Fun Forge is looking forward to next month when they'll be launching their Kickstarter campaign for Monumental: The Board Game. Players will be in charge of their own civilization and looking to out-p
Fun Forge is looking forward to next month when they'll be launching their Kickstarter campaign for Monumental: The Board Game. Players will be in charge of their own civilization and looking to out-pace their opponents in terms of research of technology and power. The game will be exclusive to Kickstarter, so if you miss out, you miss out entirely.
About the game:
In the fierce world of Monumental: The Board Game, the balance of your resources is the key to victory. Select the best cards to grow and expand your civilization at the expenses of your weaker neighbors. Each of your choices will impact your future. Focus on Science to develop technologies, or on Military power to defeat Barbarians and enemy forces. Boost your Production to build Wonders, or develop Cultural Policies to unlock specific advantages. Gather and spend Gold to become the richest civilization. You won’t be able to be the best everywhere though, so plan your strategy accordingly, and do not forget your priorities. However, be careful, as the most precious lore will be fiercely contested and shall escape you if you do not act quick enough!
Mastering science and technologies is certainly one of the key to victory. For instance, the one who will develop Irrigation will improve his civilization’s production capacity. Don’t let your opponents outrun you in the race for supremacy!
Monumental: The Board Game is an epic game of civilization, conquest and expansion coming exclusively on Kickstarter, March 14!
I know. I know. This was supposed to go up yesterday.Well, WordPress has been flaky lately and it missed its posting window. Hence why it's going up now with a reworded opening talking about it not be
I know. I know. This was supposed to go up yesterday. Well, WordPress has been flaky lately and it missed its posting window. Hence why it's going up now with a reworded opening talking about it not being posted on Saturday instead of saying, "I'm going to the LGS and gonna pick me up a Minx for Guild Ball!"
But anyway, without any further delay, today we have: Great Western Trail, Click Click Boom, Radiant, Potion Explosion: The Fifth Element expansion, Rone: Races of New Earth, Legendary Showdown, Pocket Madness, Quadropolis, Rocky Road a la Mode, Race for the Galaxy iOS, Warhammer 40k: 8th Edition, Warhammer 40k: Dark Imperium, Port Royal, Flying Kiwis, and Magic Maze.
In this video I will take a look at Radiant and give you my thoughts on the game. I will also go through basic setup and game play including the three different ages and final scoring.
All we need to know for this very exam is enclosed in one box named Potion Explosion: The Fifth Ingredient, that will be the subject of our present report, after a trial session thanks to the organization committee Horrible Games and Ghenos Games and to the creators Stefano Castelli, Andrea Crespi and Lorenzo Silva.
Players in RONE are leaders of post-apocalypse survivors who have banded together in quasi-military groups. Players use their water resources and ability to recycle equipment (cards) to defeat each opponent. A player’s hand and deck of cards represent their life points, so as soon as both are depleted, that player loses.
In Legendary Showdown, each player will take control of a line of characters. Each character will have a point value used to determine their strength in battle. They will not be going in alone. Players will be able to arm their characters with weapons, bonus values, and instant action cards to attempt to earn the upper hand. After all players have played their cards, the character with the highest point value remains in the game, with the others eliminated. Play will continue until only one player has characters remaining and declared the winner.
Like most gamers out there, I play mostly with my family and friends. While the majority of my gaming occurs with my regular gaming group, I definitely enjoy introducing new games to my family. Visits to my parents’ house are always more entertaining when we can sit down and chat while playing a new board game. I’m sure most people can relate to that.
While I have no shortage of games to play with my gaming group, choosing games to play with my non-gamer family members can be a bit more of a challenge. I always like to introduce them to new games (so we are not always playing Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne), but I have to be careful with my selection. Most non-gamers just aren’t going to sit through a 30 minute rules explanation of Terra Mystica.
So with that in mind, we’ve created this article series. In Parental Guidance, I’ll offer up recommendations for games that you can play with your family members, whether they are retirees from the baby boomer generation or your own children. This article series will focus on games I’ve chosen and played with my parents (or sisters and niece/nephews).
In Race for the Galaxy, each player is creating a galactic civilization by playing cards into a tableau in front of them. The cards represent various worlds they are settling (or conquering) and technological achievements. The main goal of the game is to score the most victory points by the time someone either plays their 12th card, or the VP chip stack runs out.
Gameplay is handled via action selection. Each round, every player secretly selects one of 7 roles (which range from drawing cards, to playing cards, to activating planet powers), with all players taking the action from that role. However the player that chose the role gets a special bonus.
