I am a teetotaler. So I'm not one much for craft beers or such. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the time and effort that goes into making those. I just don't really enjoy the fruits of those
I am a teetotaler. So I'm not one much for craft beers or such. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the time and effort that goes into making those. I just don't really enjoy the fruits of those labors. However, I can get into a worker placement game that involves brewing the best beer you can. That's what you're doing in Microbrew, a new pocket-sized board game that's up on Kickstarter now.
From the campaign:
The Brewmaster of the Tiny Tin Brewery has challenged YOU - leaders of their two newest brewing crews to a brew off! Who will create the tastiest beers and win the most loyal customers? Only one way to find out - Ready! Set! Brew!
Microbrew is an innovative medium weight, worker placement / puzzle game hybrid that fits right in your pocket!
Microbrew is an award winning board game! Designed originally for the 2017 Mint Tin competition on BoardGameGeek - Microbrew won 1st place in two of the five categories (Best Overall and Most Innovative Mechanism) and 2nd place in a further one (Best Written Rules)!
Guest Judge Justin Blaske (Designer and Publisher of Mint Works and Mint Delivery) also selected it as one of his three picks of the contest!
The campaign's around 4x funded with still 19 days left to go.
Well, now that you've gone and gotten your name on the list to get your copy of the new edition of 40k, let's get down to business with the regular affairs for Saturdays. That is, the Review Roundup.T
Well, now that you've gone and gotten your name on the list to get your copy of the new edition of 40k, let's get down to business with the regular affairs for Saturdays. That is, the Review Roundup.
Today we have: Carcosa, Pandemic, 12 Realms, 12 Realms: Ghost Town, Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China, Imperial Settlers: Aztecs Expansion, Space Invaders: Dice, Coal Baron: The Great Card Game, Saga of the Northmen, Wettlauf nach El Dorado, Get Rich Quick, Critters Below, and Honshu.
In this video I will teach you how to play including: Card breakdown, player and board setup, player turn, final showdown, and scoring.
I will also give you my thoughts and opinions on the game, but I would also like to hear what you have to say drop me a comment below on what you thought of the game.
Imperial Settlers: Aztecs comes with a 60 card faction deck for this new group. Not only are the standard Production/Feature/Action cards here, but Aztecs also incorporates concepts from the previous 3 expansions. Notably, the sets from 3 is the Magic Number, the Open Production locations from Why Can’t We Be Friends, and the Gear resources from The Atlanteans. So full backward compatibility here.
Space Invaders: Dice offers a number of different modes. You can play solo or multiplayer. There are also variant multiplayer rules which add a drafting element. Regardless, the gameplay is similar, you roll dice and destroy aliens of the matching colors on your sheet.
However, just like Space Invaders, you have to shoot from the bottom up, so it’s important to get the right colors at the right time. You take damage for any dice you can’t use and try to score points by destroying the most aliens.
In Coal Baron: The Great Card Game (yes Great is in the title), players act as managers of coal mining firms in mid 19th century England. Using cards-as-workers, players will take actions related to mining coal, building transport, and delivering coal to fulfill orders. Each order has a particular destination and players can also gain bonus points for those destinations or aim for more general objectives for more points. Hopefully it’s obvious that most points at the end of the game wins.
In true Viking fashion, the goal in Saga of the Northmen is to vie for control of Norse kingdoms throughout Dark Ages Europe (and a little bit of Africa and Asia) and then launch raids from your holdings to capture plunder and establish trade routes.
This saga is an unadulterated area majority design resolved through two phases. In the first, players contest influence in the seven major Viking kingdoms through back-and-forth card play. Afterwards, you’ll use any realms you control as bases to march and sail your armies into vulnerable neutral territories. Along the way you’ll earn infamy, or cash it in as a sort of Machiavellian currency. After three rounds the Viking Era ends. But will your story endure?
Wettlauf nach El Dorado is a deck-building racing game for two to four players. Players are explorers trying to be the first to reach the lost city of El Dorado. The first player to reach El Dorado wins.
