Yarr arr yarr! I loddie the hotpants!It's time to get some sunshine on your skin and some salty air in your lungs. The new expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories has been announced, and it's sending players t
Yarr arr yarr! I loddie the hotpants! It's time to get some sunshine on your skin and some salty air in your lungs. The new expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories has been announced, and it's sending players to the golden age of piracy. Brotherhood of the Coast is the name of this new set, and you'll be looking to find out what happened to a previous team that was sent to the same time but never came back (because that's not ominous...).
From the announcement:
Up until now, we know you’ve seen quite a bit. The horrors you faced in Estrella Drive were almost unspeakable. But you’ve proven yourselves capable of handling quite nearly anything—which is why we know you’re up to this next assignment. Now let’s get to the good part: you’ll be traveling to the year 1685, crossing the high seas of the Caribbean during the Golden Age of piracy. I hope one of you knows how to sail…
We’ve tried to keep this blunder under wraps, but the situation has gone beyond our control, which is the exact reason we’re sending you, agents. Some time ago, four seasoned agents, just like yourselves, were sent to this timeline. Unfortunately, something went awry, and we’ve lost their trace. It’s up to you to track them down and… release them from their receptacles. More details on that at a later date. We’ve seen the way you handle yourselves in the field, and believe you possess the exact skills we need to bring these agents home.
What's past is past.At least, we thought so, anyway. It would seem that's not quite the case. The stream of time has whirlpools and eddies and you can head back to them over and over again. In fact, s
What's past is past. At least, we thought so, anyway. It would seem that's not quite the case. The stream of time has whirlpools and eddies and you can head back to them over and over again. In fact, sometimes you need to, lest the whole thing jump the banks and change course. That's when the characters in T.I.M.E. Stories head back and make things right again. The newest expansion coming out is Estrella Drive. Asmodee is giving us a bit more of a preview of what you can expect this time around.
From the post:
Welcome back, agents. Quickly now, take your seats, we’ve got work to do.
You’ve already been briefed on your next mission, from here on out known as Estrella Drive. The place you’ll be sent to within the time stream—Hollywood, California, at the beginning of the 1980s. Prepare for cheap thrills, neon colors, and plenty of confetti.
(I should mention one more time before we begin, agents: the themes that await you in this particular mission are not for the young or faint of heart. We highly recommended that that agents of a young age stay back at HQ and not embark on this mission.)
Your objective? To locate and study what we believe to be a temporal loop. Bear in mind, we aren’t looking to close this loop, as the knowledge it will give us as it unfolds will prove to be invaluable to our organization. We’re certain that this mission will be integral in studying the behaviors that Time exhibits—some you have never seen before, agents. More on that later.
In T.I.M.E. Stories, players are sent to ancient lands and exotic locations. This time, they're going to that far-off time of... uh... 1982. ... That's how you know you're old, kids, when a game is li
In T.I.M.E. Stories, players are sent to ancient lands and exotic locations. This time, they're going to that far-off time of... uh... 1982. ... That's how you know you're old, kids, when a game is like, "we're going to send you way back in time, to this time where the person that's writing this article was alive." Thanks, everyone. Anyway, agents are being sent to check out 1982 California. And, as one would expect, it's not for the younger audience. That's what's going on in Estrella Drive.
From the announcement:
Come in, agents. We’re glad you were able to attend. We’re still running the necessary diagnostics and analyzing the nature of the temporal anomaly, but we believe we now have enough information to give a preliminary briefing of what we project to be your next mission. We’ve codenamed it Estrella Drive.
By now, you’ve doubtless gone on enough missions that you have some idea of what you’re getting into. You’re familiar with transfer procedures, the receptacles that you inhabit, and the caissons that you’ll use to travel to a new era within the Time Line. And with this mission in particular, you won’t be going quite as far into the past as you have in other missions—it’s not dynastic Egypt or the Middle Ages for you this time. Instead, you’ll be traveling to a place with a… unique position in history: Hollywood, California, in the year 1982.
You'd think that time could just take care of itself. Once something's done, it's done. That's not the case, though. Without regular monitoring, the whole time stream can unravel. In this case, the Re
You'd think that time could just take care of itself. Once something's done, it's done. That's not the case, though. Without regular monitoring, the whole time stream can unravel. In this case, the Reconquista of Spain isn't going as it should. The T.I.M.E. Agency has to send agents back in order to get things back on-track. That's just what you'll be doing in Lumen Fidei, the new expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories from Asmodee. It's available now.
