And no, I don't mean that I will be finding my "special someone" while here at the show, breaking my 7 long years of being single... at least, I don't think that'll happen. No, I'm talking about the p
And no, I don't mean that I will be finding my "special someone" while here at the show, breaking my 7 long years of being single... at least, I don't think that'll happen. No, I'm talking about the popular card game. Fog of Love will be here in Indy, and are also talking about the game coming to a broader description.
From the announcement:
Gen Con 2019 - taking place at Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis, Indiana - marks the first chance to grab the all-time favorite relationship simulator board game Fog of Love right off the shelf. Prior to this, American customers have only been able to buy the game online, due to an exclusivity agreement, but now broad distribution approaches.
Visitors at Gen Con 2019 may even get the chance to buy it directly from the creator, Jacob Jaskov, who will also be attending the convention to playtest the next release from publisher Hush Hush Projects.
Hush Hush Projects, publisher of Fog of Love, the unique relationship simulator game, is happy to announce that the game is now being made available for American distribution. The game went straight from a fully-funded Kickstarter to exclusively be available online from Walmart in the US. This means that the publisher’s presence at Gen Con 2019 will effectively be the first time the game is physically sold on American soil.
About the Walmart partnership, CEO of Hush Hush Projects, Mark Cooke says: “We’re very grateful that they wanted to take a chance on the game, and have been happy with the partnership. I’m also really excited about what’s next, and I look forward to seeing the game pop up on the shelves of FLGSs and other stores across the US. I hope this development will mean that even more people get to tell their own touching and hilarious love stories.”
At Gen Con 2019, Fog of Love designer Jacob Jaskov will be playtesting the upcoming release from Hush Hush Projects, a four-player game about discovering yourself currently titled Midlife Crisis. The game takes off about twenty years after Fog of Love ends, and centers around a couple both experiencing a midlife crisis. Each character is controlled by two players - one is the voice of reason, and the other is the unconscious… And the goal is to get through the crisis without losing each other and/or their sanity.
Jaskov’s design process is highly iterative, influenced by many years working as an innovation consultant. The game is still in development, so this is a great chance to see how feedback and testing influences the final experience. Seats are limited, so head over to the Gen Con website to secure a ticket for ‘Midlife Crisis Playtest’ now!
Saturdaaaaaay! It's the best day of the week (in my opinion). What cannot be accomplished with a day like today? Well, I know what can, going to do some gaming. I put together some Guild Ball minis fo
Saturdaaaaaay! It's the best day of the week (in my opinion). What cannot be accomplished with a day like today? Well, I know what can, going to do some gaming. I put together some Guild Ball minis for my friend last night. Today I'll go hang out and play some board games up at the library. But before I can head out there, I need to get you your reviews I know you so desperately desire.
Today we've got: I Am the Fourth Wall, Gravity Warfare, Gruff: Stuff of Nightmares, The Faceless, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival iOS, Vengeance, Clans of Caledonia, Harvest, Flamme Rouge: Peloton, Sakura, Fairy Tile, Pocket Mars, Lords of Hellas, Fog of Love, and Sarissa Precision 28mm Japan MDF Terrain.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at I Am The Fourth Wall by Slinky Gibbons Games. This card game follows a traditional Lovecraft theme and feel but offers a great player experience with technically 4 ways to play the game (I see them as grouped into 2 game play modes). 1: you can play co-op/solo - where all the investigators are working together to close all the gates and defeat an AI controlled "Wall" 2: 1 vs. all or Wall player vs all the other investigators (regardless if its one other person or many). Both game modes offer a rich intense experience of game play. Play is quick and enjoyable. I really do like this title and highly suggest it if you are a fan of the Lovecraft theme.
Gameplay in Lanterns: The Harvest Festival is very easy to pick up. Each turn will have you placing lantern tiles into the lake, earning matching color lanterns for you and your opponents (depending on which color is facing you). You can use these lanterns on future turns to trade them in for victory points (in sets). There are a few other wrinkles, like gaining extra lanterns for matching colors or getting honor tokens from platform tiles. But that’s the main crux of the game. Place tiles, collect lanterns, trade for points.
