the game is just a constant tug of war to pull that 'k' off the opponent's back line and see if you can find a way to move the 'v' into your own side. As the game nears its finish, you could cut the tension with a knife. 'Veal!' shouts the other team, to which you answer 'Kansas!' Then comes the breaking point - 'Kick!' The 'k' slides twice now, right off the board, and the other team starts their victory dance, which probably includes some kicking, just to rub it in.

It's amazing to me that with an office overflowing with some of the finest hobby games created in the last several decades, my family is excited to play a game we got on sale at Barnes & Noble. It's not pretty, it's not complicated, and we read through the rules in three minutes. We're gamers in my house, big-time dice-and-cardboard geeks, and yet we'll throw it all over for a crazy word game, because Word on the Street is just that much fun.

Summary

As many players as you want (but at least 2)

Pros:
Fun and tense
Great for word geeks
Easy to play, but challenging
Works the ol' brain power

Cons:
Seriously not attractive
Seems too simple to be fun (but it's not, it actually is fun)

It's not the least bit surprising that Noble Knight Games does not carry Word on the Street. Try Wal-Mart.

Card Game Review - Glory to Rome

2011-08-31T14:51:00.001-07:00

It is a well-known historical fact that at some point, ancient Rome caught on fire. Also known is that Nero played a fiddle. What is not as well known is that after he finished his violin solo, Nero went out on his patio, saw that the fire was out, and hired a bunch of his buddies to fix the town. That's where you come in.

Glory to Rome is a seriously engaging card game that has the players all acting as Roman patricians attempting to rebuild their burnt home and show the emperor (back then his nickname was 'Crazy Nero') that they love Rome the most. The reward for this loyalty was probably that they got to hear ol' Crazy play his fiddle again, but still, everyone was pretty excited, so they gave it a shot.

The game has a lot in common with games like Puerto Rico or Agricola, with actions that can be taken by everyone, limited resources, and a gradual build-up of power. And yet it feels a lot less like a dry European game than you would expect from a game with so much in common with some of the blandest games ever made. For one thing, there are soldiers who just might stab you, so it's a little more manly. For another thing, the theme for the game plays out a whole lot better than the other two.

Where Puerto Rico (or any of its spin-offs) tends to feel dry and often a little weak in the area of story-telling, Glory to Rome lets you feel like you could be walking down a cobbled road with hot half-naked slaves behind you while you direct the construction of a vomitorium (for those who are curious, a vomitorium is not a place you go to barf. It is a big exit so you can get out of the amphitheater after the gladiator fights and try to find your chariot in the parking lot. Interestingly enough, Julius Caesar once escaped assassination because he went to his room to hurl, and did not actually go to the vomitorium at all).

And the funny thing is that the art for the game contributes so well to the theme. This is funny because the art for Glory to Rome is not good at all. Some of it is decent, but none of it is particularly good. The pictures of ancient Roman buildings, in particular, often look like clip art. And yet despite having relatively amateurish art, the images actually help deliver the idea of a bunch of Roman douchebags building Rome so they can hang out with Nero at the block party-slash-orgy that weekend.

But the real reason Glory to Rome shines is because it is pretty darn intense. There's a sort of race to grab what you can while you have the chance, and if you get too wrapped up in the race, you can trip over your feet and wind up without any way to finish all the projects you've started. There's a huge motivation to want to join in on all the cool actions being taken instead of bolstering your hand with more cards, and yet if you're always jumping on the bandwagon, you'll never have time to build up your own resources.

Another brilliant aspect of Glory to Rome is how many different strategies you can employ. Of course, building houses is the obvious choice, but it's not the only way to win. Because you're a corrupt Roman politician, you can take the marble and stone and wood and stuff that you get from Nero to rebuild, and sell it to private merchants to amass a personal fortune. Sure, Crazy Nero would disapprove, but he'll forget all about it if you throw a wild party and ply him with wine and naked girls.

There are also plenty of different strategies for building stuff. Send laborers out to gather materials and then hire architects to supervise the build, or hire strong-arm legionaries to steal what you need so the craftsmen can lay brick. Hire an army of laborers to steal all the marble, and then sell it all to glad-handing crooks and line your own pockets. Or go balanced and just try to build a bunch of stuff, because the buildings tend to have some pretty serious abilities on their own.

