Though I'm sure some of you out there will watch multiple TV shows simultaneously, most of us just go one show at a time. Of course, if we're watching one thing, that means we're not watching another.
Though I'm sure some of you out there will watch multiple TV shows simultaneously, most of us just go one show at a time. Of course, if we're watching one thing, that means we're not watching another. For a TV executive, they want to make sure that your eyes are on what they're showing. It's war for viewership. And that's the war you'll be waging in The Rival Networks, a 2-player version of The Networks. The game is up on Kickstarter now.
From the campaign:
The Rival Networks is a standalone 2-player version of The Networks, the popular board game about running a TV network. It's a simplified, streamlined version of The Networks with interesting tactical decisions and excellent strategic depth that plays in about 30-45 minutes. It's an easy game to learn, and you don't need to know how to play The Networks in order to play The Rival Networks.
In this game, you and your opponent are TV network executives trying to score the most Viewers over 3 Seasons. On your turn, you'll take one of the 3 available Show Cards, one of the 3 available Star Cards, and one of the 3 available Ad Cards.
Shows go onto one of your time slots, giving you Ratings Points and Viewers there. Stars go on Shows, adding to that time slot's Ratings Points. You'll spend your Ads to buy powerful Network Cards that give you various abilities.
You'll also score a bonus if you ever get at least 3 Shows of the same Genre during the game. And you can score bonus Viewers at the end of each Season by leading in the most Time Slots, and by achieving certain Awards.
The player with the most Viewers at the end of the game wins!
The campaign's up and over its funding goal with 15 days left to go.
Woo! Saturday! Woo!I've... got nothing, really. I'm about to head over to a friend's place to game. So let's just dive into the reviews, shall we? We shall.This week, we have: Wordstacker, Wordsy, Dra
Woo! Saturday! Woo! I've... got nothing, really. I'm about to head over to a friend's place to game. So let's just dive into the reviews, shall we? We shall.
This week, we have: Wordstacker, Wordsy, Dragoon, Founders of Gloomhaven, Quest for the Antidote, Tokaido, Marvel Legendary: Noir, Quiver, Thunderbirds, Beasts of Balance, Stop Thief!, Zoo Ball, Automobiles: Racing Season, Between Two Cities: Capitals, Far Space Foundry, Good Cop Bad Cop, Unlock!, The Cohort, Star Scrapper: Cave In, Century: Spice Road, This War of Mine, Barenpark, Heldentaufe, Kingdomino, Pathfinder Adventures app, and Space Invaders Dice.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Dragoon from Lay Waste Games. We also get a look at the new rogue and barbarian expansions made available through kickstarter!
What a great and fantastic looking game - unbelievable! Available in both Gold and plastic editions! So go for the gold and get 50 gold before anyone else for the win in this awesome tactical game.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Founders of Gloomhaven, the brand new game from Isaac Childres and I can't wait for people to get their hands on this one. It's a euro at heart but fuels the lore of Gloomhaven as you are founding the original city before what you experience in the campaign of Gloomhaven.
You get a lot here in this game! Worker placement, card management, resource management, strategy, great artwork, and fantastic mechanics! the kickstarter is going on right now! If you are a Gloomhaven fan - you are going to want this title in the Gloomhaven universe! (at least I think so - the theme is rich and lore is definitely there - this is a different game though - so please make note of that.)
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Quest For The Antidote, a new one from Upper Deck and a very fun family game indeed! In Quest For The Antidote you are questing around a very fun filled map to acuqire the components you need for your antidote. you only have 50 breaths to make it happen, so make every move and action count!
Tokaido is a game in which you gain VP for the experiences you take in on a journey. But you can only do so much and compete with your opponents for the same experiences.
Marvel Noir is the latest expansion for Marvel Legendary the Deckbuilding Game. It features heroes and villains from the Noir Universe and mixes up gameplay a bit.
The Quiver is a card-carrying case you can use to make your card games or small board games portable. You can even use it for carrying other things you want to keep organized and protected.
Thunderbirds the board game was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the TV show. It is a cooperative game where players must rescue victims, stop disasters and thwart the Hood.
The Capitals expansion adds 3 new elements that, according to Stonemaier Games, are designed to all work together, so you should either play with all of them or none. That being said, you could probably mix and match if you wanted to. In addition to the three game play changes, the expansion also comes with some new city tokens.