From the announcement:
Welcome, agents. We don’t have much time. After all, you could be embarking on your next mission as early as today—the mission we’ve designated Lumen Fidei.
No one here at the T.I.M.E Agency can predict exactly what you’re going to find, but we’ve done our best to acquaint you with what we currently know in our advance briefings.
Of course, you know the destination of your mission—medieval Spain near the end of the decades-long Reconquista—and your objective. An anomalous stone, rumored to have unexplainable powers, has been discovered in this era. Your mission is to travel into the past and retrieve this stone, bringing it back for safe keeping within the walls of the T.I.M.E Agency.
What's done is done. Or is it? The time stream isn't as unalterable as we think it is. Things can go wrong that threaten all of existence as we know it. In this case, there's a special stone in 15th-c
What's done is done. Or is it? The time stream isn't as unalterable as we think it is. Things can go wrong that threaten all of existence as we know it. In this case, there's a special stone in 15th-century Spain that must be brought to the future for study due to its supernatural importance. That's the story behind Lumen Fidei, a new expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories coming from Asmodee.
From the preview:
Come in, agents. Take your seats, don’t stand about. We all have work to do, and the sooner we’re back to it, the better for all of us.
You’ve already had your preliminary briefing on the mission that we’ve codenamed Lumen Fidei. You know the place that you’ll be sent within the timestream—15th century Spain, near the end of the centuries-long Reconquista wars between Christians and Moors. And you know your objective: to join Michel d’Ailly, the Legate of Pope Martin V, and attend a secret meeting of the Christian militant orders. The gathering has been called to discuss a portentous stone, which we suspect has supernatural importance, especially to our enemies. You must find this stone and bring it back to the T.I.M.E Agency before anyone else is able to seize it.
Yes, I know it's Tuesday and not Saturday. But Saturday I was preoccupied wondering how he (Jonah) eats and breathes, and other science facts. And then Monday I was recouping from the weekend of laugh
Yes, I know it's Tuesday and not Saturday. But Saturday I was preoccupied wondering how he (Jonah) eats and breathes, and other science facts. And then Monday I was recouping from the weekend of laughing my ass off. So today's going to be a bit of a catch-up day. Anyway, let's get to it.
Today we have: Phara-Oh-Oh!, Res Publica: 2230AD, Quests of Valeria, Vinhos Deluxe Edition, Mess Machine, Tokaido App, T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition: Endurance, and Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle.
Robbers raided pharaoh Anopheles grave long ago and stole the treasures buried with him, including his precious scarab beetles. Since that time, the mummy of Anopheles has been roaming the halls of the pyramid scaring away anyone who dares enter.
You take the role of a courageous hero, looking to break the curse of Anopheles. In order to do so, players will need to enter the pyramid and find enough scarab beetles to break the curse. While the pyramid is old, one trap is still functional.
Res Publica: 2230AD is a slightly modified and reskinned version of a much older game, Res Publica. Designed the Reiner Knizia, the original was set in ancient times, but now we’ve clearly progressed into the future and colonizing space.
Players will attempt to trade race and technology cards with each other to collect sets. Sets can be cashed in to complete missions or build useful buildings throughout the game. Each player has 4 missions and once one player has completed all of their missions, or the technology deck runs out, the player with the most points is the winner.
In Quests of Valeria, players will be taking turns recruiting adventurers and sending them out on quests. Each completed quest will not only grant the player precious victory points, but also bonus actions that can immediately be taken. After one player completes their 5th quest, then the game ends and the player with the most points wins.
I’m not going to break down every rule of this game because that would take forever. There are two versions of the game in the box: The “2010 Reserve” version, which is the original Vinhos, and the “2016 Special Vintage” version which is billed as a more streamlined, and (slightly) simplified version of the game. (There aren’t many differences between the two and the rulebooks do a good job of highlighting what is different. If you know one version already, you can quickly master the other.) Since I have the version with Kickstarter stretch goals included, there are also four small expansions included. Whew, that’s a lot to learn, explain and differentiate. We’d be here until the next grape harvest.
In Mess Machine, players are trying to build a toy without the automated circuitry destroying the whole product.
The design is a straight-up puzzle and literally looks like one. Each toy/image – there are four you can assemble – is represented as a picture with sixteen tiles. One of these sets are mixed up and arranged in a 4×4 grid, image face up. Your job is to reorder them so that the picture is complete.
The catch is that your assembly line machinery only has four functions – and may only run a limited time before it shuts down!