If there is a downside to Glory to Rome (I mean outside the unimpressive illustration and blatant overuse of gradients), it comes from the buildings. A game could be neck-and-neck, with everyone pushing just a little bit at a time, and then one person builds the super-building and hires every laborer in the pool, then runs off with all the stone and wood leaving the rest to figure out what they can build out of pocket lint and dried chewing gum. The rest of the game will be a desperate race for second place, while that one guy goes on to build the Sears Tower and the others all scrabbling to build a wooden outhouse.

But while some people might see this as a balance issue, I wouldn't change one thing (well, not counting the art. There's an Italian version on BGG that looks absolutely amazing, and I would use that art instead). The crazy building powers are part of the game, and whether you stumble onto a particularly impressive collection or have the foresight and planning to make the killer combinations work for you, the buildings add a layer of excitement and tension that makes Glory to Rome hundreds of times more exciting than some dry-as-a-mattress European farming game.

While I would really love it if Cambridge Games Factory released an English-language version of Glory to Rome with the art from the Italian version (and I'm not as excited about the Black Box version, because while it is better than the original, it is not as much fun as the Italian art), I can absolutely tell you that I won't be getting rid of my copy of Glory to Rome unless I learn Italian. It's not often that I get to play a game that I find so compelling and nearly addictive as Glory to Rome. I can tell it was a good game, because after we played, we spent the next four days discussing alternate strategies, different combinations, and most of all, when we could play again.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Intensely well-designed and thoroughly playtested
Smart and tense
Everyone is playing, every turn - no down time
Feels like what it's supposed to be

Cons:
Definitely shows its European roots (only a con if you need blood in your games)
Painfully underwhelming visual presentation
Some balance issues may scare off the crybabies

When you see the price Noble Knight Games has on Glory to Rome, you're going to want a copy. If you like to scheme, plan and hose your friends, you really should get it:
AVE CRAZY NERO

Board Game Review - Field Commander Napoleon

2011-08-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

I have the coolest dad ever. Not just because he plays tons of games with me and took me backpacking a lot when I was a kid, and not just because he survived Vietnam and has kick-ass scars all over his body. No, my dad is the coolest because he willingly volunteers to play games I don't want to play, then takes the time to write reviews about them, thereby saving me time and effort and freeing me up for a night whenever I get to post his writing instead of having to do the work myself. So here's a review from my old man, who deserves endless accolades for playing this game so I didn't have to.

Field Commander Napoleon or Napoleon, With One Hand Behind His Back

Let me begin with my conclusion: If you enjoy solitaire games, you’ll probably love Field Commander Napoleon. If you just don’t care for solitaire games, or if you want a simulation rather than a game, then you’ll probably appreciate the components but not get into the game.

The components to Field Commander Napoleon are most definitely exceptional. The counters are thick and laminated, and on top of that they’re beautiful. They’re not overly-cluttered with information, and the most important features are clear and well-placed. The game maps, of which there are several, are perfectly functional for game play. Each map provides for one or more scenarios, so this box allows for a lot of repeated game play. The game boards are a bit austere since they’re just brown illustrations of the game area, but like I just noted, they’re more than fine for game play. Still, they’re of top-notch quality, if not sporting poster-on-your-wall aesthetics. The Battlefield card is very simple – an aerial-like photo of a typical European countryside. The artwork on the battlefield board is attractive with simple aesthetics, but the picture has no bearing on play.

FCN requires these two maps for each game – one fold-out map of the region the campaign occurred in, and a battlefield map on which you fight out the individual battles. The French general directing the battle (you) draws Battle Plans from a healthy assortment, but you’re allowed to choose only two or three (four in a couple of scenarios), and the rest have to be “default” battle plans. But don’t get into a funk over your lack of brilliance in command, because the enemy general is given a kidney punch in his selection of battle plans – you get to draw them from a cup and he’s stuck with what YOU give him (well, it IS a solitaire game, so the enemy general is at your mercy). These battle plans are the heart of the battle portion of the game, and I unhesitatingly agree that they’re a brilliant innovation in design for a solitaire game.

The rulebook is nicely done. Nice illustrations of components and good examples of play. There are several typos that irked me, but these generally didn’t throw off the meaning of the rules. There are places in the rules that I found pretty confusing. For example, when reading about “Shock” on page 12, I had to read it a couple times to figure out if I was rolling against the attacker’s or defender’s combat value.