The specific functional aspects of Far Space Foundry would take a bit too long to explain in this article. In brief, players are space merchants mining asteroids for two different types of ore. Mining occurs in the first half of the game and a rondel/mancala mechanism delivers that ore to a player’s freighters.
In the second half of the game, the ore is used to produce goods which can then be “charged”. Points are scored for maximizing the utility of a player’s ships and the number and kinds of products produced. Points are also deducted for empty space on ships or not upgrading ships.
Players are assigned the team of either being honest or crooked cops by being dealt three secret role cards to each player, with the majority of role cards in hand determining which team a player is on. Two players are also secretly assigned the role of the leader of each of the teams. The goal of the game is for the players to determine who the leader of the rival team is and eliminate them from the game.
Each game of Unlock! comes with a deck of cards and a smaller “tutorial deck”. The teaching deck is identical in all versions of the game.
Players begin the game with a single card deputizing the room they are in and a deck of cards (we sorted our deck by number before the game to make it easier to find cards). During the game, players will need to solve puzzles to gain access to new cards, leading them further down the rabbit hole.
The starting player and every player following has three phases to their turn. They first take two cards from the shuffled deck, look at both of them, and give one to a player of their choice and keep the other.
The second phase is optional and allows players to take a card from their hand and place it face-up on the table to start or add to a Cohort. Once a player has played the required number of unit cards to complete the Cohort, the set is placed face down and the player no longer suffers the effect of that unit type. They also choose a player to discard all the cards from their hand. In the last phase, the player discards down to the maximum hand size of 4 if necessary.
I have come to the realisation that the hallmark of a great game is one when you look at your options, mull over your choices and then let out a cry of exasperation. It is that moment when you realise that to pull off that game winning moving you really should have started your plan in motion three turns ago, or that you are simply one action or one resource short of pulling off a complete blinder.
I say this because my time with Star Scrapper: Cave In has been embarrassingly short, to the point where I feel slightly dishonest in using the word review in the title, (not too I guilty mind you as an article titled first impressions never gets the traction it deserves) but I will say within my brief time with Star Scrapper Cave In there have been multiple cries of anguish, so surely it is a truly great game.
I’ll just come out and say it. Century Spice Road from Plan B Games is a surprise for me. And a very pleasant one at that. Steve talked about it in one of our recent podcasts and he liked it. So much so that before he’d finished banging on about it, I’d one-clicked it during the recording and waited to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out that our resident Welshman may have had a point.
Anyone alive in the 90s who owned an Amiga will almost certainly have remembered the Sensible Software game “Cannon Fodder”. If you don’t remember the game, look it up. I’ll wait.
I mention Cannon Fodder because it came with the tagline: “War has never been so much fun”. And it was right – Cannon Fodder was awesome and still stands as one of my favourite games of all time. Making those little men dance across the screen as you shot their twitching corpses was highly entertaining, if a little morbid.
Cannon Fodder, however, is a complete polar opposite to the subject of this review – with the tagline “In war, not everyone is a soldier”. Also beginning life as a video game, This War of Mine is a rather brutal and harrowing depiction of the early 90’s Siege of Sarajevo from the point of view of a group of civilians trying to eke out an existence in a city that’s seen more shells than Blackpool Pleasure Beach. It’s fair to say that absolutely nothing depicted in This War of Mine could be described as “fun”.
The correct term to describe Bärenpark is a polyominoes positioning game (or Tetris shapes as I prefer to call them). Each turn you will attempt to place one of the odd shaped pieces, made of either public amenities or one of the various bear enclosures, into your park. The name of the game is efficiency, as you race to fill your park as quickly as possible but also maximise its scoring.
The day that you have been waiting for has come. At last, you can prove that you are worthy of being a member of the Hero‘s council. Show them your skills by collecting the golden monster teeth. But be aware – the lands of Taora are not as peaceful as they seem. Rumor has it, that in the dark and gloomy Netherworld, some friends become enemies…
Now get up and hurry! The Heldentaufe already started. Be the first who returns the teeth of glory.
As the name implies, Kingdomino is a twist on the classic tile-laying game, dominoes. This game takes it up a notch by adding pretty art, castles, a twist on the turn order rules, and different scoring. The goal remains the same, however: Score the most points.