Port Royal is a simple card game of set collection and pressing your luck. You are trying to earn the most victory points by earning income, hiring people who are worth points, and completing expeditions which will bring in even more money and points.
Players help these poor flightless birds overcome their evolutionary deficiencies and turn them into real Flying Kiwis by launching them from a simple ramp and catapult! If you can group them in the crate just right, or get the most on top of all the stacks, you’ll earn your flightless wings!
Magic Maze is a real-time cooperative puzzle game for one to eight players. Players control four fantasy heroes trying to equip themselves by pulling a heist at the local shopping mall. The players win if the heroes get what they need from the shops and get to the exits before the timer runs out.
It's a beautiful Saturday here in Atlanta. The sun's shining. It's warm outside.... Sounds like a perfect time to go to the LGS and stay inside, playing games all day! :DAnd to those dealing with ice
It's a beautiful Saturday here in Atlanta. The sun's shining. It's warm outside. ... Sounds like a perfect time to go to the LGS and stay inside, playing games all day! :D And to those dealing with ice up in the midwest, best to stay inside and play some games all day. Long story short, it's a good day to play some games. But what games? Well, you could check out these reviews and pick from there.
Today we have: Ulm, Orcs Must Die, Titan Race, Tavern's Tales, Manhattan Project: Energy Empire, Doom, Flash Point: Extreme Danger, Praetor, The Daedalus Sentence, Twilight Struggle- Digital Version, Imhotep, Forged in Steel, Mi Tierra, Saloon Tycoon, Legendary Inventors, Flammer Rouge, Watch Your Mouth, Draconis Invasion, Ice Cool, Celestia, The Foreign King, Sub Terra, Wasteland Justice, Takenoko, and Drinking Quest Journey Into Draught.
As nobles in the city of Ulm, Germany, the players are attempting to build up the prominence of their city through exploring the opportunities of the various landmarks. Actions are taken using the city’s cathedral, which presents a puzzle of tokens. The most victory points at the end of the game wins.
There are actually two different versions of Orcs Must Die! The Board Game, Unchained and The Order. For this review, we’ll be going over (and using pictures from) The Order version of the game. However game play between the two versions is mostly identical, other than components. Owning both versions will allow you to play rivalry mode (more on that later).
In Orcs Must Die!: The Order – The Board Game (hereto referred to as simply Orcs Must Die for brevity’s sake) players must work together to defend the rift tile from increasingly larger waves of enemies.
Each round, players will be laying traps, purchasing gear, fighting hordes of orcs and other monsters, all while trying to keep their head above water. The game is played over nine rounds, and if at the end the invasion, the rift is still standing, players win!
Titan Race’s overall theme and objective is straight-forward. You control a fantasy Titan and rider against other Titans to see who will be the winner. Titans will not only have to battle with other Titans, but also have to contend with circuit (race track) hazards. Titans can use their special abilities and bonus cards to give them the edge, but the first Titan who laps the circuit 3 times is the winner.
The game itself is designed by a Polish team called Tailor Games, now where they excel in game play and mechanics, they could do with maybe going in to a little bit more detail in explanation of their rules, this being said, we managed to get our heads round them after a couple of play throughs and found ourselves really enjoying this deck building style game. Tailor Games have got all aspects of Taverns Tales right, from the set-up of the game through to the mechanics of the mid game, and then made a very interesting system of scoring the game to determine a winner. Unless you’re rainman you will struggle working out who is winning up until you do the final score count at the end of the 9 rounds.
In this era of constant remake, reboot and rehash, even this stalwart FPS has succumbed to the ever-marching tide of progress and it was taken on by Bethesda Softworks to update the game with modern graphics, a twist on the plot and another excuse to cash in on the franchise. I must admit a slight hesitation on playing the video game, as reboots rarely see the creative lightning strike twice, but in this case, like an alcoholic kleptomaniac with dysentery, Bethesda successfully captured the spirit of the original with the benefit of making everything look reddish brown. And whilst on the subject of cashing in, it seems that practice isn’t beneath Fantasy Flight Games either with their recent 2016 release of DOOM: The Board Game.
Flash Point: Extreme Danger requires the base game in order to play. If you’re unfamiliar, I’d say head on over to our base game review to learn about that before you start here. This expansion is fairly advanced, and I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners; from here on out, I’ll assume you have some familiarity with the core game.
Praetor is a worker placement and tile-laying game that has players using workers to gain resources and build city tiles, budgeting to keep all those workers paid and happy, and spending resources to meet the Caesar’s demands. The point of all of this is to earn the most favor points so that the Caesar will love you best and name you Praetor of the city.