That said, this is NOT an easy game to master. The rules are only 21 pages, but don’t let that put you into a false sense of complacency. If you’re not familiar with this type of solitaire game, you’ll probably have to read the rules through a couple times, and follow the example of play provided at the end of the rules. On the other hand, if you have vast experience with solitaire games, I suspect this game won’t tax you too badly. Me? Well, I’m not a solitaire gamer. Believe me, folks, I’ve tried. When “Ambush” first came out I snapped it up and rushed right into the scenarios. But the programmed nature of solitaire games just doesn’t do it for me. (In Ambush, one German pops up and fires at your guys, you kill him, move, and then another German shows himself. What kind of an ambush is that?!? “OK, Hans, it’s your turn to die, stand up now.” “Oops, lost Hans pretty quickly. YOU, Helmut, you’re next. Take a shot and die like a man.” The game is obviously very popular, but it’s not anything like a simulation.) FCN, in my own game play, stands in the same company as the rest of the solitaire genre.

Let me say more about this aspect of FCN as a solitaire game. I played the first scenario – Napoleon in Italy, 1796. I marched Napoleon and five of the especially beautiful unit counters into Savona to engage the Piedmont army there. I rolled on the Fog of War table and it said my battle was going to be two turns long. I set up the pieces and quickly discovered that after two turns I’d not even started to lock horns with the enemy. Did I read the rules wrong?? After re-reading the pertinent pages I set up the battle again and pretended I had more scouts than I actually had (as in none) and forced a battle of five turns. That seemed sufficient to annihilate the Piedmonters. I drew two battle plans for the enemy that could have been helpful in some battles, but not so here. So the Piedmonters stayed in column and suffered accordingly. Um, wasn’t it the French who devised the attack in column and didn’t everyone else, especially in 1796, deploy into line to receive the enemy? Well, these Piedmonters were ahead of their time or on hallucinogenics, because they fought the entire battle in column. Poor suckers. But it’s a solitaire game and that means the enemy is stuck with whatever the programmed rules provide for them, whether it sucks and is logically ludicrous and totally outside the realm of historicity, but that’s OK because it’s just a solitaire GAME.

So why did I buy this game? Simple fact, I didn’t. My son got it as a review copy and he doesn’t like solitaire games any more than I do. Since it’s a wargame, I offered to try it out for him. Sad to say, even all the chrome and brilliant design features that have evolved since Ambush still don’t do it for me. I need a living body on the other side of the table so I can feel that rush of adrenaline when I’m rolling to try to knock out that Tiger tank, or get to express that humble gloating of victory when my opponent finally caves in and admits I’ve crushed him – “Well, you had some really bad die rolls . . . .” I’ve never felt that in a solitaire game. Not even sure a solitaire game has ever solicited from me as much as a grin.

So back to my initial comments by way of conclusion. Field Commander is a slick and attractive product. The components are top notch, and it has some innovative concepts. If you enjoy solitaire games, you’ll almost certainly want this one. But if you’re a true grognard looking for a simulation that you can play with another active gamer, I recommend you treat this one as you would any other solitaire game.

Summary

1 player

Pros:
High quality components.
Innovative concepts for solitaire play.
High re-play value.

Cons:
Rules could have been better edited.
The combat system doesn’t simulate historicity.
It’s a solitaire game.

I couldn't find this game at Noble Knight Games, but if you desperately want to pay a C-note for a game you can't play with other people, you can find it here, at the publisher's site:
http://www.dvg.com/.sc/ms/dd/ee/35/Field%20Commander%20Napoleon

Movie Review - Paul

2011-08-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

Movies that reference other movies are not exactly rare. We watched Rango, which is cover-to-cover full of references to other movies, and then we watched Paul the next night, which references nearly every big science-fiction movie or TV show made in the last ten years. But there's a big difference between obvious, unoriginal references that damage the continuity of the film, and well-placed references that make everyone chortle with glee because they recognized them. Paul has that second one.

Paul sells itself as a sci-fi romp, but it's really more of an homage to everything sci-fi geeks hold dear. It starts out at ComicCon, and rolls through references to Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Aliens and Close Encounters, to hit some of the more obvious highlights. It's full of lines that will have sci-fi nerds giggling uncontrollably and laughing right out loud. I know, because I was giggling uncontrollably and laughing right out loud.

The great thing about Paul is that it works on lots of levels. If you're just looking for a distracting goof with an alien and some vulgar humor, Paul delivers. If you want to feel like part of the in-crowd that knows pop culture the jocks won't get, it's in there. And if you want to see some well-developed characters and an engaging tale, Paul will keep you delightfully entertained.