Each player has king meeples (the number depends on the number of players), a castle, and a starting tile. The castle is placed on top of the starting tile at the beginning of the game and placed in front of yourself. This is the humble beginning of your kingdom.
Once upon a time, we reviewed the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, a legacy-style card game/RPG mashup that let you build your character in the form of a deck and some limited stats over a series of adventures. Now, Pathfinder Adventures is a digital version of PACG available on all platforms – including Steam – and part of Asmodee Digital’s prolific board game app library.
The game’s premise is just like the original: aliens are attacking the Earth and it’s up to you to blast them all to smithereens. Each player takes a score sheet that looks just like the video game, with space invaders neatly laid out in a 11×6 grid and each row of invaders worth different point values. At the top of the sheet are the hard-to-hit UFOs worth the most points.
It's Christmas Eve and the first night of Hanukkah, so there's a good chance you're hanging out with friends and family. Hopefully that includes playing games of some sort. But how do you know which g
It's Christmas Eve and the first night of Hanukkah, so there's a good chance you're hanging out with friends and family. Hopefully that includes playing games of some sort. But how do you know which game might be the best? Good thing there's reviews out there. And that's just what we're here with now.
Today we have: Power Grid, The Bermuda Crisis Discovery Dawning, Grand Prix, Colt Express App, Red7 App, Legendary Inventors, Congo, Master of Orion, Final touch, Great Western Trail, Captain Carcass, and The Networks.
Grand Prix is a board game that reenacts a Formula 1 race. You have a team of two cars and score VPs for finishing in the top ten and based on your entire team’s placement.
Red7 is a hand management game for two to four players. Players play cards to their personal palettes and to the central canvas in order to be winning at the end of their turn. The player winning once other players have dropped out wins the game.
Legendary Inventors is played over three technological ages, with each age bringing more complex inventions for your inventors to create. Each player chooses a team of four inventors from various historical periods. Your goal is to earn the most victory points by patenting/acquiring inventions, improving your inventors’ skills and smarts, or putting together a “run” of invention cards with sequential classification numbers.
Congo is a game designed to be played by 2 (or more) players on a 6? x 4? table. The rulebook is a 108 page, full-colour hardback book, and comes complete with a deck of 44 cards and a sheet of punch-out card tokens and measuring sticks.
In Master of Orion: The Board Game (hereafter referred to Master of Orion), players are trying to acquire the most victory points over the game’s eight rounds. Players have a variety of actions they can do on their turn, but most will involve managing their resources and building out their tableau of cards. The game can end in one of three ways, and when it does, you better have the most victory points if you hope to rule the galaxy.
In Final Touch, players will be competing to earn the most victory points from completed paintings. Each round, players will be playing cards onto a shared painting, with the goal of either finishing it, or ruining it. However, only the player who plays the final card to a painting will earn points. The first player to 25 points wins.
Players taking on Great Western Trail will find themselves running a cattle empire seeking to deliver the best herds of cattle to markets in Kansas City. They do so by directing a cowboy along a winding path through hazardous terrain, Native American villages, and way stations, which may or may not be helpful. The player who manages to make the most points from a wide variety of activities in that endeavor is the winner.
In Captain Carcass, you are trying to earn the most victory points by going on some deep see diving expeditions. Each turn, you will explore the briny depths by turning over cards from the loot deck. If your luck holds, whenever you decide to return to the surface, you can take all of your loot with you. However should you reveal a duplicate type of card, a diving incident occurs and you lose everything you’ve found this turn.
Once all the cards have been drawn from the loot deck, then game ends and the player with the most points wins.
The Networks is card drafting game for one to five players who take on the role of TV executives attempting to build their fledgling networks from “Public Access to Prime Time” over five seasons (rounds). The TV executive with the most viewers (points) after five seasons is declared the winner.
Games can be played between 60-90 minutes, depending on the number of players and how quickly they play.
And we are once more awash in the glow that is Saturday.Isn't it just lovely?To all my friends downtown at Dragon Con, "Hey there!" Me? I won't be getting closer any than my Kroger to downtown this we
And we are once more awash in the glow that is Saturday. Isn't it just lovely? To all my friends downtown at Dragon Con, "Hey there!" Me? I won't be getting closer any than my Kroger to downtown this weekend. But that's ok, because I'm making pumpkin cookies (with cream cheese centers).
