I remember when my dad and I would go fishing. It was pretty amazing and something I still miss. But even if you're hundreds of miles from a good fishing hole, you can still play Fishing Day. And, if
I remember when my dad and I would go fishing. It was pretty amazing and something I still miss. But even if you're hundreds of miles from a good fishing hole, you can still play Fishing Day. And, if you're really lucky, you'll catch yourself a free copy by entering Blue Orange's contest.
From the announcement (note: all references to "this post" mean the post on Blue Orange's Facebook page):
**** Fishing Day Giveaway! **** 🎣 To celebrate the launch of our new game Fishing Day, enter this giveaway for a chance to win your own copy! In Fishing Day, players use their lines to catch wooden trinkets in the water according to their shapes and colors. The first player to complete 5 challenges becomes the champion of the pond! To enter: - Make sure you like this post, and our page. - Share for a bonus entry! - In the comments, let us know what your favorite activity at the lake is! (Giveaway runs from 7/15/19 to 7/18/19 Midnight PST, two winners randomly selected from comments and shares – 1 on Facebook + 1 on Instagram - US only)
He's got the whoooooooole world in his hands. He's got the whole wide world in his hands.
And you can, too. In Planet, a new game from Blue Orange, you are trying to create the perfect world. Add in
He's got the whoooooooole world in his hands. He's got the whole wide world in his hands.
And you can, too. In Planet, a new game from Blue Orange, you are trying to create the perfect world. Add in habitats and resources for them as you go, with only one having created paradise in the end.
You can pick up your copy now.
From the website:
A world is taking shape in the palm of your hands. Take on the role of super beings and compete to create perfect worlds with the ideal conditions for wildlife to flourish. In this very unique game, each player’s board is a 12-sided 3-dimensional planet core. Throughout 12 turns, select landscape tiles representing oceans, deserts, mountains or frozen lands, and arrange them on your planet to create the best ecosystems. Win Animal Cards while fulfilling your own ‘’Natural Habitat’’ objective and create the most populated planet in the universe!
It's Saturday once more. I just knew it would show back up eventually.I'm currently playing D&D, and you can watch if you want.But I know what you all really are here for are those reviews I know you
It's Saturday once more. I just knew it would show back up eventually. I'm currently playing D&D, and you can watch if you want. But I know what you all really are here for are those reviews I know you so desperately desire. So let's not keep you waiting any longer.
Today we have: Potion Explosion: The Fifth Ingredient, Miremarsh, Ambar, Shaky Manor, Nut So Fast, Jetpack Joyride, Tiny Trees, Azul, and Rise to Nobility.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Potion Explosion's brand new expansion, The Fifth Ingredient! Its out at retail and you can already pick this one up. Its a definite buy, if you are a fan of Potion Explosion. This expansion adds a few more mechanics to the base game and a brand new ghostly white marble that can take the color of any other marble in the game! Pair that with new professor abilities and you have tons of possibilities now to make the most potions for the win!
Next to card drafting games, one of my favorite genres has to be dexterity games. I think I love not only the skill involved, but how unique the game play is. Even ones that share mechanics can stand out on their own and providing a completely new and entertaining experience.
Shaky Manor (formally known as the KDJ nominated Panic Mansion) is a dexterity game that will have you shaking a board to try and move random pieces around. Sounds easy enough right? Let’s find out.
You’ll need fast reactions and quick counting skills to play this nutty reaction game from Smirk & Laughter Games. Nut So Fast will test your pattern recognition skills as well as your dexterity. Grab the matching wooden nut tokens or be the first to strike a nutty pose to be crowned the Nut So Fast Champion.
Nut So Fast is a dexterity game for 3-6 players that lasts about 20 minutes. It plays best with 4 players.
There are a lot of things that can attract someone to a certain board game. Theme, artwork, mechanics, or any combination of those things. Many games boil down to gathering resources and fulfilling orders to score points. Ambar uses a lot of familiar formulas, but each with a bit of a unique spin, on top of a medieval-fantasy theme that is brought to life with wonderful artwork.
Players compete to collect precious amber from dangerous forests and use it to create attractive jewelry for the nearby towns. The gameplay uses a press your luck mechanism along with card play and engine building. Ambar plays 2-4 players in about an hour.
Jetpack Joyride was first released as an iOS video game in 2011 by Halfbrick Studios following their hit game, Fruit Ninja. Jetpack Joyride is a side-scrolling, endless runner game in which you are traveling through a laboratory using a stolen bullet-powered jetpack. In this fast-paced video game, you are trying to travel as far as possible through the lab, collect coins, avoid obstacles and hazards, and complete missions. Lucky Duck Games is attempting to capture the same energy and tension of the award-winning digital game and transform it into a tabletop experience with the Jetpack Joyride board game. Have they succeeded in capturing the original spirit? Continue reading to find out.
The Demigod of Trees has fallen. Seduced by Maion, the God of Decay, and his promises of power, he has been cast out in disgrace. Now Fisaven, the God of Growth, is looking to fill in the recently vacated position. And he thinks that YOU could be the one. Now it’s time to prove you’re worthy.
Azul is an abstract game for two to four players. Players are trying to collect sets of tiles to fill in empty spots in their mosaics without collecting too much waste. The player with the most points is the winner.
There are things in life that are perfectly understandable. Things like buying German cars because they’re well made and can go round corners; wearing a crash helmet when riding a motorbike; sacking work off to go to the pub and drink in the beer garden because it’s a nice day or avoiding old people on the pavement as they dawdle and you’ve got places to be. There are also things that make less sense. Like Brexit or Donald Trump.
I feel that the subject of this review falls into the latter category, although purely in name alone. Rise to Nobility for me conjures images in my mind of a pleb trying to become more than they are. Earning money, working hard and gaining a title. A bit like Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale. What doesn’t spring to mind on hearing the title, is the strife involved to become the next Town Clerk to manage the organisation of inhabitants in a new city in the Five Realms and succeed a particularly bungling, but delightful old chap called Berk. Perhaps “Rise to Administration” would be more appropriate.
But, like a drunk trying remain focussed on explaining the finer points of Quantum Theory, I digress.
It's very early on Saturday morning. Well, not as early as it was when I first got up (Now: 6am. Woke up: 3am). I'd love to know why, on weekdays, my brain is all, "man, I dun wanna get up!" while on
It's very early on Saturday morning. Well, not as early as it was when I first got up (Now: 6am. Woke up: 3am). I'd love to know why, on weekdays, my brain is all, "man, I dun wanna get up!" while on the weekend it's like, "3am, homebear. Be awake now!" Maybe I'm just so excited about D&D today. I guess we can go with that. But while I get ready for all the things I'm gonna do today, I also need to get you your reviews I know you so desperately desire.
Today we have: Go Nuts for Doughnuts, Sushi Go!, Bamboleo, Cry Havoc: Aftermath, Down in Flames: WWII-Guns Blazing, Gaslands, Dinosaur Island, Dr. Beaker, and Crusader Kings.
We are back with another edition of Parental Guidance. The article series where I pull games off the shelf and play them with my parents in the hopes of helping you find new and diverse gateway games to play with your family. As always, I’ll start with a quick summary of what the game is, why I chose it, and then my mother will chime in with her thoughts on the game. So let’s get to it.
I remember Cry Havoc being one of the hot games releasing at Gencon 2016. This asymmetric, area control game did not disappoint me or many others. Unfortunately, my Cry Havoc stayed on my shelf through most of 2017 because of new games releasing and any game, even the great ones, can get lost in this gaming renaissance we’re currently in. It was not until Essen 2017 that Portal Games released Cry Havoc: Aftermath, the first expansion.
Let’s take a look at what Aftermath adds to the base game and if it’s worth adding to your gaming collection.
The latest iteration, originally published in 2010 and still printed, is Down in Flames: WWII-Guns Blazing. It’s a tabletop card game for 2-6 players with about a 30 minute playtime. For a simple dogfight, 2 players is fine, but for a grand aerial battle, an even number of players up to 6 (or 12 with additional decks!) is really the heart of the experience.
Publisher Mighty Boards has really been coming out with a unique lineup of board games. First was Posthuman, their post apocalyptic survival game. Then came Vengeance, the action movie revenge game. And now we have Petrichor, a game about controlling clouds over fields of crops. I’ll say this about Might Boards, they know how to take a underused theme and run with it.
Petrichor is an area control game for 2-4 players that takes about 30-60 minutes to play. The game plays best with 3 players.
The goal of Dinosaur Island is to build the most exciting dinosaur park you can and pack in more visitors than fire regulations allow. The game is played over a variable number of rounds dependent on how quickly players achieve objectives. You can also vary the length of the game by choosing from short, medium, or long game objects at setup. Regardless of the objectives, the rounds themselves will play out the same way.
Two years ago Dr. Eureka was a surprise hit with my gaming group. We were like mad scientists trying to mix the correct molecules into test tubes. It was a straightforward and fun real-time puzzle featuring top-notch components.
Its sequel, Dr. Beaker, once again is impeccably produced: the beakers and stirrers look like they’re straight from a laboratory. Would Dr. Beaker be a game-changing sequel like The Godfather II? Or would it be a huge dud like The Sting II? And will I ever be able to reference a movie from this century?
Who doesn't like getting things for free? Nobody. Who doesn't love having some games with friends? Well, on this page, hopefully nobody. Blue Orange is putting those two together with their Cooperativ
Who doesn't like getting things for free? Nobody. Who doesn't love having some games with friends? Well, on this page, hopefully nobody. Blue Orange is putting those two together with their Cooperative Games Giveaway they're holding now. Go put your name in the hat and you could walk away with some great cooperative titles.
From the contest: (note: all mentions of "this post" refer to the Blue Orange post on Facebook)
*****Cooperative Games Giveaway!***** While we’re big fans of competition here at Blue Orange, sometimes things are just better when you work together. We have three great preschool cooperative games that help kids work on important skills like shared decision making and team work, and we want to share them with one lucky winner! Enter into this giveaway for the chance to win a cooperative game bundle that includes two new games Happy Bunny and Where’s Mr. Wolf?, as well as the popular storytelling game Tell Tale. Details below:
- Make sure you like this post, and our page. - In the Comments below, share with us a fun experience that showed your children how team work helps!