The title of the film refers to the big-headed alien who gets himself rescued by a couple hapless comic book geeks in an RV. The alien has been on the planet for decades, and has a twisted sense of humor and a love for the finer things in life (by which I mean alcohol and hallucinogens). The choice of Seth Rogen to voice the foul-mouthed space traveler is perfect - when he makes dick jokes or weaves a string of profanities that would blister the paint, he just feels right. I can't imagine any other actor who could delivered his off-color lines as well. Can you imagine Clint Eastwood saying, 'What, am I harvesting farts?'

The two comic nerds are played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the knucklehead geniuses who brought us Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and they're just as incredibly fun to watch as they have ever been. Whether they're being routinely mistaken for a gay couple, acting out Star Trek scenes in rubber masks, or running for their lives from redneck bruisers or psychotic Bible-thumpers, Pegg and Frost are hilarious and just plain fun to watch.

Paul is more than just a good story. It's freaking hilarious. But it's my kind of humor, which is to say, it teeters on the edge of being offensive. Then it takes a running start and leaps wildly over the edge, right into awesome. Not like constant penis joke gross, or anything. It's not Your Majesty (which blows goats), just lots of cussing and jokes about probing. This isn't disturbing or anything, just damned funny and peppered with F-bombs.

If you're a particularly religious sort, you may want to give Paul a little thought before you go get the DVD. The movie mercilessly guts the more extreme religious wackadoos, and while I found those parts hilarious (due largely to the fact that I find the Young Earth concepts utterly laughable), if you are sensitive to people poking fun at scientifically ludicrous theories of Christianity, you might find Paul a little uncomfortable. Especially if you watch it with your pastor.

However, I did particularly like the part of the film that expresses amusement at the idea that the planet is only 4,000 years old and yet maintains that disbelieving that particularly silly idea does not preclude the possibility of religious belief. It was like the writers were saying, 'yes, some parts of some religions are stupid, but let's not throw out the baby with the cavemen who rode dinosaurs to their jobs at the quarry.'

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have made themselves international icons for nerds the world over, and they do a lot more than just deliver boob jokes. Their stories tend to be tightly scripted, magnificently well-timed, and downright amusing. The knuckleheads who brought us Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz continue to deliver seriously entertaining goofery that leaves you with the certain knowledge that these are two guys who you would love to know better. But even better, these guys make you reasonably sure that they would actually enjoy knowing you. Paul is a great example of this - when you finish watching the movie, you'll want to call them up and see if they can make it for next week's barbecue.

They can't, of course. They're going to be at a local convention for people who collect Star Wars memorabilia.

Summary

Pros:
Absolutely hilarious
Some great 'in-crowd' references that will have sci-fi nerds laughing like idiots
Great writing and solid plot with some very likable characters
Nerds in the spotlight - gets me almost every time

Cons:
The humor is not what you might call clean, though it is really funny
Some rather vicious pokes at religious extremists
(Neither of these things bothered me at all, and in fact, were Pros for me)

Card Game Review - North Pole

2011-08-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

Penguins live in the South Pole. Not everyone knows that, but everyone should. So if you're a penguin, and you live at the South Pole, where would you vacation? Warmer climates are pretty much out - you've got more insulating fat on your gut than Dom DeLuise, and there's no way you can drink enough margaritas in Cabo to keep from melting into a pool of fat cells and tiny tuxedo feathers. Seems to me your only option is a place that's just as cold - the North Pole.

So off you go in a refrigerated plane cabin, and then when you get there, you realize that there's even less to do in the Arctic than there was back home. You put your cute little heads together, and come up with an activity sure to delight everyone - a race!

That's what you do in North Pole, anyway. You set up at your base camp, lay out an ice bridge of face-down playing cards, and start sledding, snow-shoeing, or just waddling your way to the big shiny barber's pole that God put at the North Pole so you would know when you could turn around.

This racing game from Cambridge Games lets you all be penguins, which is a dream held by almost nobody whatsoever over the age of six years old. Fortunately, North Pole is a kid's game, and thus the theme works just fine. But it's a good kid's game, the kind that a roomful of adults can play without a child anywhere in sight and still enjoy it. It doesn't have all that strategy and tactical brilliance that you look for when you're trying to play grown-up games, but it's smart enough to keep you occupied while still allowing your tiny spawn to get a kick out of stepping on narwhals at the frozen ass-end of the world.

Playing this game is incredibly simple. You have five cards, and you're trying to drop cards that let you shag it to the North Pole and back. If the card next to you is a walrus with a 3 on his card, you can play a walrus with a 4 and waddle onto that card. If you actually have a 3, you can snow-shoe there and still get to play again. Three of the same number will let you take a sled, which is handy when you want to go diagonally, and three of the same number and color let you dog sled and move twice.