Fortune is the name of the game, or rather, Fortune Points. Accrue 25 of them to win the game!
Each player has a hand of 7 cards, the same 7 cards that every other player has. From these cards, each player simultaneously and secretly chooses 3. When everyone is ready, the chosen cards are flipped up and resolved in order from 1 to 7
You’re in a room. It is dark. You’ve been eaten by a Grue.
Ok, not that last bit, but two out of three isn’t bad. For those of you who may wear tinfoil hats and are obsessed with the impending dawn of war, then you may quite enjoy the subject of my latest peek-a-boo as it’s set in a bunker during a war. Whoever chose to build this bunker clearly hadn’t heard of basic requirements like medicine or lighting. Perhaps they were cut from the budget during construction.
It’s hardly surprising that amenities such as a light bulb were missed as the inhabitants of this Stone-Age bunker are a bunch of woodland animals, the Critters, trying to survive a particularly hefty war involving a lot of bombing of a rather unspecific nature. The world is warring whilst our protagonists must wait it out in their concrete cocoon below ground. And thus we arrive at the name of the game in question: Critters Below from Antler Games
Well, now that you've gone and gotten your name on the list to get your copy of the new edition of 40k, let's get down to business with the regular affairs for Saturdays. That is, the Review Roundup.T
Well, now that you've gone and gotten your name on the list to get your copy of the new edition of 40k, let's get down to business with the regular affairs for Saturdays. That is, the Review Roundup.
Today we have: Carcosa, Pandemic, 12 Realms, 12 Realms: Ghost Town, Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China, Imperial Settlers: Aztecs Expansion, Space Invaders: Dice, Coal Baron: The Great Card Game, Saga of the Northmen, Wettlauf nach El Dorado, Get Rich Quick, Critters Below, and Honshu.
In this video I will teach you how to play including: Card breakdown, player and board setup, player turn, final showdown, and scoring.
I will also give you my thoughts and opinions on the game, but I would also like to hear what you have to say drop me a comment below on what you thought of the game.
Imperial Settlers: Aztecs comes with a 60 card faction deck for this new group. Not only are the standard Production/Feature/Action cards here, but Aztecs also incorporates concepts from the previous 3 expansions. Notably, the sets from 3 is the Magic Number, the Open Production locations from Why Can’t We Be Friends, and the Gear resources from The Atlanteans. So full backward compatibility here.
Space Invaders: Dice offers a number of different modes. You can play solo or multiplayer. There are also variant multiplayer rules which add a drafting element. Regardless, the gameplay is similar, you roll dice and destroy aliens of the matching colors on your sheet.
However, just like Space Invaders, you have to shoot from the bottom up, so it’s important to get the right colors at the right time. You take damage for any dice you can’t use and try to score points by destroying the most aliens.
In Coal Baron: The Great Card Game (yes Great is in the title), players act as managers of coal mining firms in mid 19th century England. Using cards-as-workers, players will take actions related to mining coal, building transport, and delivering coal to fulfill orders. Each order has a particular destination and players can also gain bonus points for those destinations or aim for more general objectives for more points. Hopefully it’s obvious that most points at the end of the game wins.
In true Viking fashion, the goal in Saga of the Northmen is to vie for control of Norse kingdoms throughout Dark Ages Europe (and a little bit of Africa and Asia) and then launch raids from your holdings to capture plunder and establish trade routes.
This saga is an unadulterated area majority design resolved through two phases. In the first, players contest influence in the seven major Viking kingdoms through back-and-forth card play. Afterwards, you’ll use any realms you control as bases to march and sail your armies into vulnerable neutral territories. Along the way you’ll earn infamy, or cash it in as a sort of Machiavellian currency. After three rounds the Viking Era ends. But will your story endure?
Wettlauf nach El Dorado is a deck-building racing game for two to four players. Players are explorers trying to be the first to reach the lost city of El Dorado. The first player to reach El Dorado wins.