First and foremost, the aesthetic of the cardboard version has carried over perfectly to the small screen. The style is instantly recognizable, with heavy use of slightly-textured white space allowing the focus to remain on the adorable character design. Everything has been translated into 3D animated versions of their paper counterparts, given life with subtle animation that compliments the design. Characters jog along the path to their next stop, ships float at sea, the river water flows. The landscape is still mostly white, but bursts with color where the action is happening. The tiny icons from the board have been fleshed out into detailed little models; all in all, the charm has carried over and even been enhanced with these little details.
I have been a big fan of T.I.M.E Stories. At the time of its release the Myst style puzzles, accompanied by amazing artwork and interesting stories, made it one of my favourite cooperative game experiences. But this feeling has been eroded. The introduction of ‘escape room’ type games follow a similar concept and Mansions of Madness second edition and the Arkham Horror LCG have both made games that offer similar experiences in a much more re-playable format.
This meant that although I was eager to play the latest T.I.M.E Stories expansion ¬- Expedition: Endurance - as I played it the other games in this genre preyed in my mind. To remain king of the hill, T.I.M.E Stories would have to deliver an absolute blinder of a puzzle. Unfortunately, it failed.
theMCGuiRE review take a look at Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle deck building game from USAopoly. This is a great title for the whole family and uses a very good simple deck building mechanic with a story driven design. I absolutely love the tuck boxes, releasing rules and game play as you progress through.
The game offers 7 secret boxes, each having new rules and components for the game! So go pick up a copy at your favorite retailer and dive into the the world of Hogwarts!
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.And if you happen to trip while trying to acquire a strange stone that both the Christians and the Moors are looking for, during the time of the Reconquista
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. And if you happen to trip while trying to acquire a strange stone that both the Christians and the Moors are looking for, during the time of the Reconquista, you would fall on the Spanish plain, too. That's where (and when) you'll be headed in Lumen Fidei, the 5th expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories coming from Asmodee.
From the announcement:
Your next mission, codenamed Lumen Fidei, will send you and your teammates back to 15th century Spain, near the end of the centuries-long Reconquista—the wars between Christians and Moors for control of Spain. Your receptacles are part of a delegation, charged to accompany Michel d’Ailly, the Legate of Pope Martin V. You’ll be attending a secret meeting of Christian military orders, but your objective is a strange stone that has captured the interests of Christians and Moors alike. You need to find and retrieve that stone, bringing it safely back to the T.I.M.E Agency before anyone else can secure it.
Expect Lumen Fidei to hit store shelves sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year.
Nobody said that traveling across the Arctic was going to be easy. There certainly was a rather high chance for everything to go to pot and everyone dying. Well... that kinda happened. Luck was not on
Nobody said that traveling across the Arctic was going to be easy. There certainly was a rather high chance for everything to go to pot and everyone dying. Well... that kinda happened. Luck was not on the side for the crew of the Endurance. But as bad as being trapped in ice and slowly dying is, there's also a time anomaly to deal with. That's just what you'll have to solve in Expedition: Endurance, the new expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories, which is available now.
From the release:
1914 NT: What really happened to the crew of the Endurance and their Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition?
Bundle up, and step into your caisson. The Expedition: Endurance expansion for T.I.M.E Stories is now available, and its time-traveling, Antarctic adventure now awaits you!
From the moment you walk into the agency, it becomes clear that this mission is serious. Bob is late, and when he arrives, he's rattled. Sam is out of order, the techs haven't sorted out the problem, and you're forced to work with an old machine. All of this while you're about to confront one of the worst temporal anomalies that Bob has ever seen…
In games we get to live out situations that we, ourselves can't do. In T.I.M.E. Stories, your characters inhabit the bodies of others in history and look to fix the time stream. But what if you want t
In games we get to live out situations that we, ourselves can't do. In T.I.M.E. Stories, your characters inhabit the bodies of others in history and look to fix the time stream. But what if you want to go a step further? The new Endurance expansion coming for the game lets you jump back in time and take on an alternate form, if you so choose. Now, who's a good boy?
From the preview:
Agents, this is a special training for missions involving… let’s say ‘"non-human receptacles." As you know, the tachyon process separates your mind from your body and lets you slip into and gain control of another human being.