(Giveaway runs from 5/7/2018 to to 5/13/2018 Midnight PST, one winner randomly selected from comments, US only)
It's Saturday and I'm painting minis.... I'm not good at painting minis...But, y'know, it's just about getting the colored goop on the figure. I'm not going to be winning any Golden Demons or Crystal
It's Saturday and I'm painting minis. ... I'm not good at painting minis... But, y'know, it's just about getting the colored goop on the figure. I'm not going to be winning any Golden Demons or Crystal Brushes, but hey... they'll be painted.
But while the last color dries, I'm gonna post your reviews for you.
Today we have: War of Supremacy, Laruna: Age of Kingdoms, Harvest Dice, Ex Libris, Legacy of Dragonholt, Boom Blast Stix, A Column of Fire, Cytosis, Dream Catchers, Arkon, Fabled Fruit, Queendomino, and Clans of Caledonia.
I will be taking a look at this new Kickstarter tactical card game from Lost Treasure games called War of Supremacy. I will give you a basic rundown of the different cards and their role within the game. A look at how the game is setup and basics of player turns and combat. I will also give you my thoughts and opinions on the game, and would love to hear yours.
In this video I will be taking a look at a brand new game on Kickstarter. All components are prototype versions and will be much better with the final production version. I will also give you my thoughts and opinions on the game, and would love to hear yours.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Charterstone from StoneMaier Games. You are pretty much getting one special experience in this box. Its a legacy game and a fantastic one that offers 12 games within the campaign and then the ability to flip the board over and purchase the recharge pack to play the entire campaign again (if you choose to). You will be building out a small charter within this world and working to lock in the most VP's per game. You are constantly balancing either building, opening crates, going for advanced upgrade cards or just stocking up on resources. There are so many strategies to deploy in obtaining VP's. There are also really cool hidden "special" things you will be unlocking you will never expect. At this point, this is a favorite of mine and the final map will be framed on the wall! It does not get much better than this fantastic legacy experience for the entire family. Jamie and Stonemaier Games - well done - very well done! Team this is a 100% buy recommendation.
As you might expect from a roll and write game, Harvest Dice is easy to learn. Each player starts with a blank harvest sheet and a pencil. Each round, the first player rolls the 9 veggie dice (3 dice per crop). Then, each player drafts one die and adds it to their plot. When adding a die, you must place the crop in a column that matches the number on a die. The trick is, a veggie must be placed orthogonally next to the same type of veggie (after the first).
In Ex Libris, you are attempting to collect book cards and assemble them into rows that both stack above each other and are arranged in alphabetical order. At the start of the game, each player chooses a library tile. These tiles provide a unique assistant for each player as well as two workers.
Like other roleplaying games, a campaign of Legacy of Dragonholt (the only way to play) begins with character creation. Characters do not have attributes like Strength or Dexterity. They merely have a list of Skills, a Stamina score, tracked Experience, and an Equipment list.
The skills a character may have is based on a selection of a Race and Class, both of which are mostly typical high fantasy selections based in the world of Terrinoth, Fantasy Flight Games’ generic fantasy world of choice. Once characters are created, players read the introduction in the first book and the game mostly introduces rules as needed.
The goal in Boom Blast Stix isn’t to be the winner, just not to be the loser. On a player’s turn, they place one of the triangle shaped sticks on top of the canister cap. If nothing happens, the next player takes their turn. If the pile explodes, that player is the loser.
A Column of Fire is an adaptation of the third novel in Ken Follett’s “Kingsbridge” series following The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. (The novel is titled A Column of Fire in English, and Das Fundament der Ewigkeit (“The Foundation of Eternity”) in German.)
In the game, set in Europe during the time of Elizabeth I, Catholics and Protestants compete for power and influence in England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In this politically unstable environment, resourceful operatives and courageous secret agents plot to secure power for their rulers. The balance of power shifts back and forth amidst foiled assassinations, successful rebellions, and futile invasions — and not infrequently, those who sympathize with the weak are expelled from the country.
Cytosis: A Cell Building Game is a worker placement game that takes place inside a human cell. Players start out with a number of workers and on a player’s turn, they will place one of their workers in any available location within that cell. Some of the locations provide players with resources (e.g., mRNA, ATP); some with actions (e.g., convert resources, collect cards). Resources are used to build enzymes, hormones and/or receptors, which score Health Points. The player with the most Health Points at the end of the game wins!
Dream Catchers is a cooperative casual game for 2 to 4 players. Players are dream catchers who visits children in their sleep to collect sweet dreams and remove nightmares to help them sleep tight for the night.
Play power cards to catch a sweet dream for the sleeping child or remove a nightmare to prevent them from attacking the poor kid. Players may trade cards with each other to help in their task.
I was going to start this review by saying that Arkon is a bit like Ronseal, and then I realised that not everyone in the world will be familiar with a wood staining product and its advertising slogan. For those who haven't got a nostalgic history of UK television commercials, Ronseal's slogan was "it does what is says on the tin" and I feel that by describing Arkon as a take-that card game with set collection and bidding, you more or less know most of what you need to about the game, but we have been tasked with reviewing this product and so we are honour bound to tell you more.
Hopefully you’re very thirsty or really dig the latest health drink craze, because the goal in Fabled Fruit is to collect sets of fruit to mix into particular juices. Innovative designer Friedemann Friese combines worker placement and set collection, but that’s not the game’s central conceit. Rather he has worked those two familiar mechanics into his inventive Fable System – a sort of minimalist campaign-style twist and/or legacy element. Except you don’t permanently alter anything like most legacy games, so you can start over any time. And it’s not a campaign as in a contained story, but more an ongoing evolution of game play. That’s the design’s draw.
To concoct delicious juices players will visit location cards. There are fifty-nine different locales. Don’t worry…they’re not all out at once! Indeed you’ll play with but a handful each game. The locations deck is stacked in descending numerical order. Each spot (except #59) has four copies. Your very first game begins with all of the first six locations stacked together by number. These are places you may visit.
Queendomino is, like its predecessor, a tile-laying game that takes the familiar game of dominoes and adds a few twists. The goal in Queendomino is the same as in Kingdomino: Score the most points to win the game. (Since Queendomino shares a lot of commonalities with Kingdomino, for the sake of brevity here I’ve glossed over some of the common aspects in this review, both in terms of rules and basic strategy. If you’ve never played Kingdomino, please read my earlier review to get a sense of that game.)
In Clans of Caledonia, you lead a Scottish clan over the course of six rounds in an effort to cultivate and export agricultural goods. Each round, players will successively take a single action until all players have passed. On your turn, you have a litany of actions to choose from.
You can deploy a unit from your player board to the map by paying the cost of the unit and the cost printed on the map. The unit must be placed adjacent to one of your units already on the map and be on the appropriate type of terrain. Miners go on mountains, sheep go in fields, etc.
Ok, so it's actually the day after Valentine's Day, but there were a lot of things going on yesterday and it was hard to keep up with all of them. One was the giveaway from Blue Orange and Board Game
Ok, so it's actually the day after Valentine's Day, but there were a lot of things going on yesterday and it was hard to keep up with all of them. One was the giveaway from Blue Orange and Board Game Revolution. However, it's not too late to join! If you'd like a free copy of Kingdomino and Queendomino, go put your name in the hat.
From the announcement: (note: all references to "this post" refer to the Blue Orange post. Replying here won't get you entered into the drawing!)
*****Valentine’s Day Royal Wedding Giveaway***** To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we are giving you all the chance to win the perfect pair! We have partnered up with Board Game Revolution to offer you not one but TWO chances at scoring a Kingdomino and Queendomino bundle. Follow the contest guidelines below and then head over to Board Game Revolution's contest page (link below) for a second shot at winning the bundle!
To enter: - Make sure you like this post, and our page - Tag the person or people you want to play this bundle with in the comments and tell us why you chose them!
(1 contest winner will be selected at random, Contest runs 2/14 to 2/21, Midnight PST, US only)
Helloooooooo, Saturday. You know you're my favorite. I hope the other days of the week get jealous, but you're just so great. Time to put on some appropriate music and relax... and probably play some
Helloooooooo, Saturday. You know you're my favorite. I hope the other days of the week get jealous, but you're just so great. Time to put on some appropriate music and relax... and probably play some games, too. I plan on doing that as well. But, before I go do that, I gotta make sure the people get the gaming reviews I know they so desperately desire.
This week, we have: Go Nuts for Donuts, Loot N Shoot, London, Centipede, Stellium, DropMix, Cursed Court, Einstein, Peptide, Empires: Age of Discovery, Test of Honour Ronin, Photosynthesis, and Fast Forward series (Fear, Fortress, Flee).
Ah the donut. A beautiful ring of delicious dough and sugar. The donut is a miraculous dessert that comes in so many flavors. Will we find Go Nuts for Donuts from GameWright Games just as irresistible or will this cute filler game leave a bad taste in your mouth like an old jelly filled donut?
London takes place in the years following the Great Fire which decimated much of the older parts of London. Players are tasked with rebuilding the city and stemming the rising tide of poverty that comes with a rapidly developing city.
Since this is an asymmetrical game, the Gnome and Centipede player’s set-up and turns will be different. Once set-up is complete, play begins with the Gnome player with two phases:
1. Refresh the Dice Pool: If there’s only 1 die left you re-roll all dice.
2. Activate 1 Die: Choose 1 die and take all actions listed on the die, then move that die out of the die pool.
The game board is comprised of six rotating disks held together with a cardboard boundary. Marbles drawn from a bag represent the astronomical objects placed on one of seven spaces on each disc. Objective cards are also set up beside the board that shows the configurations of colors of marbles required for scoring points.
There are actually three different ways to play DropMix, the most addicting of which is Freestyle. No rules, no challenges, just play cards and create awesome mixes (hopefully). How does it work? The DropMix board connects to your mobile device (phone or tablet) and uses a free app.
The intrigues and scandals of the realm’s greater nobility are a subject of fixation, and even obsession, for the entire kingdom. Most especially for the minor nobility, whose fortunes can be elevated — or shattered — by what happens at court.
In Cursed Court, you must consider both public and hidden information, some of the latter shared among different pairs of players, when wagering your limited influence in each season of the year. As the machinations of the nine key nobles are progressively revealed, your fortunes rise and fall. After three years, a winner is crowned.