The goal of the Daedalus Sentence is for all players together to find and unlock the escape pod. To do so, they must make their way from the center of the board to the outermost ring, avoiding Minotaur and Loctae patrols, while collecting the cards needed to unlock the codes for each gate.
I’ve only been playing the game AI in offline mode so far. The AI does seem to provide a good challenge – either that, or I’m just rubbish! I even discovered a new crinkle on the winning conditions which I wasn’t previously aware of (You lose the game if you trigger a thermonuclear war – what I didn’t realise is that if your opponent triggers the war via a card that you have played, you are deemed to have started the war. The computer AI has done it to me three times now!).
In Imhotep, the players become builders in Egypt who want to emulate the first and best-known architect there, namely Imhotep.
Over six rounds, they move wooden stones by boat to create five seminal monuments, and on a turn, a player chooses one of four actions: Procure new stones, load stones on a boat, bring a boat to a monument, or play an action card. While this sounds easy, naturally the other players constantly thwart your building plans by carrying out plans of their own. Only those with the best timing — and the stones to back up their plans — will prove to be Egypt’s best builder.
The game takes place over three eras (turns/decades), each with multiple phases in which players are dealt eight cards — all with historic black-and-white photos from Colorado — and must discard one and bank two for their final turn. Cards are used to either play Municipal Muscle points to build, buy, or seize structures, or used for the “event” listed on every card. Cards can also be used to set yearly “Headlines” or “Themes” which evoke a movement in American society or technology and change VP awards or other variables in the game. Structures are scored by multiplying the amount the sector tracks have advanced by the number of buildings owned. Different tracks progress differently.
Mi Tierra: New Era (My Land: New Era) is a worker placement game in which the players represent farmers that try to labor their land in the best way possible. They will have to sow and work the land and take care of their animals so they can produce goods and sell them in the different available markets.
In this second edition, players will have all the fun included in the original Mi Tierra plus more, since the second edition includes many more features like use of water for plantations, horses, new products and more. Also, instead of four players you will be able to play up to six-player games. Finally, the rules of the game have been revised to make sure that Mi Tierra gets even better.
Players are Saloon owners in an old west gold rush town. They’ve purchased lots on the four corners of the main crossroads and need to expand their small establishments into thriving businesses. Their goal is to create massive centers for commerce and entertainment in the wilds of the West. To boost their success, they’ll need to attract the wealthy and famous citizens of the town while keeping away the less savory characters.
Lead a team of history’s greatest minds to glory in Legendary Inventors, a game in which 2-5 players each captain a group of four inventors working to bring their knowledge to life by creating useful objects to improve the world. Compete against rival teams to patent inventions and work to improve the knowledge of your inventors. The inventing team who has patented the most inventions or who has the smartest inventors wins.
Flamme Rouge is a fast-paced, tactical bicycle racing game where each player controls a team of two riders: a Rouleur and a Sprinteur. The players’ goal is to be the first to cross the finish line with one of their riders. Players move their riders forward by drawing and playing cards from that riders specific deck, depleting it as they go. Use slipstreams to avoid exhaustion and position your team for a well timed sprint for the win.
Watch Ya’ Mouth contains a bunch of mouthguards and more than nine hundred phrases on 143 cards that you will find extremely challenging to say while sporting a mouthguard. Can you communicate clearly enough that others will guess what you’re trying to say?
The game is designed to play as teams usually of 2. One person wears a cheek retractor similar to what you get at a dentist. Then they read a phrase on a card with the equipment in their mouth. Their teammate(s) are supposed to try and repeat the phrase correctly back (without the retractors).
With over 500 beautifully illustrated cards, Draconis Invasion is a fast-paced strategic deck-building card game for 1-6 players. You and your friends must fight the forces of evil in a beautiful dark fantasy world. Players take the roles of noble Heroes in this 45-minute tabletop game. Defeat vile invaders while recruiting powerful defenders, garnering gold, and completing secret campaigns. However, as the battle rages on, fatigue and fear will begin to take their toll, bringing your soldiers to their knees.
Ice Cool is a flicking game in which each round one of the players takes the role of the Hall Monitor (also called “the Catcher”) – his aim will be to catch each other penguin and get points for that. The others (also known as “Runners”) will try to run through several doors, thus gaining fish (that give them points) on their way. When either the Hall Monitor has caught each other penguin once or any of the others has gone through all 3 doors that have fish on them, the round is over. Each player will take the role of the Hall Monitor once and at the end of the game the winner will be the one with the most points on their fish cards.