Some time ago, following a rare malfunction of the tachyon targeting device, we found out that we could actually let agents use animals as receptacles. Officer Nathan Marks, the first agent ever to insert into an animal receptacle has kindly agreed to… Where is he? Nathan, would you please stand up and stop mewing? Thank you…
Oh, he’s leaving. Well, as a cat—instead of the intended receptacle, the cat’s owner—Officer Marks was able to execute an amazingly successful distraction on a primitive communication system called the Internet. His efforts allowed the other team members to achieve their objectives without anyone noticing.
We have since performed other non-human insertions. At the time being, we can only target a limited range of animals: mammals, preferably with two or four legs… and with a reasonable brain size. Agency R&D is currently working with the Departments of Biology specializing in botany, entomology, and herpetology. So you can expect some stranger things down the line.
While you can just pull up Google Earth from any internet-capable device and go exploring all over the world, 100 years ago, the only way to go discover a new place was to actually get there, yourself
While you can just pull up Google Earth from any internet-capable device and go exploring all over the world, 100 years ago, the only way to go discover a new place was to actually get there, yourself. And that's just what the crew of the Endurance were attempting to do. Unfortunately, ice has surrounded and trapped their ship and the crew is slowly running out of resources. Add to that, a time anomaly has opened up that you and your futuristic crew are having to travel back in time and fix. No, you're not supposed to make it so the expedition is a success, but you're still needed. That's the story behind T.I.M.E. Stories' Expedition: Endurance expansion and what we get a preview of here.
From the article:
In Expedition: Endurance, your receptacle is one of the crew of the doomed Endurance. Something has gone wrong with the expedition, and you must travel back to the year 1914 to close whatever temporal rift you may find aboard the ship or in the Antarctic wilds beyond.
But your receptacle has already been compromised. The Endurance has been trapped in an ice floe, and the crew is running out of food and heat. The barren white landscape looks like death. And the realization that they're going to die—lost and forgotten in this frozen wasteland—has begun to drive the crew members mad. There's little love or trust left between them. They've been overtaken by paranoia, agoraphobia, and kleptomania.
More than that, there's a good chance that you, too, will succumb to the madness. Just as each T.I.M.E Stories mystery can transport you to a different age and place, it can alter the core rules and jolt you just a little bit from your comfort zone. In Expedition: Endurance, however, that jolt isn't small, and you'll be pushed far from your comfort zone. Instead, you'll be fighting for your sanity as you explore one of the most terrifying of all T.I.M.E Stories adventures in a frozen, cloistered, death-ridden environment.
There certainly was plenty going on in 1914. But this particular situation doesn't revolve around the rolling fields of Europe. That's not to say that being part of a trans-arctic expedition is that m
There certainly was plenty going on in 1914. But this particular situation doesn't revolve around the rolling fields of Europe. That's not to say that being part of a trans-arctic expedition is that much safer than being on the Western Front. As you find your consciousness put inside one of the crew members of this ill-fated expedition, you already find death all around you. Something happened here. Exactly what you'll have to find out, lest all of time unravel around you. That's the story behind Expedition Endurance, a new expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories.
Players must figure out what happened to cause time to be more wibbly-wobbly than it usually is. Your goal isn't to suddenly make the trip a success. No, it's still bound to fail. But exactly how everything comes together is the important part. And supposedly supernatural forces are at play here, so you'll have to be ware of your sanity as time goes on.
You can expect Expedition Endurance to hit store shelves in the first quarter of next year.
Ah, Saturday. What cannot be accomplished on a day like today?*hears someone shout out "You can't build Rome in a day!"* ... Ok, besides that. *hears people shout out hundreds of other things* Ok, fin
Ah, Saturday. What cannot be accomplished on a day like today? *hears someone shout out "You can't build Rome in a day!"* ... Ok, besides that. *hears people shout out hundreds of other things* Ok, fine! But besides the roads, education, the aqueduct, and stability, what have the Romans ever given us? ... I feel I've gotten off-track. Here's today's Review Roundup.
This time around we have: V-Wars, Imhotep, Celestia, Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space, Ghost Stories, Adventure Time Card Wars: Fionna vs Cake, Tanks – Panther vs Sherman Starter Set, T.I.M.E. Stories (spoiler-free and spoiler reviews), Light of Dragons, Roots of Mali, and Mage Wars Arena Battlegrounds Domination.
V-Wars is an all out war for control of the earth. The game starts out as a “fully cooperative game”, but as loyalties are revealed (or switched), it’s clear that lines will be drawn and only one side will win.
Ghost Stories is a cooperative game tasking players with defeating an army of ghosts attacking a lonely village. In order to claim victory, the players, or Taoists, must defeat all incarnations of Wu-Feng before the village is destroyed.