As Albert Einstein transcended science and became a recognizable figure around the world, so the game Einstein focuses on simple rules and quick playability, an accessible strategy game for gamers and non-gamers alike.
Peptide is an open-drafting card game with resource management elements. Basically, players compete to link amino acids side-by-side, forming what’s called a Peptide Chain (in biology, this process is called RNA Translation). In order to do so, players must first select from a number of available open-drafted face up cards, which in the game represent cellular organelles. Each organelle rewards players with either molecular resources or cellular actions. Final scores are based upon the types of amino acids in your Peptide Chain, and the player with the most points at the end of the game wins!
It would appear that we at Polyhedron Collider are a shower of dirty liars and hypocrites. "What is the reason for this confession?" you may ask. It seems that we may have made the statement on an earlier podcast that “it’s not all about the bling”. Whilst true, my track record on this sort of thing isn’t exactly exemplary as I’ve got a growing number of games in my collection with more shinies than Malcolm Reynolds after having Serenity diamond-encrusted - one of which is Empires: Age of Discovery, a hefty Worker Placement/Area Control game from Eagle-Gryphon.
You are in charge of a species of tree (or you are the trees, however you want to look at it) and it’s your job to get as much energy from the sun as you can so that your trees can grow, thrive, produce seedlings for the next generation, and ultimately end their life cycle as strong, healthy trees. Succeeding at this means, inevitably, weakening the other trees in the forest, but such is the circle of life. The strong survive, the weak become mulch.
Fast Forward is a new series of games from Friedemann Friese that do not come with rulebooks. Instead, the games in the Fast Forward series are sorted decks of 90 cards each, and the rules of each game are discovered during play. The Fast Forward games also use Friese’s Fable System, introduced in Fabled Fruit, which evolves the gameplay from one game to another but whose components are fully resettable.
The series was launched with three games–Fear, Fortress, and Flee–and each game is stand-alone, yet it makes sense to review them together. For one thing, part of the fun of each game is discovering it as you go, so I have to be vague on some details to avoid spoilers. And for another thing, the system works pretty similarly in each game.
As the first month of the year comes to a close, it's good to look forward to what the rest of the year will be like. How many of your resolutions have you managed to keep? Blue Orange is looking to m
As the first month of the year comes to a close, it's good to look forward to what the rest of the year will be like. How many of your resolutions have you managed to keep? Blue Orange is looking to make 2018 a great one, and they've resolved to have a bunch of game releases. But what sorts of things will there be? Glad you asked! Because they're here to show their plans.
From the preview:
It’s a new year, and you know what that means- new games! This year we are excited to be publishing a diverse lineup that includes high-energy dexterity races, adorable cooperative games (a Blue Orange first!), playfully packaged smaller games, and unique brain teasers. All-in-all we’re adding a whopping 16 new titles to our catalog! You’ll be glad to know they align with everything you’d expect from Blue Orange: easy to learn, fun to play, and engaging for a wide range of ages. We are launching all of these at New York Toy Fair on February 17th, and you will be able to find them in stores and online come early spring.
It's Saturday. Usually, that would mean gaming. But Friday meant gaming for me, as a friend came over after work and we played some Guild Ball, Bunny Kingdom, and Apotheca. Great way to spend a Friday
It's Saturday. Usually, that would mean gaming. But Friday meant gaming for me, as a friend came over after work and we played some Guild Ball, Bunny Kingdom, and Apotheca. Great way to spend a Friday. So, what am I up to Saturday? Well, I'm in the CMON Offices, helping pack orders for the holiday sale. Yeah, seems people loved those deep cuts. And since I feel partially responsible (as the one they tasked with actually changing the prices on all those things), I felt it only right to help pack everything up. But while I get orders together, I know you're here for a heaping helping of reviews. Heaping helping because we didn't have a Roundup last week, due to the holiday.
So, this week we've got: Near and Far, Queendomino, The Oregon Trail: Hunt for Food, Dog Might Games Traveler Dice Tower, Campy Creatures, Camel Up, A Game of Thrones Card Game, Colt Express, Truth Bombs, Ex Libris, Star Trek: 5-Year Mission, Slide Blast, Happy Salmon, DownForce, Smash Up iOS, Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time, Ink Monsters, The Quest for El Dorado, Reef Route, Crabs, Werewords, Fog of Love, Museum Heist, Crosstalk, Potato Pirates, Tulip bubble, The Chameleon, Ulm, Asset Drop Subscription Box, Tortuga 1667, Dwar7s Fall, The Expanse, Tokyo Highway, and Ulock!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at The Oregon Trail Hunt for Food the card game. This is an expansion based off The Oregon Trail card game released last year and overly popular Target store purchase. Both of these are exclusive to Target and I do recommend picking them up (if you can find them). Each game has a different feel and that is what I like best about this expansion. It offers another type of experience that can be enjoyed as a stand alone or add-in to the original.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at the new DOG MIGHT Traveler Dice Tower. This thing is pretty cool and hold up to 20 dice while allowing for 7 dive to be rolled all at once. It offers a back carving in the wood and a lazer engraved image in the front. You can choose from up to 20 different different woods/finishes and its on kickstarter doing very well right now! It has super small form factor for a dice tower and is a great add on to the Component Collector if you already have that.
In this video I will teach you how to play including: Setup, the different phases of the game and how they work, player turns, and final scoring. I will also give you my thoughts and opinions on the game, and would love to hear yours.
Campy Creatures is a love letter to the 1950’s monster movies played out as a deduction card game. You’ll be playing as a mad scientist on his devilish mission to collect mere mortals for your zany experiments. Of course, you’re not going to put yourself in danger, so you'll instead send one of nine different monsters to capture innocent engineers, teenagers and archaeologists.
Camel Up is a fun, fast paced racing game for the whole family. It has won numerous awards since it’s release in 2014; blending simple to understand gameplay with the perfect mix of strategy and luck, all rolled into the unique theme of camel racing.
Players control a set of camels racing around a track in the desert with coloured dice, betting on the camels as they go. Each camel has its own dice of the same colour that controls how many spaces forward it moves each time it is rolled. There are rewards for predicting the winner of each leg and the overall winner and loser of the entire race, with the person who has collected the most prize money at the end of the race becoming the winner.
A Game of Thrones is an advanced strategy game for 3-6 players designed by Christian T Peterson, the creator of the legendary Twilight Imperium and founder of Fantasy Flight Games.
The game is set on the island of Westeros, where each player takes on the role of one of the six Great Houses who inhabit the island at the start of the story. Over the course of ten game rounds, each player will attempt to gain control of the most castles and strongholds to cement their claim as holder of The Iron Throne, and subsequently ruler of Westeros.
Hold on to yer’ hats and climb aboard the Colt Express for a rootin’ tootin’ robbery ride and the chance to bag some serious loot. Colt Express is a turn-based family board game that puts you in the shoes of a Wild West Bandit looking to rob a train. Using cards from your hand, you take it in turns perform actions that will help you pilfer the most loot before your rival bandits get there first.
The game is designed for 2-6 players and features not only one of the best “boards” I have played on but also some of the most genuinely fun moments in my board-gaming career. The game table is comprised of a locomotive at the front of the train and then train carriages equal to the number of the players in the game, plus one.
A great party game for me involves learning some embarrassing truths about my friends and being able to taunt them for it, in a friendly well-meaning way of course. I got my hands on Big Potato games’ new party game ‘Truth Bombs’ and assembled the Playopolis team for a few games this week.
Ex Libris is a game about being a librarian, which at first may seem a bit monotonous, but given your library is set in a fictional town, where gnomes, goblins and mummies reside it is anything but dull. Add in one of the most anal library inspectors you will ever meet and hundreds of different books, and you have something a bit special.
As a self-confessed bookaholic I was excited to get my hands on a copy of Ex Libris to play and review. Published by Renegade Game Studios and designed by Adam P. McIver, Ex Libris was first debuted at the 2017 GenCon and generated a great deal of hype.
Games that are attached to a well know Intellectual Properties can be a bit hit and miss. What you tend to find is that many of these games rely heavily on the IP to drive sales (I’m looking at you, every TV/film version of monopoly) because the core gameplay isn’t all that great or different. Occasionally though, a games mechanics and its theme go together like bread and butter, with each element complimenting the other and providing a greater experience for players as a result. Is Star Trek: 5-Year Mission a shameless money grab or can it boldly go where no man has gone before?
After a little bit of time off, we are back with another edition of Parental Guidance. If you haven’t read any of our past articles, the goal of this series is to help you find games to play with your family and friends outside of the usual gateway games (which you are already probably sick of). Once again we are going to take a look at three board games I chose to play with my parents during our latest gaming session. For these reviews, I’ll provide a quick summary of the game, followed by why I thought it would be a good choice for my non-gamer parents. My mother will then comment on what she thought of the game.
On one side of the coin, Near and Far is a game about equipping an adventuring party by visiting various buildings in town. On the other side, players make choices about which locations outside of town to visit and, possibly, have adventures requiring heroic choices. The results of these and the placement of camps deliver journey points, the victory currency of the game.
The gameplay contained in Smash Up relies on a multitude of half-decks of cards, each with a theme (pirates, aliens, zombies, wizards, etc…).Each player makes a deck of cards from two different themes. The goal is for a player to take control of bases, which are worth a varying number of points, and the player with the most strength at the base when the threshold is reached, wins it. On a turn, a player can play 1 minion card to a base and 1 action card. Usually, players are trying to play cards with abilities to give them higher strength, play more minions, or disrupt other players. Once a player manages to get 15 points from winning bases, the game is over and highest points wins.
The goal in Professor Evil is to rescue 4 treasures before the Professor can lock enough away. Each player will get to control a unique character, each of which specializes in a specific area of the game (movement, locks, etc…). Once the board is seeded with switches and treasures, you are ready to begin.
Ink Monsters is played over a series of rounds. Each round, a 12-card circular layout of monster cards is placed on the table with the pen card above one of the monsters. Every player also has a hand of 3 action cards.
Every turn, players may play an action card to manipulate the movement of the pen card and draw a replacement. Then, they MUST take the card located under the pen. Once they do this, the pen moves to the next monster.