There is a lot to cover with Vengeance so we’re going to do a high-level overview, but the actual rules are here if readers want them: Vengeance rules.
It’s important to note that Vengeance is made up of Acts much like a revenge movie. The Wronging occurs first, followed by Acts 1-3 which consist of Montages and Combat Rounds until the End for final scoring.
At the beginning of the game, each player drafts a clan, each with their own particular special power. These include being able to sell milk, aged whiskey in barrels to sell for more money, expand over sea spaces, and so on.
During a game round, each player performs their choice of an action, in player order, until all players pass.
In Harvest, players are trying to plant, tend, and harvest vegetables from their fantasy inspired gardens. There are nine different characters to play all with a different ability and starting resources. Each round you get to place two farmers on the town board or the action cards which change each round.
Throughout the game, you will acquire seeds, water, fertilizer, and magical elixirs. You can plant your seeds with fertilizer to turn them into crops. Once in your field, you can tend to your crops with water to grow additional crops of the same type. Each field can only contain one type of crop, so you will have to harvest your crops at some point to clear the way to repeat the process.
Let’s assume you’re familiar with Flamme Rouge, and you’re here to see if the expansion is worth adding to the mix. If not, I’d start here with my review of the base game.
Peloton adds a slew of new tracks, riders, and variant rules, but as there are no significant gameplay changes I’m going to forgo the usual rules rundown and jump right in.
Sakura is a simultaneous action selection/hand management game for two to six players. Players are painters who want to be close to the emperor when he smells the cherry blossoms but not so close as to cause their own disgrace. The player with the most points after the emperor stops three times is the winner.
In Fairy Tile, players act out the scenes of a tale upon the tabletop by moving its characters to various locations around the realm – and forging the kingdom’s borders along the way.
The story begins with three land tiles. These are double-sided and consist of three hexes randomly representing plains, forests and mountains with rivers running through some and a castle dotting the landscape every now and then. These start tiles designate where to place the princess, prince and dragon, respectively. Players are then evenly dealt a hand from a deck of thirty-six pages (cards). These are stacked and everyone draws their first page. Cards have very lovely artwork, a task, a number and flavor text.
The objective of the game is to complete all of your pages of the story by individually meeting the required tasks on each card. These adventures generally stipulate maneuvering one or more characters to a specific location. Or sometimes you only need position an actor so that he or she sees (as in a straight line of hexes) some designated feature. In the case of the dragon or princess, simply flying over a castle or visiting one might be enough to move the plot along.
“Mars is there, waiting to be reached.” - Buzz Aldrin
Mars. The Red Planet. The Roman God of War has hung in the night sky capturing the imagination of man, and drawing the creative mind to it like gravity since it was first gazed upon. In the last few years, the fiction was left behind as science began to catch up, and we now know more about this baron and hostile planet than ever before. Yet, the more we know, it seems the more our imagination runs rampant and so the notion of the colonisation of Mars seeps into our consciousness, filling our screens, bookshelves and of course, our board games. It is in this vein that we explore Pocket Mars.
Lords of Hellas is, thankfully, more than just "Dudes on a Map"; one of the major concerns that existed during the campaign. If you've played Kemet or Game of Thrones, this will seem familiar, but in my not-so-humble opinion it's better than both. Different to both too, but superior. Game of Thrones has more politics and Kemet has a base of operations. Neither are present in Lords of Hellas. Despite the heft of the minis (and the Statues are very hefty), the game mechanics are thankfully very light and turns rattle on quite quickly, so there's little downtime.
Sarissa Precision Ltd are a company that produce high quality MDF terrain in various scales at a mid-range price. This review is looking at their Japan range of buildings, which are useful for playing games in the Sengoku period – especially rules such as Test of Honour
I have a number of Sarrissa’s buildings in my collection – they actually make up the majority of my scenery that I use for Test of Honour and other games.
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 weekend! Wooooo! Partaaaaaaaaaay!And by "Party," I mean gaming!Working on getting this Review Roundup and then gonna head out to the LGS to play some Guild Ball.Today we've got: Tiny Epic Que
It's the weekend! Wooooo! Partaaaaaaaaaay! And by "Party," I mean gaming! Working on getting this Review Roundup and then gonna head out to the LGS to play some Guild Ball.