So Card Wars kind of smooshes together aspects of traditional trading card games like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh into one streamlined lane-based battle-fest.
The idea of the game is to do damage to, and eventually knock out, the opposing player. You’ll be playing creatures, buildings and spells in order to chain some awesome combos and knock those hit points from 25 to 0. The battle area is split into four lanes. Cards only battle cards in their own lane, unless you’re told otherwise. Each lane contains two landscape tiles, one of yours and one of your opponent’s.
Gale Force Nine, the company behind titles such as Firefly: The Game and Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery, have recently released a new game – Tanks: The World War II Tank Skirmish Game.
This new game has been launched with the Panther vs Sherman Starter Set, plus a set of two American expansions (Sherman & Pershing) and three German expansions (Panther, Stug G and Panzer IV). Further expansions of British & Russian Tanks are coming in July and August respectively.
Mage Wars Arena Battlegrounds Domination introduces tiles with terrain effects that create a modular arena. There are also more spells and a new way to play the game.
Aaaaaah... Saturday.What a glorious day. What cannot be achieved on such a day as Saturday?Well, I know I can be working on various articles for the site. Hopefully you're getting in some gaming, like
Aaaaaah... Saturday. What a glorious day. What cannot be achieved on such a day as Saturday? Well, I know I can be working on various articles for the site. Hopefully you're getting in some gaming, like I am, too.
At the moment, though, we've got ourselves the Review Roundup.
In today's feature we have: Vikings Gone Wild, Blood Rage: Mystics of Midgard Expansion, Codinca, Blood Rage: Gods of Asgard Expansion, Imperial Settlers: Atlanteans Expansion, King's Forge: Queen's Jubilee Expansion, Talon, 13 Days, 51st State, The Grizzled: At Your Orders, One Night Ultimate Vampire, Area 1851, Tesla vs. Edison: Powering Up, No Thank You Evil, Valeria Card Kingdoms, Legends of the American Frontier, Jail Break, Adventure Land, Anachrony, Android: Mainframe, Shogunate, T.I.M.E Stories: Under the Mask, Aya, Porta Nigra, The Gallerist, Doctor Panic, and Knit Wit.
Queen’s Jubilee is the first expansion for King’s Forge. It has new craft cards and some new gather cards too. It adds variety without adding complexity. And even makes the game play quicker!
In Area 1851, you are one of the area’s top five Tinkerers and you’re looking to prove your grit to the citizens of this Wild West town.
Each turn, players have to deal with and negotiate random events in the area, then continue the turn under those circumstances, by drawing Tinker cards to fill their hand up to five cards, then rolling dice to determine their resources for that turn. Players then spend those resources to build new Gadgets or augment their existing Gadgets with Modifications. These Gadgets and Modifications can then be Delivered to the townsfolk for Reputation. In addition players can choose to scrap cards from their hand, and pull them out of circulation.
The Powering Up! expansion takes Tesla vs. Edison gameplay to a whole new level by infusing exciting new systems and introducing both a sixth player and a solitaire variant! Fans of the game will delight in exploring:
Building a headquarters. What is a good electric company without state-of-the-art facilities such as a laboratory, works, office, and studio? Each option offers different bonuses and rewards to the enterprising player!
Valeria: Card Kingdoms is a tableau-building game for 1-5 players and will feel familiar to deck-building fans. The cards you buy can work for you on your turn and on all the other player turns, as well. On your turn, roll two dice and activate citizen cards with the result of each individual die and the sum of both dice. Other players will simultaneously activate their citizen cards based off of the roll. Next, take two actions from the following: slay a monster, recruit a citizen, buy a domain, or take 1 of any resource. The player with the most victory points at the end wins the game.
Legends of the American Frontier is an adventure game for 3 to 7 players in which you live the life of a newly-minted citizen in the colonial days of America, starting just after the Revolutionary War in the 1780s and running through the early 1800s.
Jail Break is played on a randomly setup, modular board. Consisting of 24 cards, the jail can be laid out in a 6×4 grid, or really into any shape the players would like. Changing the configuration of the jail can lead to a different experience in each game.
Players will each have a mugshot card that shows their special ability. During the game, players will be able to move throughout the prison, gathering resources and potentially attacking other players. Each turn a card will trigger a random event that could be positive or negative, and at the end of the turn, a guard will be moved to a new location of the player’s choice. The first player to successfully escape is the winner.
Adventure Land is a bit of an abstract fantasy adventure game. There are three different adventures (scenarios) included in the box, each of which has their own complexity level and win conditions. The basics of the game remain the same no matter which adventure you are playing.