One of the most common ways people sum up a game (and indeed the same way Board Game Quest does it) is to mention the primary mechanisms in a game. For example, a press-your-luck, dice rolling game might immediately conjure visions of Yahtzee and other derivative games. Unfortunately, this can also have the effect of turning noses in the air when a particular mechanism is mentioned.
This deserves mentioning because the game reviewed here has two of the mechanisms some gamers love to hate. The Quest for El Dorado is a deck building race game set in the wilds of a South American jungle. Two to four players will be acquiring cards representing useful resources or personalities and use them to navigate the various terrain types.
There are some games that kids somehow become familiar with by the time they are about three years old. Tag, and all of its varieties, is one of those. At my son’s preschool they play a somewhat modified game of tag called Sharks & Minnows, which is basically tag where you try to be the last minnow standing.
Reef Route might as well be Sharks & Minnows: The Board Game. It plays 2-4 players, aged 5 and up, in about 15 minutes.
Crabs is a hand management card game for three to five players. Players are catching, raising, and binding crabs to fulfill contracts and get valuable crabs. The player with the most points after the points threshold is met wins.
Werewords is a social deduction guessing game for four to ten players. Players are members of a village on either the villager team or the werewolf team, trying to either guess the magic word or prevent it from being guessed, respectively. The team that reaches their goal without being discovered by the other team is the winner.
To begin, mix together the mayor card, a werewolf card, and the seer card, plus villager cards to equal the number of players +1, then deal one card to each player, placing one card face-down in the center of the table. The player who receives the mayor card receives the Yes/No, Maybe, So Close, and Correct tokens, takes the face-down role from the center of the table, and starts the app.
Fog of Love is a card-based “storytelling” game that attempts to replicate the experience of falling in (and sometimes out of) love with a partner. There are the usual butterflies of excitement at first, followed by the drama later. (Dealing with the in-laws, anyone?) I’m not going to try to explain every rule and phase of the game. It’s best understood as more of a story. The mechanics support the story, but it’s easier to wrap your head around it if you see what the game is trying to achieve.
Your goal is to satisfy your character’s destiny. You begin the game with the same number and type of destinies in hand as your partner. During the game you will gradually secretly discard destinies until you have only one left. This will be the one you must achieve at the finale in order to win. (More on that in a minute.)
The goal of Museum Heist is to claim 3 artifacts. Each round, a group of 7 thieves pursues 1 piece of artwork, but only one player will be able to claim it.
At the start of a round, each player secretly chooses one of the 7 thieves, placing a corresponding card facedown in front of them. No one knows who you chose, and you don’t know who others chose, and it’s entirely possible two or more players chose the same thief.
CrossTalk is the party game of subtle conversation in which two teams race to guess secret keywords. Each round, teams select a clue-giver, and those clue-givers are given knowledge of the same secret keyword. The goal of the clue-givers is to help their teammates guess this keyword before the other team.
Roast, mash, or fry your opponents and send them down to Davy Jones’ locker — but before you can reign terror on the high seas, you have to first master the art of potato war. Use programming concepts such as functions, loops, and conditionals to fortify your attacks. If that’s not enough, you could just loot and hijack your way to victory by saving Potato King from the deadlock of doom.
When in need, summon the Kraken to your aid and deny everything…
In 1637, the tulip craze fuelled one of the first speculative investment bubbles. Coveted tulip varieties led to skyrocketing prices with tulip bulbs costing more than houses in Amsterdam. Then just as suddenly as it started, the bubble burst when investors could no longer afford even the cheapest bulbs, leaving economic turmoil.
In Tulip Bubble, players buy and sell on a fluctuating market, trying to earn the most guilders. The game flow includes a preparation phase, buying phase, and selling phase, with these phases recurring until the bubble collapses or someone manages to outwit the markets by purchasing a black tulip for 120 guilders before that collapse occurs.
Ulm is at its heyday. The construction of the Ulm cathedral has not yet been completed, but the city is already wealthy and prestigious. In Ulm, players try to expand their spheres of influence and to make optimal use of the hustle and bustle on the marketplace around the cathedral.
I recently ran a news item about a brand new subscription box service – Asset Drop. Andy from Asset Drop very kindly offered me the November box to review – here are my thoughts…
I must admit, I did rather enjoy The Curse of the Black Pearl – Captain Jack running around the Caribbean drunk and sunburned was an entertaining film that refreshed the way we looked at pirates. Even if it was responsible for a million poor attempts at dreadlocks from Hallowe’en partygoers from then on.
I say refreshed – we’ve always loved pirates and it seems that Façade Games agrees as their most recent game, Tortuga 1667, is centred around the loveable, survy-ridden rogues as they plunder a galleon for more booty than a Beyonce music video.
The initial reaction to Tortuga 1667 is that it is gorgeous. Even down to the fake book that it’s stored in and the roll out map you play on. It’s such a lovely looking game that you can’t help but like it right from the off.
I think I must secretly be a Dwarf. At 175 cm tall, it’s hard to justify that statement, but I have a beard, I don’t mind being underground, I like large stone structures, I enjoy drinking ale and I listen to loud music. So, I’m going with it. This kinship I’ve just made up is going to be used to thinly explain why I find Dwarfs’ Fall from Vesuvius Media so appealing, at least the idea of it anyway.
Actually, there’s a few reasons why I backed Dwarfs’ Fall on Kickstarter and it wasn’t entirely based on my affinity for rock. The artwork is very whimsical and I love its cartoon style. It’s cute and serious at the same time. There is the other hefty reason that it is in fact a worker placement, so of course I gave it a looksee being the Euro-lover here are Collider Towers.
It's the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Man... my grocery list was 2x as long as usual. I got 2 turkeys, some sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, dressing, carrots, and ingredients to ma
It's the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Man... my grocery list was 2x as long as usual. I got 2 turkeys, some sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, dressing, carrots, and ingredients to make 2 pumpkin pies. ... I, uh... kinda take Thanksgiving seriously. My fridge is rather full. But before we get there, we've gotta get you those reviews I know you so desperately desire.
This week we have: Hotshots, Alien Artifacts, America, Noxford, Twilight Imperium, Rhein: River Trade, Queendomino, Exit the Game Wave 2, Folklore: The Affliction, and The Expanse.
The game board is made up of 18 randomly placed tiles, each of which has a specific scorch limit that players must be aware of. To combat the fires, each player will control a firefighter with a special ability.
Alien Artifacts is card driven 4x game (eXplore, eXploit, eXpand and eXterminate). Players manage their hand of resource cards to build a vast fleet of ships, develop fantastic new technologies, and discover far away worlds (well, they are on the table in front of you, so they aren’t THAT far away, but I am trying to stick to the space theme).
After plopping all the components out of the box and laying out the board, setup is pretty much complete. Players will take turns guessing answers to the current topic shown on a variety of subject cards which sit in a box hiding the answers at the bottom of the cards. Guessing tokens record the players answers.
If players guess the exact right answer out of State, Year, and Number types of answers, they earn 7 points. Any answers adjacent to the correct answer get 3 points. Players can also gain points from guessing that no player has a correct answer. Turn order rotates so everyone will have a chance to guess early.
So there are no thematic stakes at play in Noxford. Rather, in this simple design you head a seedy crime syndicate looking to muscle in on turf throughout the ever evolving city of Noxford. And muscle others out. All with steampunk card art. If you can outmaneuver your opposing bosses by deploying henchmen around key districts, the town will soon be eating from your hand!
Twilight Imperium is an epic 4x strategy game (well, technically 3x but let’s not quibble over details) wherein players compete to expand their galactic empire, conquer planets, exert their influence, and ultimately prove the worth of their people to rule the galaxy from the throne on Mecatol Rex.
Players take on the role of the head of a freight company that moves goods to cities along the Rhine. You’ll take orders that designate which city to deliver the containers and how long you have to do it. You, along with the other players, will charter planes, trains and ships along with your own personal fleet of trucks to deliver these goods and collect money on the contracts. Whoever can earn the most capital by the game’s end is the winner.
To begin each round, players take turns selecting an order card from the market row. Each card is a contract that dictates where you promise to deliver goods and how long you have to do so. When taking a card, you’ll put a number of time markers on it as indicated by the card you choose.
In this video you can find out my spoiler free thoughts on Exit the game Wave 2 by Kosmos. (Wave 2 is The Forbidden Castle, The Forgotten Island and the Polar Station)
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Folklore the Affliction a newish game from Greenbrier Games and its on its second printing in kickstarter right now! so check out the link below to get in on that. Man, I go on for a while on this one - over an hour actually! this really is a great game and a fantastic implementation of your classic RPG but in a board game style and approach. It has a ton of content and expansions already available. Please look into this one and consider your options as I am not sure we will see this one in retail and you may only be able to get it through kickstarter and Con's. Excellent game!
For those who don’t know, the story of The Expanse is set in our solar system some two hundred years in the future. Four political entities struggle for control, and comprise the playable factions:
the United Nations of Earth, the technologically advanced Martian Congressional Republic, the oppressed asteroid belt miners of the Outer Planets Alliance, and the mysterious ProtoGen Corporation.
It’s an interplanetary cold war that threatens to become hot at any moment, which is why it’s not surprising that the game is very much reminiscent of GMT’s classic Twilight Struggle (a fantastic game about U.S.-Soviet conflict from 1945-1989). Just like that game, the emphasis in The Expanse is on subterfuge and intrigue rather than open conflict, and high player bluff skills are definitely rewarded.
Hellooooo Saturday!And what do we do on Saturdays? (We wear pink!) That's Wednesdays. No, on Saturdays we look at some reviews. So let's get to it.Today we have: That's a Question, Seikatsu, Through t
Hellooooo Saturday! And what do we do on Saturdays? (We wear pink!) That's Wednesdays. No, on Saturdays we look at some reviews. So let's get to it.
Today we have: That's a Question, Seikatsu, Through the Ages App, Between Two Cities: Capitals, Storm Hollow, Whistle Stop, Rhino Hero: Super Battle, SpyNet, King Frog, Paramedics: Clear, Trickster: Champions of Time, and Zero Down.