Anyway, being Saturday, we've got our Review Roundup ready to go.
This week we have reviews/previews of: Systema Gaming Base-0 Bundle, DragonFlame, The Undercity, Abracada-What?, Abyss, Incredible Expeditions: Quest for Atlantis, The Networks, Eminent Domain: Microcosm, and Shogun.
We’ve been having great fun building the Base-0 kits from Systema Gaming, modular laser-cut MDF terrain kits for tabletop skirmish and wargames such as Warhammer 40k and Infinity. We’ve built 6 of these modular kits and so now its time to see how they all fit together!
The Undercity is a cooperative, dungeon crawling adventure game with a seven scenario campaign for two to four players. You gain XP and can add abilities to your heroes. And though mostly a tactical combat game, there are varying goals from scenario to scenario.
Let’s just get this out there right in front; yes, this game’s title is almost impossible to pronounce. We’re all familiar with the classic spell Avada Kedav- I mean, Abra-Cadabra, but the inflection here is all wrong, and trying to speak this game’s name just never comes out right. Most people just say “Abra-cadabra What?” or “Abraca-What?” instead of “Abra-Cada-What?”
The undersea world is fascinating. Since we still haven’t figured out how to overcome that nasty pressure-related implosion thing, we know more about outer space than we do about the oceans. That lack of knowledge leaves a lot of room for the imagination to fill in the gaps yet, strangely, the undersea world isn’t a theme that’s been exploited to death in movies, books, or board games. Which means that a game like Abyss has a chance to be original and fresh in a way that space games or medieval-themed games do not. So, does Abyss take advantage of this chance, or does it squander it?
Mystery has always seduced you. And Danger. They’re partners in your fate, luring you like Sirens to explore the furtive questions that have hounded history – stories of lost empires and baffling legends. The third Siren is Adventure. And in your fantastic journeys to unlock time’s greatest myths, you’ve had plenty of that. You gained unimaginable wealth in finding the Lost Cities of Cíbola. Received powerfully arcane knowledge in deciphering the Voynich Manuscript. And unlocked the origins of humanity itself in discovering Lemuria. But one of civilization’s greatest mysteries has always eluded you. Where is Atlantis and what does it behold?
The Networks is card game about building your network from “Public Access to Prime Time.” It’s a one to five player game that can be played between 60 and 90 minutes, depending on the number of players and how quickly they play.
In 2011, game designer Seth Jaffee brought us a deck building game called Eminent Domain. Published by Tasty Minstrel Games, this was one of their earliest titles that helped to put both of them on the map.
Recently, Seth and Tasty Minstrel have hooked back up for another trip into the Eminent Domain universe. This time however, it’s in the form of a micro game. Eminent Domain: Microcosm takes two players in a quick trip through this Sci Fi universe. Can a game this tiny hold our attention for long? Time to find out!
Eminent Domain: Microcosm is a 2 player engine building and deck building game that takes about 10 minutes to play.
Following our review of the beautiful Samurai on Wednesday, Quinns is reviewing classic game Shogun! Which means it's retroactively Japan week and you should all act accordingly.
It's worth watching this review just for the fabulous . How does it work? Where did it come from? We just don't know! Ha! Please stop asking such silly questions.
Alton Brown once said that soon, everyone was going to have their own TV network and their own spice rub. Well, Formal Ferret Games is giving you a chance to practice at one of those. No, this isn't a
Alton Brown once said that soon, everyone was going to have their own TV network and their own spice rub. Well, Formal Ferret Games is giving you a chance to practice at one of those. No, this isn't a card game where you get to work at making your own spice blend. The Networks puts you in charge of your own TV channel. It's sort of like UHF, the game, but without aliens or Weird Al.
Players start out with three public access television shows and a little bit of money. It's then up to them to build their network into the most-watched one in all the land. Schedule new shows, run ad campaigns, recruit stars to endorse your network. But be careful, your competition is looking to steal away those shows and advertisers and celebrities for themselves. You have to be quick. You have to be shrewd.
The campaign is about 2/3 to their funding goal already with still 27 days to go.
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