In Adventure Land, players will be moving their heroes around a 10×11 gridded game board. As your adventurers move, they will be collecting items and companions to use when they try to defeat the game’s fog monsters. While each of the three adventures has their own unique win conditions, many require players to collect a certain type of item(s) to earn victory points. At the conclusion of the adventure, the player with the most victory points will be the winner.
Each player in Anachrony commands one of the games four Paths. During each round, players will be collecting resources, workers, and scientific breakthroughs in the hopes of advancing their society. Anachrony is a two-tiered worker placement game, meaning that players will be taking actions on a shared main board, while also building up their own player board with actions and special powers.
For you historians out there, Android: Mainframe is a reimplementation of a game called Bauhaus. That probably doesn’t mean much to most of you, since it was released only in Spain and only 17 people have it marked as “owned” on BGG. Allow me to explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up. The goal of Mainframe is to capture “nodes” (squares) on the board by surrounding them with “partitions” (little blue walls) with your Access Point Tokens inside. You only get points at the end of the game if your enclosed zones contain only your own tokens, and no other players. The bigger the zone, the more points your access tokens score.
Shogunate pits players against each other as heads of rival clans in a power play maneuver seeking the emperor’s throne. You’ll need to deceive others as to your true intentions, deduce that of your enemies’ and even eliminate other claimants.
In this quick, social deduction card game each player secretly receives a clan affiliation and five action cards. Cards corresponding to the five clans are then randomly lined up on the table. The goal is to scheme your clan’s way to the head of the succession line by the end of the game. The twist is that someone else gets to resolve the actions you play!
If you read my review of A Prophecy of Dragons, you'll know I was disappointed with the previous adventure for TIME Stories, the time travelling cooperative game which I still believe is one of the best cooperative board game experiences on the market. Thankfully, I am happy to say that Under the Mask is a return to form, a fun puzzle and adventure that gets everything just right.
TIME Stories is a mystery and as such your experience will rely on not knowing the puzzles ahead so I'm going to attempt to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. However, there will be some very mild spoilers from here on, so if you want the Under the Mask to be a complete surprise then come back later.
Imagine someone had created a cooperative board game out of domino rally. There you go, you've just imagined Aya and to be fair I could leave the review right there.
In Aya you and your friends have discovered a new land and are travelling inland via river, exploring the untouched wilderness and photographing the local wildlife and breathe taking scenery.
You are a builder in ancient Rome. But you want to be a Master Builder, known as the greatest in the Empire. To claim that title, you’ll work to construct four Roman structures, including the titular city gate, the Amphitheatre, the Basilica, and the city wall, faster and better than your opponents.
It’s a perfect economic strategy board game for all art lovers – manage your own art gallery and became successful and internationally well-known art dealer! You have to do a lot of work to achieve that – make promotions for pieces of art and artists themselves, buy and sell in the international market, bring visitors to your exhibitions, sign contracts and of course hire assistants, who will help you to cope with all this work. Develop your own business-strategy and become the richest and the most famous Gallerist! We are happy to offer you a board game review. Designed by Vital Lacerda, artist is Ian O’Toole, published in 2015 by Eagle-Gryphon Games, Fire on Board Jogos and Giochix.it.
It's here. Doctor Panic, the first co-op game to ever feature a whoopie cushion, or a hairnet, or a needle and thread, is now available in shops. Best of all, it's every bit as dumb as advertised!
There's never been a game that demanded SU&SD's attention more. Time for us to turn on the bright lights, disinfect our mouths and begin the delicate operation... of the review.
In (almost!) five years of running Shut Up & Sit Down we’ve always put the game first. We’ve fretted about player counts and waxed lyrical about themes. We’ve snapped apart mechanics like so many Lego bricks. So today, I hope you guys will indulge me in putting something else first.
Look. At. This. Flipping. Box.
I mean that literally. Knit Wit, the new game from Pandemic creator Matt Leacock, is opened with a flip-top magnetic catch at one end. But we’re just getting started.
Today's the release day for two new board games from Asmodee. Well, one's all-new while the other is a new expansion. They're Histrio and the Under the Mask expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories.histrio_mock
Today's the release day for two new board games from Asmodee. Well, one's all-new while the other is a new expansion. They're Histrio and the Under the Mask expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories.
Histrio puts you in charge of a troupe of performers who are trying to entertain the king. Hire more people for your group and try and stay ahead of the king's changing whims to make sure that you're the one to get the lucrative deals when he wants to watch a show.