Seikatsu is a tile-laying game in which you are trying to match types of birds to score instantly. And match the flowers on the tiles for end game scoring.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Storm Hollow the adventure Storyboard game. There is a ton of content in this system and I am impressed with its smooth mechanics, simple game play, and high level of quality components. It really is a fantastic gaming system for the family and I highly recommend this if you are a RPG'er or have considered getting into something like this with the family. All fairy-tails and stories from this realm are a reality in Storm Hollow. You will go on awesome magical adventures both fun to tell, as the game master, or experience as a player. The introduction is quick for the game master and players will be ready to play and start quickly. It also features a co-op board game experience as well - so if you simply want to set the adventure story mode aside and play a board game like experience, you can do that as well.
The goal in Rhino Hero: Super Battle is to get your hero to the highest level of the communal tower.
Each turn, you choose a floor card from your hand that determines which and how many wall cards you will use (short or tall) to support the floor card. The walls are placed on the tower (either on the base level or on previously played floors) with the floor on top of them. If the floor shows a monkey, you have to hang a spider monkey from the floor card.
SpyNet is a very straightforward game, but with a card draw twist that adds some intrigue. Every player starts with a hand of one card. In the center of the table are the main deck and three piles of cards. On each turn, a player may “Recruit” by drawing cards or “Deploy” by playing cards.
Colored lily pad tokens for three sections divided by wild lily pads are placed in a circle. The bulging eye player frog disks are placed on starting lily pads. Players also receive a hand of five mosquito cards numbered 1 through 5.
Each turn, players will simultaneously play a card from their hand. The lowest numbered mosquito card allows that player to move first, hopping their frog a number of spaces equal to the number they played. Spaces occupied by other frogs don’t count.
The goal of Paramedics: Clear! is to not only save lives, but to save more than your fellow Paramedics. That’s right, this was surprisingly a competitive game.
Trickster: Champions of Time comes with 14 different character cards, each illustrated wonderfully by Beth Sobel. Each character has a card in each of the 8 colors in the game and 7 characters are chosen for each game.
Zero Down is a set collection/hand management card game for two to five players. Players try to collect sets of the same number or same color to score the fewest points. The player with the fewest points wins.
Hey everyone. We've made it around to another weekend. I said I was going to probably be doing some baking. Well, I've got some magic cookie bars cooling right now. I love these things... probably too
Hey everyone. We've made it around to another weekend. I said I was going to probably be doing some baking. Well, I've got some magic cookie bars cooling right now. I love these things... probably too much... *looks at my stomach* ... definitely too much. But issues with my waistline aside, I hope you're having a good weekend so far. I'm sure many of you are out gaming, which is awesome. But if you're stopping by here, I know it's because you want to check out those gaming reviews I know you all so desperately desire.
So, as I sip on a Pineapple Crush and wait for these bars to finish cooling, today we have: The Walking Dead: All Out War, Exit the Game, Legendary: X-Men Expansion, Orleans, Quantum, Race for the Galaxy App, First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet, Serengeti, Stone Age, Maze Racers, Purrrlock Holmes: Furriarty's Trail, Memoarrr!, The Goonies Adventure Card Game, Photosynthesis, Incantris, Hafid's Grand Bazaar, Ascension X: War of Shadows, Fate of the Elder Gods, and The Champion of the Wild.
The Walking Dead: All Out War is a skirmish game that pits your survivors against your opponent’s and you both must deal with hordes of zombies. It can be played as a cooperative or solo board game too.
X-Men is a big box expansion for Marvel Legendary the Deckbuilding Game. It features heroes and villains from the X-Men comics and adds some new mechanics to the Marvel Legendary series.
Orleans is a bag-building and worker placement board game. You must increase your followers to take more actions, get board position and gain more VPs.
Frankly, this section is almost unnecessary for Maze Racers. You can probably figure out what you need to do by looking at the back of the box, which is one reason why Maze Racers works so well. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
A starting block is placed in one agreed upon quadrant of the board, while the goal is placed in another. Say go and each player tries to build a maze as quickly and creatively as possible. The walls are rigid foam with a magnet on the bottom. As everyone should be familiar with what a maze is, teaching the game takes seconds. The only rule is that the maze has to be possible to complete. A spacer stick is included for checking your work.
In Purrrlock Holmes, each player will have a suspect card in front of them that displays the suspect and time of the crime they are trying to solve. You cannot see your own suspect card and must perform investigation actions to solve the crime.
When you investigate, you play one of the 4 suspect cards in your hand. Other players will tell you if it is a lead or a dead end. If the suspect on the card matches your suspect, it is always a lead. Alternately, if the time on the card is within an hour of the time your crime was committed it is also a lead. Everything else is a dead end.
Players are tasked with moving the three potion ingredients necessary to the bubbling cauldron at the center of the circular game board. The issue is that you don’t know which ingredient is in each of the potion bottles at the start of the game. Each turn, players will roll the set action dice to determine what they will do on their turn.
Players may be able to move one of the potion bottles closer to the center, move the Wizard looking to block your path or send bottles back, place a path blocker on one of the six paths, or roll the magic dice.
Being a family weight game, Memoarrr! is about as easy to learn as you might expect. The deck of cards in Memoarrr! is comprised of 25 cards, each card containing one of 5 different backgrounds and one of 5 different characters. The 25 cards are randomly laid out in a face down grid, and the center card is replaced with the scoring cards.
Each player gets to look at 3 cards before the game begins. The first player then randomly flips over a card. The next player clockwise must then flip over a card that matches either the background or the character on the card the first player flipped.
As The Goonies is a family weight game, learning to play is fairly easy. Each player will control one of the famous Goonies characters, each of which has 2 special abilities.
Incantris is a wizard dueling/skirmish game that uses dice to settle the score. Unlike some games of this type, you are not required to build a deck or otherwise create your army/team in order to play. Simply choose your team of three wizards from the pre-made teams and start attacking each other! Each team has their own unique abilities and things they do “best,” so each one plays a little differently.
Merchants enter Hafid’s Grand Bazaar hoping to emerge from their commercial haggling the wealthiest trader. And a grand bazaar indeed it is. With five unique goods each in five different commodity types – from cut gems to goats to ore to carpets to olive oil – it’s a veritable medieval Wal-Mart! You accumulate goods through bidding for caravan loads, negotiating with your competitors and with just a little outright luck. Okay, maybe more than a little.
In Ascension X, like previous games, you can play your entire hand without limitation, buying cards and fighting monsters in any order. Runes are used to buy cards, Strength to fight monsters, and you accrue Honor tokens to score points. A pool of 6 cards in the center of the table contains the monsters you’ll be fighting along with the heroes and constructs you’ll be adding to your deck.
In Fate of the Elder Gods, players take on the ever-maddening role of cults trying to summon ancient evil and herald the fall of mankind! Each cult is in competition to be first to summon their god, but they all must also repel intrepid investigators working to seal off the gate to beyond with Elder signs. Gather arcane artifacts, cast powerful spells, embrace the Dark Gift of your Elder God, and be first to hasten doom…before it’s too late!
It's a board game review cliché to say "if you like this kind of game, you'll like this game". It's a tired and lazy get-out clause for a reviewer, they can thoroughly dislike a game and then issue this kind of statement completely admonishing any form of reviewer responsibility while remaining pretty, positive and ever so cuddly. It is a phrase I detest, but trying to write a review of The Champion of the Wild while avoiding this statement is turning into the literal equivalent of a daytime charge across the minefield.
Blame Canada (Day), but it seems that the post got eaten by the system. It happens occasionally, but it's alright. We can rebuild it. We can make it stronger, faster, better... Or mostly the same but
Blame Canada (Day), but it seems that the post got eaten by the system. It happens occasionally, but it's alright. We can rebuild it. We can make it stronger, faster, better... Or mostly the same but with this new intro.
Anyway, this week we have: Werewords, Caverna: Cave vs Cave, Not Alone, Evolution: The Beginning, Black Hat, Big Bang 13.7, Kingdomino, Match Madness, Lady Richmond, Century: Spice Road, Homes: 2 Player Card Game, Coldwater Crown, Quadropolis, and This War Of Mine.
Evolution: The Beginning pits players’ species against each other as they adapt traits in order to consume the most food from the communal watering hole, or other species. At the end of the game, the player who has collected the most food throughout the game is the winner.
Player pawns on a board representing a computer network stand in for the computer access of players as they navigate through information systems. By winning card tricks, players can move their pawns through systems with the aim of staying on the most valuable spaces when scoring occurs at the end of a round. Players will gain points for cards in hand and the spaces their pawns occupy, however, the lowest score wins.
Players in Big Bang 13.7 (hereafter just referred to as Big Bang) take the role of galactic, supreme forces or gods (if you prefer). They shape the cosmos by playing hexagonal tiles representing stars, planets and other cosmological bodies. At the end of the game, players will score points by making sure tiles that match their objectives line up.
In Kingdomino, players are seeking to expand their kingdom over the course of the game. Each round, players will be drafting colored tiles, and adding them to their existing territory using a simple tile-laying mechanic. Scoring is based on the size of each area, multiplied by any crown symbols present.
Match Madness comes with rules for two modes of play. In Quick Play, each player gets a set of five puzzle blocks and a number of objective cards are placed face down in the middle of the table in a single stack. The top card is revealed and all players simultaneously race to arrange their blocks to match the card.
If you believe you have made a match, quickly grab the card and then all players will verify that you truly have a match. If so, keep the card and play continues as another card is revealed. If you made an error and your blocks do not match the card, you can no longer compete for it as the others continue to make a match.
Lady Richmond is an auction game for two to five players. Players are potential heirs to Lady Richmond, fighting for their inheritance at the auction block. The player with the most valuable assets at the end of the game wins.
Century: Spice Road is the first in a series of games that explores the history of each century with spice-trading as the theme for the first installment. In Century: Spice Road, players are caravan leaders who travel the famed silk road to deliver spices to the far reaches of the continent for fame and glory. Each turn, players perform one of four actions:
Establish a trade route (by taking a market card) Make a trade or harvest spices (by playing a card from hand) Fulfill a demand (by meeting a victory point card’s requirements and claiming it) Rest (by taking back into your hand all of the cards you’ve played) The last round is triggered once a player has claimed their fifth victory point card, then whoever has the most victory points wins.