If it was just playing the cards, North Pole would blow goats. There are two things that make this interesting. First, you can only draw two cards on your turn, so if you blow your wad on some killer diagonal sled move, you're going to be standing around for a while. You have to time your big moves or everyone will catch up to you while you gasp for breath (and it's damned hard to breath at the North Pole, unless you happen to be a penguin, which you are). But here's the interesting part - when you draw those two cards, you can take two off the top of the deck, or you can take two from the face-up stock of five. Use those cards well, and you can stack your hand to get where you need to go. It makes for some tough decisions - the hallmark of a good game.

The second thing is even cooler. A bunch of the cards have snowflakes on them, and when you use snowflakes to move, you can wreck the ice. Then the other penguins have to fix the ice before they can get past, which slows them down and diminishes their card supply, allowing you to rest for a moment before hauling ass for the finish line. Ruin the right icy paths, and you'll leave everyone else to curse in frustration and call you names. And that is what a game for children should be all about.

The art on North Pole is cute enough, but it's not going to win any awards. The graphic design is typical of Cambridge Games, which is to say that it's not particularly good. But the game is exceptional in being accessible for children and enjoyable by adults. That makes it a good kid's game in my book, and the kind I don't mind playing one bit.

Summary

2-6 kids or adults, whatever you've got handy

Pros:
Light and smart at the same time
Engaging for kids or grown-ups
Clever decisions that make your kids work for their win
Doesn't patronize

Cons:
Art is mediocre

Noble Knight Games carries some of the games from Cambridge Games Factory, but not all of them. That means I don't actually have a link for you, which is kind of a shame, because North Pole really is a kid's game worth having.

Announcement - Social Media

2011-08-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

It has finally happened - I have fallen prey to the siren song of social media. I've had a Facebook page for years, but never really used it because it irritated the hell out of me. I just didn't need to know which of my friends had recently purchased sandwich meat. I don't need regular updates on the after-work plans of people I barely know who live hundreds of miles away. And Facebook is ridiculously difficult to use. Would it kill them to have some kind of navigation menu? The buttons are all over the place!

But a few months ago, Asmodee made me an offer that I didn't really want to refuse (as opposed to one I couldn't refuse, which might have involved a horse's head and extensive kneecap surgery). For the last couple months, I've been writing copy for the Asmodee website, and starting last week, I'm now the official Facebook voice for Jungle Speed.

To complete my descent into social media hell, I also acquired a Jungle Speed Twitter account. I never would have considered a Twitter account until my wife told me how many short, funny jokes she reads on Twitter. I created a Drake's Flames Twitter account, but never said anything. For one thing, I would have been talking to myself, because my Twitter account had exactly zero followers. Then my massage therapist started following me, and so I had one follower, and I didn't really want to tell her dick jokes. Not sure what made her decide to follow me, to be honest.

So then last week I started my Jungle Speed Twitter account, and then Wednesday I attended a Twitter party. For those of you with enough self-respect to not know what that is, a Twitter party is a thing where you have a narrow chat window with a mildly restrictive character limitation and everyone types at the same time, then replies at the same time, and people talk so fast that you get a headache. It was exhausting, but when I was done, I had 44 followers, and now I feel obligated to say something every now and then, just so people know I still care about them. I don't, but it wouldn't be nice to tell them that.

Other than the fact that I'm pulling a paycheck from Asmodee, nothing has changed. I made it clear when I took the job that my reviews were still going to be crassly honest. They still send me review copies, and I still blow holes through the bad ones (though honestly, I think Asmodee has one of the best gold-to-garbage ratios in the industry). The only game I'm promoting is Jungle Speed, aside from writing web blurbs and the odd press release. Everything else is just my unfiltered opinion, and I won't be writing about Jungle Speed here. Mostly because I already did, like three years ago, which is why the Asmodee people wanted me to work for them.

However, now that I know that Twitter is not quite as worthless as I thought it was, I intend to start using my Drake's Flames account. As soon as one or two people are actually listening (I'm not counting the lady at the chiropractor's offices who rubs the kinks out of my back), I'll make sure I tweet something at least once a day. I'll also update you when I write a review, so that you don't have to check in every two hours to see if I've posted an article about some game you're never going to play. Plus I'll write inappropriate and potentially offensive jokes, many of which will have references to body parts, sexually transmitted diseases, or flatulation. I mean, why have a Twitter account if you don't tell fart jokes now and then?