Today we've got: Tiny Epic Quest, Sagrada, Azul, InBetween, BONK, Stop Thief!, Agility, Cast the Ritual, Fog of Love, H.I.D.E., First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express, and Go Nuts for Donuts.
In this video I will teach you how to play Sagrada including: Setup, Player turns, end game conditions, and scoring. I will also give you my thoughts and opinions on the game, and would love to hear yours.
HUGE RULES MISTAKE! CONFLATED TWO RULES TOGETHER! TAKE THIS VIDEO WITH A GRAIN OF SALT! Drive Thru Azul (and review) Intro (00:00); gameplay (00:57); final thoughts and review (34:40)
I can firmly say that I am a massive fan of Stranger Things, the Netflix television series that mixed 80s movies, Dungeons & Dragons and a smidgeon of Cthulhu. What is there not to like? Which is why I was very excited about the new little game form Board&Dice, InBetween. For starters it’s Stranger Things the card game, and is certainly a lot better that that Eleven egg waffles nonsense that was recently announced. Secondly the game was designed by Adam Kwapi?ski, and although he may not yet be a household name, I think he is always one to watch.
From the people who brought us KLASK, we now have another wooden, capitalized game in the form of BONK. Opponents sit on opposite sides of the board in either a 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2 configuration. The goal is to try and get the ball in the opposing team’s scoring area.
Each player is assigned a chute and is given three metal bearings to start the game. Each round starts with a simultaneous high five between all players, after which play immediately begins. You attempt to the knock the ball into the scoring area by dropping a bearing down the chute and knocking the ball around. Once a point is scored, the ball is placed back in the middle and a new round begins. Play continues until one side scores 5 points and is the winner.
Stop Thief! is an app-driven hand management deduction game for two to four players. Players are private investigators trying to catch crooks in order to make enough money to retire. The first player to reach the winning money threshold wins.
Agility is basically a race game, although there are (sort of) two races going on simultaneously. The first race is to adopt the best dogs that can most easily clear the obstacle courses available in the game. The second race is to be the first to get those dogs through your chosen courses. In order to accomplish these goals, you’ll be playing cards, taking the resultant actions, and collecting dog treats which allow you to adopt dogs and complete obstacles.
Turns are fairly simple. First, you’ll play one of the training cards from your hand. These cards have both numbers and two kinds/quantities of dog treats on them. The number indicates how many spaces to move the marker around the action rondel. You will take the action on which the marker lands.
As rival wizards, players will be managing a set of cards in their Lab (their hand of cards) that will hopefully contain ingredients needed to power the ritual. Each round of the game is one ritual and three rituals will complete a game. Players who complete a ritual first will get the most points for the round.
The two players in Fog of Love are in a relationship. The game story plays out a romantic comedy through which those characters develop and collide, with the hope that they meet their destiny at the end. However, that’s not really the point.
The setup requires that each player construct a character from a variety of Trait, Feature, and Occupation choices. These form the foundation of the roleplaying for each player-character. There are no hard and fast rules to the roleplaying, but without this, much of the other parts of the game will operate mechanically.
The first part of every round has players selecting a die at random from a black bag and placing it secretly behind their screen. They choose a die face that represents one of the four targets for their mission: satellite, power plant, submarine, or army base. The value of these missions is determined by a display of random intel cards. Every player also receives a Rank card which will later help players win the game.
First Class places players in the roles of rail barons building out trains as they compete for prestige. Players will expand their trains and upgrade train cars, as well as possibly gain points for extending the reach of their trains. The player with the most victory points from a variety of sources wins.
Included in the game are five card modules. By combining two of these modules, players can have different experiences each time they play. The basics of play are all the same, but the way each module works can change scoring opportunities as well as limitations.
The goal in Go Nuts for Donuts is to earn the most points over the course of the game. Each round, a number of cards are dealt face up onto the table (players +1). Each player then secretly selects a card they want. After revealing their choices, any player who was the only person to choose a specific donut collects that card into their score pile. If one or more players chose the same donut card, it’s discarded and no one gets it. A new round begins by filling the holes left in the line of donuts.
After all the donuts have been collected or discarded, the game ends and the player with the most points wins.
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