In February 1895, London woke up to a loud bang. A large pillar of smoke showed that a bomb had exploded in the Houses of Parliament. Security forces were activated immediately and they arrested a suspicious young laborer near the area.
Mycroft Holmes, at the service of the crown, was commissioned to investigate the relationship of the young laborer with anarchist groups. He thinks it will be an easy task that he can do from the comfort of his armchair in the Diogenes Club — until he is informed of disturbing news; his younger brother Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, has been hired by the boy’s parents to prove the innocence of his son, who believes to be a scapegoat of a dark conspiracy.
Is that “victory” you taste in the salty air? You’ve secured your spot as a competitor in the world-renowned Coldwater Crown fishing tournament, and the contest has just begun! Will you be able to cast the right bait at the right time to reel-in the biggest fish? Will you be able to strategically balance your efforts at the different fishing locations to win the most trophies? Very little is certain on these frigid waters, but it’s guaranteed the fish will be biting!
Coldwater Crown is a fun and clever board game that captures the thrill of fishing in a tabletop experience. Created by acclaimed game designer Brian Suhre, it’s a game of strategic planning, angler’s intuition, and just the right amount of luck! Test your fishing expertise against up to three of your friends or hone your skills at the practice pond. You don’t have to be a master angler to win, but once your trophy count begins to stack up, you might just feel like one!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at This War Of Mine the Board Game! Based on a popular video game, This War Of Mine offers a rich RPG like game play with multiple games phases that take place over the course of a 24 hour period. Although it has aspects of a RPG - it is a true board game. The games offers "saving", which makes it easy to pick up and go after a session and then unpack and start game play right back up.
As you play through the game, you experience real life as it would be in this environment and the design is fantastic!!! This game is so much fun and really takes you on a journey. It's a BUY - 100% ! I could not recommend it more.
Hello Saturday! How are you? Is everything going well? Of course it is! It's Saturday!So, let's not wait around. Let's get right to the reviews so we can get back to it being Saturday. Personally, I'm
Hello Saturday! How are you? Is everything going well? Of course it is! It's Saturday!
So, let's not wait around. Let's get right to the reviews so we can get back to it being Saturday. Personally, I'm thinking of watching a movie and questioning Netflix's algorithms in what "more like this" really means...
Today we have: The Pirate Republic, Kingdomino, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Board Game - Shadows of the Past, Adrenaline, Ave Roma, Hero Realms, Food Truck Champion, Sorcerers' Skirmish, Carcassonne: Amazonas, Oceanos, The Flow of History, Citadels, Broken Legions, Haspelknecht, and GKR: Heavy Hitters.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Board Game - Shadows of the Past from IDW Publishing and Kevin Wilson. Man Kevin really made a fun game here and how could you go wrong with the TMNT theme! When I first heard this was coming and Kevin was the designer, I was instantly "in". This is the EPIC Works edition and is packed to the brim with everything you could want. I cant wait to see what they add to this system. I also have the new April O'Neil Hero pack coming out soon to retail.
this is the first in a two part series to unbox this massive game and then play through a few turns. So strap in and get ready to open up this epic game with Part I: The Opening!
Adrenaline is a first-person shooter in board game form. It is action-packed but requires good area control and resource management to win.
Adrenaline does a good job of mixing theme with tactics. On the surface it might look like a random shoot-em-up, but it has a solid Eurogame foundation.
I received Ave Roma in 2016 following the successful Kickstarter campaign and straight away I was impressed. It arrived promptly and looks great straight out of the box. Due to the Kickstarter, it includes a bunch of expansions which really do make the game very good value. A few nice touches to make the workers pillars instead of discs all adds to the appearance. But this is all so much finery – but very much keeping with the theme. Ave Roma is a victory points game based on a complex worker placement mechanism. Euro games have weights, and I’m not going to lie, Ave Roma is so heavy it could well have its own gravitational pull. There are upsides and downsides to this – the upside is that there’s lots of ways to win so it’s never too clear who’s in the best position at any one time. The downside is that learning the game is an absolute bitch.
Each player starts the game with an identical 10 card deck (unless you are playing with the hero packs) and share an 80 card market deck. During a player’s turn, they will be playing cards from their hand to either attack their opponent or purchase cards from the central market. If you’ve ever played a deck building game before (and especially if you’ve played Star Realms), the mechanics will be quite familiar. The goal in Hero Realms is to reduce your opponent’s life to zero.
In Food Truck Champion, each player is the owner of a food truck out to make a name for themselves. As the owner, you will be hiring staff, taking orders and preparing meals… all with the goal of earning awards and increasing your popularity.
As you complete orders, you will earn the right to expand different areas of your food truck, giving you much more flexibility. At the end of the game, the truck owner with the most popularity is the winner.
In Sorcerers’ Skirmish, players will take turns drawing, declaring, casting and resolving spell cards. Each sorcerer’s deck has identical elemental spells but how each player uses their deck is key. Aside from their spells, players should also use any other means to win. Players can count cards, bluff, use logic and hopefully have some luck on their side to be crowned the winner!
A boat race along a pre-Columbian Amazon is the setting for this version of Carcassonne. As players place tiles and use meeples to claim locations, they will also be moving a boat down the great Amazon river with the aim of scoring enough points from villages, tributaries, jungles with animals, and maintaining a lead in a river race.
In Oceanos, you’ll play as a submarine captain rushing out to explore the ocean for fun and profit.
You start with a basic submarine – a single periscope to find your way, a small aquarium to store fish specimens, a diver for treasure collection, and a little extra fuel.
The Flow of History is a card based game that has players guiding their respective civilizations from the agrarian age to the modern. Whoever has accumulated the most culture by game’s end will be the winner. But before learning how the game plays, it’s important to know a couple of things about the cards themselves.
There are six types of cards categorized by color. Whenever you gain a card you will add it to a stack in front of you arranged by type/color. Each card will have at least one production symbol on it as well as an effect written out in the middle. When a new card is placed over an existing one, it will overwrite the previous effect, but leave the production symbols showing.
Every player starts with a single card in their civilization and 4 resource tokens. The rest of the cards are placed in a deck arranged by ages. Cards are drawn off the deck and placed in the middle of the table to comprise the market. Players take turns taking a single action until the deck is depleted. Whoever has accumulated the most culture at this time will be the winner.
Citadels is ostensibly a city-building game because you earn points by building city districts, represented by cards. The goal is to have the most points when you or someone else builds eight districts (seven with 4-8 players in the new edition), triggering the last round of the game. You start with four of these and a couple gold. Each turn you either take two gold or draw two district cards, adding one of them to your hand. Normally, you may build one district each turn by paying the cost indicated on the card, which is also its point value. You can nab bonus points by building the maximum number of districts, owning at least one of the five different kinds of districts (noble, religious, trade, military and unique) and finally with certain unique district cards.
Broken Legions is a ‘warband’ style of skirmish game, so players will each need a warband of between 7 and 12 models a side. Since the game is set in a mythical Ancient Rome timeline, warbands consist of miniatures from the armies of the time: Imperial Rome, Gladiators, Barbarians, Dacians, Parthians, Argonauts (Greeks) and Cult of Set (Egyptians). Most of these miniatures you will find in any 28mm Ancient army that you may have to hand, or maybe one that has been lying in a corner unloved since its days of playing WAB?
It's the Saturday before Gen Con. A week from now we'll be shoulder-deep in the show.Of course, that means this weekend is full of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get ev
It's the Saturday before Gen Con. A week from now we'll be shoulder-deep in the show. Of course, that means this weekend is full of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get everything done before heading to Indy. But, even with all the brouhaha, there's time to bring you the reviews that you so desperately desire.
This week we have: Book of Nox Deluxe, Fishy Tactics, Agamemnon, Infinity Morat Rodoks, Tyrants of the Underdark, Scythe, Dungeon Busters, Dead of Winter: The Long Night, Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquistion Game, Vampire Hunters, Via Nebula, Antarctica, Titan Race, Agricola: Revised Edition, and Vikings on Board.
Scythe is the long-awaited and much-hyped 4X game from Stonemaier Games. The hefty box is packed with depth and a richly storied world. You will explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. And you will also be immersed in a story told in few words, and a world that is both beautiful and haunting.
Now, I like cake. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t. Cake is one of life’s fantastic luxuries. It’s never a bad time for cake and it goes with pretty much any meal, snack or beverage. It’s like the friend everyone has who is always up for a beer no matter what day of the week it is. And like that friend, you’ll always end up consuming far too much, feel sick and regret it the next day as your gut grows steadily larger. But you’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Assuming it still beats after troughing a mountain of chocolate fudge.
The hordes of the undead and creatures of the night definitely go in and out of popularity faster than global hyper colour t-shirts. It's seems like only yesterday that Vampires where the undead du jour, there was a brief spate of werewolf popularity, then non-threatening vampires and now zombies are bloody everywhere, shambling about the place trying to catch Pokémon.
During the course of the game, the players’ main goal is to construct their 5 buildings. To do so, the must not only harvest resources from the game board, but also create paths to bring them to their building sites. When a player constructs a building, they will earn both victory points and also gain an immediate power they can use.
Once a player has built their fifth building, the game ends and the player with the most victory points is the winner.
Antarctica is an area control game for two to four players that takes place in Antarctica, approximately when our planet’s natural resources run low (i.e. the near future). The object of the game, like 93% of all Euros, is to collect the most victory points (VPs) by the end of the game.
Titan Race pits up to 6 players against each other in an aggressive and dangerous race to the finish line. The first player to complete three laps and cross that finish line claims victory!
Agricola is worker placement resource management game for one to four players. Players are farmers who are building a sustainable farm out of meager resources. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.
Vikings on board combines elements of worker placement, area control, and action selection to create a game in which the object is to earn points by controlling valuable ships when they set sail, and placing bets on which clan will control a ship when it sails.
duuuuuuuuuuuuuun, duuuuuuuuuuuuun, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun! DUN! DUN!boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boomAh yes, Zarathustra couldn't've said it better, himself.It's
duuuuuuuuuuuuuun, duuuuuuuuuuuuun, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun! DUN! DUN! boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom Ah yes, Zarathustra couldn't've said it better, himself. It's Saturday. I hope yours is treating you well.