One thing I will not do is update you every time I change my pants. You also cannot use Facebook to friend me, poke me, fan me, like me or ask me for spare change, because I barely use my Facebook page and I turn down or ignore almost every friend request. But if you follow Drake's Flames on Twitter, you can get crude humor and stupid cracks delivered direct to your phone, which to be honest, doesn't seem like much of an upside to me, but far be it from me to judge.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can click the button I just added to this site (it says, 'follow me on Twitter', in case you're just not sure) or just start following @drakesflames.

Russian Game Review - Potion-Making Practice

2011-08-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

Russian Game Week is coming to a close, and I saved the best of the batch for last. I need a big drum roll and maybe a man dressed up as a dancing bear. This last game requires some fanfare, because it's one of the most entertaining games I've played this year. If I was a lot less lazy and bothered to rank things, this last game could be a contender for Game of the Year. But I don't, so it's just really fun.

The game is called Potion-Making Practice. Before you begin your derisive snorts, keep in mind that the game is made in Russia. It's not like they could hire Hollywood wordsmiths to come up with a sexy name. In Russia, the name is probably some clever play on words that doesn't translate to English. In Russia, 'Potion-Making Practice' probably means 'Free blowjobs,' but in the US, it just means chemistry class.

The name might be a little bland, but the art in this game is beautiful. The card design is lavish and ornate, with more eye candy than an NFL trophy wife. Whether it's a painting of mandrake root or an elaborate design that twists around everything like an insidious magical vine, the graphics for Potion-Making Practice will make you want to play, even if the name sounds like homework.

The premise seems simple enough. You're all combining elements to make potions, and then combining those potions to make elixirs, and then combining the elixirs to make talismans and mythical creatures and taco salads. The more complicated your concoction, the more points you get for making it. You can even use the compounds your opponents cook up, but when you do, they get points for having you steal their stuff.

An interesting element of Potion-Making Practice is that on your turn, you only ever get to play one card (unless it's a spell card that says, 'play another card'). This means you can't make potions with the elements in your hand. The only way to get the base elements is to pick them up off the table, and the only way those elements get there is if people put them there. Since you score a point just for contributing a new element, there's considerable incentive to fill the table with building materials, even if you don't have any way to use them.

It might seem like this is a game where you want to block your opponents by trying to figure out what they want to cook and depriving them of their recipe ingredients. But since the winning combinations come from combining existing potions, and you can use the finished potions your opponents mix up, it's actually in your best interest to let people make whatever they want. Making simple potions is not going to win you the game. For the really big scores, you need to whip up the impressive potions, the magical critters, or the tricky talismans. And to do that, you'll need to take advantage of the concoctions created by the other Hogwarts kids.

At first glance, Potion-Making Practice looks like it's all luck. If you never have the cards you need to build the potions you've drawn, you could just be screwed. But the player counting on luck is going to lose to the player who watches the card play, keeps track of his hand, and uses what he has when he needs it. Patience is the key - it doesn't matter if you make a potion every other turn, because in the end, the player who puts together the killer combinations will win the game, and he can only do that if he manages his cards very carefully.

Some of us were of the opinion that there were too many elements, and to be completely honest, that can be a consideration. The game can be frustrating if the two pieces you need to finish your creation never appear in the middle of the table. But then, you're not going to win the game with simple creations, so the elements on the table are not as important as they seem. It's frequently a good idea to put down the pieces your opponents need, so that after they compose your missing ingredients, you can whip up the extravagant creations you've been holding since the second turn of the game.

Potion-Making Practice isn't an easy game. There is a seriously intimidating number of things to track at once, and winning this game requires timing and patience and cunning. It's not a light game, either, and will demand your attention and intellect. But it is a tremendously fun game, the kind of game that you'll be discussing for hours and dreaming of playing for days after you finish. I'm writing this review right now and mentally salivating over the possibility of playing again tonight. For some people, Potion-Making Practice is going to be work. For people like me, it's a wonderfully complicated puzzle that demands every bit of genius I can bring to the table. Games as good as Potion-Making Practice just don't come along very often.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Smart and tricky
Requires intricate planning, careful patience, and whip-smart timing
Beautiful art
After you play, you'll have a hard time thinking about anything else

Cons:
Dense and potentially intimidating

Potion-Making Practice isn't just the best Russian game I've played. It's one of the best games I've played in a long time. You can get it on eBay, right here:
KICK-ASS RUSSIAN AWESOME