Fortune is the name of the game, or rather, Fortune Points. Accrue 25 of them to win the game!
Each player has a hand of 7 cards, the same 7 cards that every other player has. From these cards, each player simultaneously and secretly chooses 3. When everyone is ready, the chosen cards are flipped up and resolved in order from 1 to 7
You’re in a room. It is dark. You’ve been eaten by a Grue.
Ok, not that last bit, but two out of three isn’t bad. For those of you who may wear tinfoil hats and are obsessed with the impending dawn of war, then you may quite enjoy the subject of my latest peek-a-boo as it’s set in a bunker during a war. Whoever chose to build this bunker clearly hadn’t heard of basic requirements like medicine or lighting. Perhaps they were cut from the budget during construction.
It’s hardly surprising that amenities such as a light bulb were missed as the inhabitants of this Stone-Age bunker are a bunch of woodland animals, the Critters, trying to survive a particularly hefty war involving a lot of bombing of a rather unspecific nature. The world is warring whilst our protagonists must wait it out in their concrete cocoon below ground. And thus we arrive at the name of the game in question: Critters Below from Antler Games
First part of the weekend is already a success. The pizza last night was pretty much everything I could've hoped for. It's nice when a week-long cooking project turns out good (ok, the pizza doesn't r
First part of the weekend is already a success. The pizza last night was pretty much everything I could've hoped for. It's nice when a week-long cooking project turns out good (ok, the pizza doesn't really take a week to make, but parts I was able to do ahead of time like render the bacon and such was done along the way, instead of doing it all last night). Today it's all about the Board Game Day at the Milton Library. If you're in the Atlanta area, stop on by.
But that's for later (well, later to me now as I'm typing this, not later from the time you read this, since I'm typing this at 6am and will be gaming at 2pm when it posts).
Right now we've got reviews of: London, Colosseum, Ophidian 2360, Ore-Some, Critter Combat, Gloomhaven, Runebound: The Gilded Blade Expansion, Mage Wars: Arena Paladin vs Siren Expansion, Conquest of Speros, Castles of Burgundy, Flamme Rouge, and Ponzi Scheme.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at the new Critter Combat from Rare Mind Games. This is currently on Kickstarter with a super low funding goal. Please go out there an check this out as it is really a great little card game for kids and adults.
The mechanics are simple but the game still offers a good level of strategic thought process as you decide how to use 1 of your 3 available actions on your turn.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Gloomhaven! This is the game play review featuring game mechanics, my thoughts on quicker startup, layout and all the goodness that makes Gloomhaven. I will have to say, it will not be surprising to see this game make best game of 2017 as it is fantastic and the more you play the more you want to play and build out your board. It really offers a full RPG experience in a traditional board game setting.
So get out there and pick up a copy when it hits retail as this is a gamer's paradise!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at The Gilded Blade a Runebound 3rd edition expansion featuring a new miniature, items, abilities and adventure cards. So as the festival takes place, buy sell and loot all you can - but watch out for thieves because they are everywhere in this one.
In Conquest of Speros, each player will take control of one of four different factions and battle for various locations. Location types and resources from those locations translate into points at the end of the game, with the player having the most points being crowned the winner.
Based on The Castles of Burgundy, the card game of the same name has players as lords of lands in renaissance France. Their goal is the expanding of their estates through the construction of buildings, creating farms, mining, shipping goods, and constructing castles. This is accomplished through the playing of cards to form sets and using cards with dice symbols as virtual dice. The player who earns the most points from this variety of activities wins.
There’s a fundamental question that every race-themed board game has to ask and answer, and that is this: what makes the track any more than a simple scoreboard? Or, in other words, what makes the race a race?
Ponzi Scheme is an economic trading game for three to five players. Players are fraudsters luring investors with impossible promises, trying to build the most profitable shell companies. The player with the most points in industries (without going bankrupt) wins.
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