It's time once more to get you some opinions and insight into a bunch of games. Yes, it's our Review Roundup.
Today's articles feature: Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion, Between Two Cities, The End of the World RPG, Flick 'Em Up, 7 Wonders Duel, New York 1901, Toast, Card Caddy, Brass iPad Version, El Grande Big Box, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Infernal Relics, Zombies vs. Cheerleaders, and The Bloody Inn.
Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion is a re-implementation of another Fantasy Flight game called Cold War: CIA vs. KGB so you could say that the Star Wars theme is pasted on, I feel that it fits well enough with the mechanics, so this wasn’t an issue for me. SW: Empire vs.Rebellion is a blend of light deck building, hand management and variable powers. With the object of the game being the first person to 7 victory points, let’s take a look how it’s played.
Between Two Cities is a competitive but collaborative tile-laying game. You build two cities, one with your neighbors, and the lowest valued city that scores the most points wins.
Matt and Quinns are ready to flick one another up! Won't somebody stop them? Seriously we're not insured
This week we're looking at Flick 'em Up!, a beautiful new game of flicking bullets at one another that comes in a ruddy WOODEN BOX. But could anything replace our favourite dexterity game, Catacombs? Only one thing's for sure. This town ain't big enough for both of 'em.
Over the course of three ages, you complete wonders developing your civilization in the meantime. In the beginning of the game, both players have four wonder cards. Only seven wonders can be completed – it means that one of the players will fail to complete all their wonders.
Like the parent game, 7 Wonders Duel is based on card play. The difference is that you don’t draft cards from various hands of cards but take them from a display of face-down and face-up cards.
The 20th century begins – this was the time New York got its famous skyline. You are pursuing a career in real estate while skyscrapers are on everyone’s minds. You need to build taller and bigger!
Two to four players can enjoy constructing skyscrapers in this city-building family board game. In order to win, you need to gain control of New York streets (by building skyscrapers, of course) and accomplish challenge objectives.
This card-drawing city-building game provides you with quite a strong mental challenge – there is something to rack your brains over solving the puzzle of the Big Apple.
Cheers. Good health. Skol. Iechyd da. Every language has the Toast, when you raise your glass, wish someone the best and drink your beverage. But what if you don't actually wish good health on the drinker, what if you want the drinker to die? Then the best option of course is to slip some poison into your enemy's cup. The problem is someone else will no doubt be looking to poison you, so you best keep an eye on which cup has the poison, and which has the antidote. Is it me, or does this wine taste faintly of almonds?
The Card Caddy is designed mainly for traditional playing cards but can easily be appropriated for your favourite expandable card game deck. It's made up of two injection moulded shells that slot together to form a hard plastic box for your cards and there's even a little window allowing you to quickly glance at what's inside
In Brass, players are trying to earn their way as industrialists during the English industrial revolution. The game is played over two eras: the canal phase and the rail phase.
During the game, players will be using a hand of cards to drive their actions which include: building industry (Cotton Mills, Coal Mines, Steel Mills, Ports, and Shipyards), building canals or rails (depending on the era), developing their own industries, selling cotton (either to the foreign markets or to local ports), or taking loans.
Players score victory points for building connections and making deals with their industries. The goal is to have the most victory points after the second round of scoring. Sounds complex? It is, but it’s also a really refined game.
El Grande is an area control/area majority game, designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich. It was originally released in 1995, re-released as a 10th anniversary set in 2006 and re-released again in 2015 in a Big Box configuration for its 20th anniversary. It supports 2 to 5 players ages 13 and up, and plays in about 90 minutes (for the base game).
The life of a superhero never lets up. Just when you’ve cleaned out one city and banished all your supervillains to prison, the asylum, the void, wherever – another round of baddies show up with their own nefarious plans.
Infernal Relics is an expansion to Sentinels of the Multiverse (now packaged with Rook City) that adds new heroes, new villains, and new environments.
Zombies vs. Cheerleaders is a two-player, asymmetrical card game based on the comic book series of the same name. One player takes the side of the cheerleaders while the other plays the zombies. The goal of the game is to either destroy all of the zombies (cheerleader player) or devour one cheerleader (zombie player).
The Bloody Inn casts you as an innkeeper of questionable morals trying to earn as much money as possible.. Rather than earning an honest wage, you’ve decided that murder and theft are more your style. It’s certainly more lucrative. Your plan is to appeal to the darker side of some your guests to help you murder the other guests, dispose of the bodies, and take their money while eluding police suspicion. Your actions may be reprehensible, but no one can say you didn’t work hard for your wealth.
Hey everyone. I hope those of you that celebrated it had a good Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I still hope you had a kick-ass Friday. As for today, I hope you're having a great Feast of
Hey everyone. I hope those of you that celebrated it had a good Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I still hope you had a kick-ass Friday. As for today, I hope you're having a great Feast of St. Stephen. Or, again, if you don't celebrate such, I hope you're having a kick-ass Saturday. Being Saturday, it's time to get you some reviews.
Today's offerings include: Food Chain Magnate, Fleet Wharfside, Tumult Royal, Tail Feathers, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, New York 1901, Mission: Red Planet, Orleans, Flick 'em Up, The Bloody Inn, Tide of Iron: Stalingrad, VS System 2PCG, and Le Havre - The Inland Port.
Your goal is to become the most successful developer in all of New York. You want to build the most buildings and largest skyscrapers which will earn you victory points. You will do this by placing your building tiles on vacant lots and then demolishing and upgrading those buildings as the game progresses. You begin with a single starter property. Everything else you must earn on your own.
In Mission: Red Planet you head up a mining company exploiting the fourth rock from the sun. Given its colorful nickname, and the year 1888, you’d think the main ore in demand would be iron. Alas, not so! Instead, scientists have discovered two new resources – sylvanite and celerium – and of course these minerals will revolutionize our own world. As if using steam power to reach Mars wasn’t amazing enough! Of course, this is no altruistic endeavor for the good of humanity, but one of venture capitalism for the profit of your investors. And if you’re going to beat your competitors to these valuable resources, you’ll need to move boldly and employ some dastardly cunning.
Orleans was published in 2014 by dlp games. The game was designed by Reiner Stockhausen and illustrated by Klemens Franz, famous for his illustrations in such games as Agricola and Le Havre.
Flick ’em Up! was published in 2015 by Pretzel Games. It was designed by Gaëtan Beaujannot and Jean Yves Monpertuis. Illustrations in the game were done by Marie-Elaine Bérubé, Philippe Guérin, and Chris Quilliams.
That’s the rather unique theme to The Bloody Inn, a new card game designed by Nicholas Robert. In The Bloody Inn, players take on the role of the proprietors of the inn, trying to earn some Francs through any means necessary. Does this rather dark theme make for an entertaining game? Time to find out!
The Bloody Inn is an economic and hand management card game for 2-4 players that takes about 45 minutes to play. In our experience, The Bloody Inn plays best with 4 players.
When I reviewed the new version of Tide of Iron from 1A games, I found the game to have great components, unique scenarios, and solid mechanics that blended well together to create a memorable tactical war game experience.
It isn’t a game for the general gaming audience, rather a game that is best enjoyed over and over again with the same people. Even though there are plenty of scenarios in the box and online, players could eventually grow tired of playing as American and German forces across northwestern Europe.
Fear not! There are four expansions you can purchase that add new locations and Soviet and British troops to your arsenal. Today, we will be looking at one of those expansions, Tide of Iron: Stalingrad. This expansion allows players to battle as either Soviet or German troops in urban warfare. Let’s get into what this expansion brings to see if it is worthy of adding to your war gaming experience with Tide of Iron.
The Inland Port is a shorter, two-player version of La Havre. The Inland Port App lets you play against the AI, online with friends or a pass and play game.
If you're a regular reader, I'm sure you've figured out that my favorite day of the week is Saturday. And, I mean, it's gaming day. What's not to love about it? Hopefully you've found some gaming to b
If you're a regular reader, I'm sure you've figured out that my favorite day of the week is Saturday. And, I mean, it's gaming day. What's not to love about it? Hopefully you've found some gaming to be had.
And if you're looking for a new game, I've got just the post for you. Get a look at a game before you buy it and see what others are saying about it in our Review Roundup.
This week's Reviews/Previews include: Plastic Soldier Company's 45mm anti-tank gun set, Eaten By Zombies, Flip City, The Networks, Fate of Akalon: Tribes, Viceroy, Samurai, Imperial Assault, Metro 2033: Breakthrough, Less, Longhorn, and Dark Seas.
Eaten by Zombies! is a game designed by Max Holliday, originally published by Mayday Games. Artwork is by Max Holliday and John Huerta. Eaten By Zombies! Burn it Down Expansion is scheduled to launch on Kickstarter soon, licensed by Ginger Ale Games. Using the rubric linked below, we will discuss thoughts on the game so you can find out if it is the right purchase for you.
Flip City is a game designed by Chen Zhifan, published by Tasty Minstrel Games. Artwork is by Adam P. McIver. Using the rubric linked below, we will discuss thoughts on the game so you can find out if it is the right purchase for you.
The Networks is a game designed by Gil Hova, published by Formal Ferret Games. Artwork is by Heiko Günther and Travis Kinchy. The Networks is scheduled to launch on Kickstarter on September 1, 2015. Using the rubric linked below, we will discuss thoughts on the game so you can tell if it is the right purchase for you.
Fate Of Akalon: Tribes is a game designed by Robert Nicaise, published by Foursight Games. Artwork is uncredited on BoardGameGeek. The Fate Of Akalon: Tribes campaign launched this week on Kickstarter. Using the rubric linked below, we will discuss thoughts on the game so you can find out if it is the right purchase for you.
You start Viceroy with two gems of each color, four character cards and two law cards. There are four colors of gems; red, green, blue and yellow. You keep two of the cards, discard the other two and return two gems to the supply.
Fantasy Flight’s new edition of 1998 Reiner Knizia classic Samurai arrives in the next few months. Now, this site has traditionally poked fun at Knizia, which is to say we’re still waiting on the proof that he isn’t some kind of extra-terrestrial. The man has four hundred and fifty designs to his name, his obsession with simplicity means the less-good ones are breathtakingly dull, and then there’s this video he made for the 2015 Global Game Jam. We’ve discussed it at length, and we’re pretty sure that’s not a green screen and he really is transmitting from inside the game dimension.