Meanwhile, in the Under the Mask expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories, you must figure out what happened to King Tut's funeral mask. When Howard Carter opened the tomb, it was nowhere to be found. So you have to travel back to ancient Egypt to see whodunit. Can you return the time stream to its previous setting?
The discovery and excavation of King Tut's Tomb in Egypt is seen by many as one of the greatest archeological finds of all time. When Howard Carter and his team came across it and opened it up, it gav
The discovery and excavation of King Tut's Tomb in Egypt is seen by many as one of the greatest archeological finds of all time. When Howard Carter and his team came across it and opened it up, it gave us an invaluable and unprecedented look into the world of ancient Egypt. But what if the funeral mask that had been placed on the boy kind weren't there? How would the world be changed? It's just that question that is asked in Under the Mask, the 3rd expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories.
It would seem as though the Syaans have pillaged King Tut's Tomb before Howard Carter was able to make his momentous discovery. It's up to you to hunt them down and find that mask before it's too late. That's not going to be easy, of course. You'll have to use whatever small clues you can to get to the bottom of things and make it all right with the timestream.
Expect to see this expansion on store shelves in the 2nd quarter of this year.
Yeehaw!Get on there, little dogie! Hup! Hup!Hey there, pardners, it's time once more for a Review Roundup.So let's get this rodeo on the road!Today we have: Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King, Mage
Yeehaw! Get on there, little dogie! Hup! Hup! Hey there, pardners, it's time once more for a Review Roundup. So let's get this rodeo on the road!
Today we have: Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King, Mage Knight, Lil' Cthulhu, Fleet Wharfside, Patchwork App, Techno Bowl, Rubicon's Opel Blitz, Arena Rex, Black Hat, Captain's Wager, T.I.M.E Stories: A Prophecy of Dragons, Quadropolis, Orphan Black, City of Spies, and Empires: Age of Discovery.
Li’l Cthulhu is a press-your-luck game for 2 to 5 players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a $25 pledge for a copy of the game (or $30 for the game plus a bonus expansion). Note to parents: although the game is about Lovecraftian horrors, it’s all done in a funny, cute way, so there’s nothing too terrifying for younger players. Except Li’l Cthulhu’s diaper. I don’t even want to think about that.
A look at the upcoming Techno Bowl from Bombshell Games.
Brent Spivey at the moment is an unknown name in the board game world. He's designed several excellent miniature game rule-sets including Havoc: Tactical Miniature Warfare, The Battlefield, and Rogue Planet. When I heard he was entering the board game world my eyebrows arched skyward like my 75 pound horse of a dog hearing the word "walk". When I discovered it was an 8-bit American Football game I was left dumbfounded, like my 75 pound horse of a dog trying to apply the Pythagorean Theorem to an obtuse triangle.
In this first of a series of reviews of Rubicon Models' 28mm (1/56th scale) World War 2 plastic vehicles kits, I take a look at the ubiquitous Opel Blitz truck.
As always this in-depth review contains large sprue pictures, the historical background, my experiences building and painting the model followed by a summary of my opinions on the kit.
I've spent the last few months working those pectorals and drenching myself in olive oil. Why? So that I can now sit shirtless at my computer for a proper review of Arena Rex.
But what IS Arena Rex? It's an excellent miniatures game of gladiator combat in a semi-mythological classical world, where your tiny team of just 3-5 fighters square off with their foes in a battle TO THE DEATH! Or, at least, to the filling of the last wound box and the removing of the little resin figure.
Black Hat pits players against each other as hackers infiltrating a network, hopefully without leaving a trace of their transgressions. With a hand of cards essentially representing your hacking skills, you and others vie to win tricks in order to root into the network’s path laid out along the board. Spaces represent accounts, assets and cyber traps worth varying points, so some are better than others. While there is a final critical asset space triggering the endgame, its occupant doesn’t always signify the winner. Instead, whoever leaves the least evidence of their presence by occupying low-key spots and dumping high skill hacking cards will prove the ultimate black hat.
I used to really enjoy playing card games of chance like Poker. There was no better feeling when you won the pot with a great hand or bluff. It’s harder now to find the time to get friends together to play given everyone’s schedules and “adult” responsibilities. So when I was offered the chance to play and review, Captain’s Wager, a hand management card game of chance from Grey Fox Games, I pounced on it. Does Captain’s Wager stand up to other games from my past or should you pass? Read on!