In Celestia, a revamped version of Cloud 9, you board an aircraft with a team of adventurers to perform many trips through the cities of Celestia and recover their wonderful treasures. Your journey will not be safe, but you will attempt to be the richest adventurer by collecting the most precious treasures!
In The Foreign King, players take on the roles of influential Belgian bourgeoisie and who industrialize Belgian provinces, build metallurgical and textile factories in order to obtain greater economic power, vote in the National Congress seeking to increase their political influence, expand its social mass and send to the provinces under their dominion at the highest authority, King Leopold I of Belgium, to revise the provinces in the pursuit of their own interests.
The holiday season is well and truly upon us. It's the last weekend before Christmas and all through the house, my D&D group had to cancel because everyone had last-minute stuff come up due to the hol
The holiday season is well and truly upon us. It's the last weekend before Christmas and all through the house, my D&D group had to cancel because everyone had last-minute stuff come up due to the holiday and the end of the year :/ ... But waddyagonnado? Me? I'm gonna probably bake some cookies and just chill, watching some Christmas movies, including MST3K's Manos, the Hand of Fate. Why is that a Christmas movie? Because it's in the same 2-disk box with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. But that's me.
As for the exact moment, it's time to get you a bunch of reviews.
Today we have: Mythos Tales, BattleGoats, Murder at Blood Mansion, Timeline: British History, The Refuge, Ice Cool, You Gotta Be Kitten Me, Colony, CVlizations, Star Wars: Destiny, Pocket Madness, The King's Armory, La Granja: No Siesta, Escape Room: the Game, Ponzi Scheme, Doom: The Board Game, Deathwatch: Overkill, and Blood Bowl (2016 Edition).
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Mythos Tales from 8th Summit. This is a story driven game with a horror feel straight from the H.P. Lovecraft's universe! You will work as a team or alone to solve the crimes one by one trying to outwit Professor Henry Armitage and get the best most efficient score possible. The game is super fun and travels well if you are on the go. So if you are looking for an adventure and you don't mind chasing down monsters from the deep, look no further than Mythos Tales!
Timeline is ridiculously simple to play. Each card in the game beautifully depicts an event in history. The front side is merely the artwork and title but on the rear of the card is the year in which this event took place. The aim of the game is simply to empty your hand of cards by slotting a card in between the right events. Flip over the card to see if you're correct, if so the card stays in place, wrong and the card gets discarded and you are forced to draw another card from the deck.
The Refuge was very quickly funded on kickstarter recently, and lucky old me, I’ve just received mine through the post! The game itself is a mixture of deck building and a race to the finish line, all while trying to outsmart zombies and the other survivors, there is only room for one person at the finish line!
School’s in session but the penguin students have only one thing on their minds: fish. The winner of Ice Cool is the player who can collect the most.
On your turn, you will flick your penguin pawn a single time. Certain doorways around the school will have fish tokens in your color attached to them. If you flick your penguin through one of these doorways, you remove the fish token and draw a fish card. It’s an easy enough goal, but it’s complicated by the presence of the hall monitor.
Colony is an engine building and resource manipulation game with dice for one to four players. Players are leaders of postapocalyptic colonies using their scant resources to build up their infrastructure. The first player to reach a certain point threshold is the winner.
Players take on the roles of unseen hands guiding a tribe through the ages. As they do so, they will engage in resource gathering activities with the aim of acquiring knowledge and tools in the form of idea cards. Each card awards happiness points at the end of the game and/or a special ability to gain advantage over opponents.
In Star Wars: Destiny, each player constructs (or uses a pre-made starter deck) of 30 cards. The goal of the game is to reduce the life of your opponent’s heroes to zero. This is accomplished by playing cards from your hand and rolling dice to gain attack power, resources or other special abilities. Turns will be played back and forth between players until one player is out of life.
Pocket Madness (which sounds like a disease received from visiting Yuggoth) is a game about researching the Ancient Old Ones as recorded by the human Howard Phillips Lovecraft. By playing cards, the human players imagine themselves to be opening portals, publishing research and gaining “madness” (more like sanity if you ask me). The human player who is able to have the least “madness” at the end of the game wins.
Luckily for the kingdom, scouts have noticed an impending army of monsters hoping to break through the castle defenses and take the treasures within. This advanced warning has allowed for the necessary preparation for the upcoming battle. This allows the players to set up defensive towers and hire troops to defend the castle. Players will choose from traditional fantasy hero archetypes to command during the game.
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.
Read More