A review of Star Wars Imperial Assault could simply read thus: Its Descent 3rd Edition with Star Wars.
This straightforward statement sums up the entire experience and easily works better than any review score. If you liked Descent Second Edition and you like Star Wars then go out and buy this game, seriously, you don’t even need to read the rest of this review.
Not only does Imperial Assault beautifully combine these two elements, it improves upon the older game, making for a tighter, more rewarding experience with a an extra two-player miniatures skirmish game added for free.
Today, we are going to be diving into Metro 2033: Breakthrough. Published by Hobbyworld International (Viceroy, Spyfall), Metro 2033: Breakthrough is a card game that puts players in the role of a faction leader, trying to acquire supplies, discover new locations, and even fight off monsters. With a good theme, interesting artwork, and cards with multiple uses, we’ve got a lot to talk about here, so let’s get to the good stuff.
Metro 2033: Breakthrough is a set collection and hand management card game for 2-5 players that takes about 45 minutes to play. Metro 2033: Breakthrough plays well with any number of players.
Looking for a light abstract game and you just don’t want any pretense of theme? Enjoy a decent game of checkers but would prefer something a bit simpler? Like a very clean, minimalistic design? How about a game you can learn in less than a minute, and play in less than 10?
Well, you might be interested in Less, a small-boxed light abstract game that (despite the claim of relation to chess) plays a bit like checkers in 10 minutes or… uh… less. It’s on Kickstarter now, seeking your funding.
Is it just me, or do French game designers have a fascination with the Old West? I wonder if it’s a general cultural allure, or only from the tabletop studios of Faidutti and Cathala, et. al.? They certainly have some nuggets that run away with western clichés, stereotypes and caricatures. Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy playing them. It reminds me of the good old 1950’s Westerns with super-tanned white actors playing the Indians.
Pirates! It seems like everyone loves pirate themed games. They’re certainly among my favorites. Some, like Merchants and Marauders, are long, heavy, thematic affairs. Others, like Jamaica and Black Fleet, are light, fast playing, and better suited to a family environment. Then there are games like Libertalia that fall somewhere in between. They’re all good and it just depends on what you crave on any given day as to which one you’ll pull out. With so many pirate games covering so many different mechanics and audiences already on the market, is there room for another one? The creators of Dark Seas certainly thought so. Read on to see if I agree.
Asmodee is adding another popular game to their lineup. They are taking over worldwide publishing, commercial, and brand rights for Blue Orange's Spot It! party card game (known as Dobble outside of t
Asmodee is adding another popular game to their lineup. They are taking over worldwide publishing, commercial, and brand rights for Blue Orange's Spot It! party card game (known as Dobble outside of the US). This continues Asmodee's plan for global domination... I mean, expanding their games portfolio and international presence.
Spot It!/Dobble has been out for just a couple years, but has already sold around 7.7 million games (3 million of which were in the US). There will be a short transitional period where Blue Orange will continue to distribute in North America while Asmodee integrates the game into their distribution chains.
Hello again TGN Readers and welcome once more to Saturday. With any luck, you're gaming. I know I am. We've got one of our guys in my D&D game moving to Ohio this summer, so we're trying to get in
Hello again TGN Readers and welcome once more to Saturday. With any luck, you're gaming. I know I am. We've got one of our guys in my D&D game moving to Ohio this summer, so we're trying to get in as many sessions as we can before he goes.
As per usual, we've collected together various review articles we've found during the week and present them to you here now.
In this week's articles, we've got reviews/previews of: Roll for the Galaxy, Gruff, Alchemists, Chaosmos, Elysium, Arboretum, Battle Sheep, Ystari, Spike, Patchwork, XenoShyft, Salvation Road, Tide of Iron: Next Wave, Stones of Fate, and Dungeon Crawler Fantasy RPG Miniatures Sets 1 to 3.
I think I can trace my excitement for custom dice right back to my earliest gaming experiences. Dice were supposed to be uniform, six-sided things that counted from one to six. The moment I saw that you could put other things on dice, my world was turned upside down. Icons? Pictures? Why stick to just six sides? Any shape you roll could be a die! What was to stop me shaving numbers into the dog’s fur and tempting her to roll about the hall floor to decide our gaming fates? Nothing, friends. Nothing.
The first time I heard about Roll for the Galaxy’s 111 multicoloured custom dice I had to be sedated. I don’t actually remember much of the day but Matt says they had to call an ambulance and I recall Quinns, Brendan and Leigh visiting me in a facility specially constructed and arranged to avoid reminding inmates of the platonic solids. Thing is, in that place we still had our black market deals that the staff didn’t know about. Ten pounds to touch a D12. Forfeit an evening meal to roll some X-Wing attack dice.
Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up a hillside to make themselves fat, mean and weird, and the name of the goats was Ol’Darby, Gusto and Gaptooth.
Okay it’s not quite the fairytale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff but the card game Gruff is about three billy goats and using those billy goats to hit your opponent.
When I first heard about Alchemists, a deduction game published by Czech Games Edition (CGE), I had a feeling that this game would definitely be in my wheel house. Alchemists is a game where players are trying to deduce the identity of 8 different ingredients while trying to also become the most famous potion maker in the land. One of the most noteworthy things about Alchemists is the use of an integrated smart phone app. Is this integration a gimmick or the real deal? That’s a question that needs to be answered, so let’s find out.
Alchemists is a worker placement and deduction game for 2-4 players that takes about 2 hours to play. Alchemists plays great with any number of players.
The universe is about to collapse, and your final hope lies in an ancient mysterious artifact, the Ovoid. Whoever controls this “cosmic egg” can shape the birthing of the next universe according to their own agenda. Players are secret agents from a handful of surviving worlds, zipping from planet to planet in special “amnion suits” that allow for interstellar travel, space combat and planetary landings.
Elysium is a game of set collecting and combinations in which players recruit cards representing heroes, items, powers and gods. These cards have many different powers and you can create powerful combination to earn gold (the help of the gods) and victory points (the favor of the gods). Each card belongs to one of the eight Olympians gods (a family), and shows a level (1 to 3).
Arboretum looks like a game you’d play with your grandma. You’ve got these pretty cards featuring a dozen different types of colorful trees, with each set numbered from one to eight. Who can make the prettiest and most score-efficient arboretum? Such a peaceful little game right? Nah. Arboretum is a tense game subtly focused on screwing over your grandma and anyone else who thinks they’re going to score a single point for their intricately planned tree pathways.
In Battle Sheep, your flock of sheep is fighting against other sheep for control of the most pastures in the farmer’s field. Your sheep are not pacifists. You want to own those pastures and keep the other sheep off your turf by surrounding them and preventing them from moving in. Why share when you can have it all?
Today I would like to talk about my favorite new … Ahem, my favorite new game from this year … MY FAVORITE GAME FROM 2015 CALLED … WOULD YOU JUST ROLL YOUR DICE ALREADY!?
Step into the comic book world of Blake and Mortimer and be drawn into the mysteries of–
Wait, you’ve never heard of Blake and Mortimer? Really? Well, neither had I. Turns out it’s a Belgian comic featuring two detectives, the impulsive Mortimer and the straight-laced Blake, who consistently find themselves drawn into mysteries or trying to solve criminal cases.
Fortunately, you don’t need any backstory to play the game. You don’t need to role-play, and the mysteries aren’t continuous or set in any consistent world. All you need to know is: mysteries. Get ready to solve some.
You know I’d have a Johnny Cash line for this review’s title. Used to, songs about trains held a certain prominence in American culture. Lyrics often celebrated and lionized the mighty iron steeds so critical in building and sustaining this continent-stretching nation. And not just in poetic refrains. The music often imitated the mournful moans of a steam whistle or the beats the rhythmic chugging of hanger and piston. From the ballad of Casey Jones, to the old country Wabash Cannonball, to the swinging Chattanooga Choo-Choo, to the folksy City of New Orleans, to the soulful Midnight Train to Georgia, and the rocking Last Train to Clarksville, innumerable songs across every genre have recognized the railroad’s central place in the American story. It just so happens there have been a fair number of popular games about it, too.
Kahuna is an area control board game for two players. You play cards to place bridges (or remove your opponent’s) on islands to gain control of those islands and score VPs.
Have you ever been punched in the nose and thought, “Man, that was awesome. Gimme 2 more!” Xenoshyft Onslaught is going to kick you in the teeth, steal your lunch money, stuff your limp body into a locker, look amazing while doing it and you are going to love every painful second of it. Thanks Cool Mini of Not.
PHD has a play through review of Xenoshyft which is a hybrid blend of a cooperative, deck builder, tower defense game that challenges even the veteran gamer.
Salvation Road is the 5th game to be launched by Van Ryder Games. It is also the 3rd game (I believe) from the design duo of Peter Gousis and Michael D. Kelley. Van Ryder Games is located out the Nashville, TN area and is known for its solid solo games. Salvation Road plays very quickly in about 60 minutes and is very easy to learn and play almost immediately. Please note, I was provided a prototype of the game so the rule book, artwork and components may be much different that what I was provided.
If you’re a fan of small unit tactical WWII combat then you are likely familiar with a game that has been well known for years in the genre, Tide of Iron. If you’re not familiar with it or regret never picking up the now out of print game, you’re in luck because 1A Games has picked up the license and intends to not only continue the series but to grow it even further.
My mic was all kinds of messed up so I apologize in advance. It worked fine during the actual hangout, but for the playback over the air for YouTube somehow it was lost in translation. I shall try to do better in the future.
My mic was all kinds of messed up so I apologize in advance. It worked fine during the actual hangout, but for the playback over the air for YouTube somehow it was lost in translation. I shall try to do better in the future.
More fantasy RPG miniatures! The kind folks over at Dungeon Crawler have obviously heard about our addiction to pre-painted RPG miniatures as they have sent us some of their minis for review. We’ve been collecting pre-painted fantasy miniatures for RPGs such as D&D and Pathfinder for a long time, and have been enjoying the new sets from WizKids. We’re very excited to discover another company producing this kind of miniature and look forward to seeing the minis from Dungeon Crawler’s first 3 sets up close.
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