Captain’s Wager is a hand management card game for 2-5 players and plays between 25–30 minutes. Captain’s Wager plays best with 4-5 players.
A Prophecy of Dragons is the second expansion, and therefore third adventure module for T.I.M.E Stories, and while T.I.M.E Stories remains one of my favourite games of 2015 and one of the best cooperative game experiences to date, A Prophecy of Dragons is by far the worst adventure for the system and its approach to rules and story threaten to undo all the great work accomplished by Asylum and The Marcy Case.
I will try and keep this review as spoiler free as possible; however some mild spoilers will come out in the discussion.
Who here remembers the series Quantum Leap? In the show, the main character would jump through time, inhabiting the body of someone in history and have to make sure they didn't mess up the timeline at
Who here remembers the series Quantum Leap? In the show, the main character would jump through time, inhabiting the body of someone in history and have to make sure they didn't mess up the timeline at all. When I think of T.I.M.E. Stories by Asmodee, I get a similar sense. Granted, you're trying to go fix the timeline, but it's still the first thing that comes to mind. Anyway, Asmodee is showing off a preview of their upcoming expansion for the game, called A Prophecy of Dragons.
As one would expect, A Prophecy of Dragons takes players back to the Middle Ages. Learn the skills inherent in your receptacle (the name for the person you jump into in the game), gain weapons and other important items that will help you in your task. Can you collect the clues and properly interpret them in order to find out what has been changed and make things right again? The whole future is depending on you, lest the Middle Ages remain all sorts of messed up.
You can look for A Prophecy of Dragons to be available in just a couple weeks, March 10th.
Saturday! Saturday! Saturday!Saturday! Saturday! Saturday!Saturday night's alright for fightin'! (as long as it's fighting battles out on the tabletop. Don't actually go out and get into fights, peopl
Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday night's alright for fightin'! (as long as it's fighting battles out on the tabletop. Don't actually go out and get into fights, people) When this posts, I'll be hanging out with Shaughn, our warehouse manager/resident tattoo artist, getting myself my 2nd tattoo. Should be good times.
Anyway, while I have some ink permanently injected into my skin, you can check out some game reviews.
This week our review/preview products include: Seven Card Samurai, 7 Wonders: Duel, King Chocolate, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Vengeance, Twilight Struggle Collector's Edition, Nippon, The Best Treehouse Ever, T.I.M.E. Stories, Bermuda Crisis: Discovery Dawning, Sheriff of Nottingham, Cthulhu Wars, Soldiers of God, Space Crusade, Concordia, Abyss, and Dark Stories.
Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was a famed and prolific Japanese filmmaker. Noted for masterpieces such as Drunken Angel, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, his movies were technical marvels and explored gritty themes surrounding the master-student relationship, heroes, man’s struggles against nature and of course violence. They were also grueling to make. Filming lasted hours and hours with abundant downtime for cast and crew. So they demanded entertainment between takes and other tasks. So Kurosawa invented this card game, Seven Card Samurai.
7 Wonders: Duel is a drafting/tableau building game for two players. Players collect cards to advance their civilizations. The player who achieves military or scientific superiority or who scores the most victory points is the winner.
King Chocolate is a tile-laying/production chain game for two to five players. Players are chocolatiers striving to earn money through controlling various steps in the chocolate-making process. The player with the most money wins.
You’ve played Sentinels of the Multiverse before, right? You should probably check out our review if you haven’t, but here’s a quick summary: one villain. Four (or five, or three) heroes. The villain takes a turn, which is automated, and involves drawing a card from the villain deck and activating any available powers. Then, each hero player gets a turn to play one card and use one power. Each superhero has a unique set of abilities that allow them to attack enemies, defend themselves and their allies, and provide buffs and boosts to the team. The game ends when all the heroes are defeated, OR when the supervillain is destroyed. That’s it in a nutshell.
Recently, young publishers Space Cowboys released a game called TIME Stories. This rather unique board game borrows from the premise of these great movies and sends players through a looping series of games. In TIME Stories, players are temporal agents who travel back in time to accomplish a specific mission. However, unless you are very lucky, chances are it will take you more than one game to achieve your goals. Does this looping mechanic work on our tabletop? Let’s dive in and find out.
TIME Stories is a Cooperative deduction game for 2-4 players that takes about 60-90 minutes to play. In my experience, TIME Stories plays best with 4 players.
Today we are going to look at a new tabletop game currently in funding on Kickstarter. Bermuda Crisis: Discovery Dawning is a game for 2-4 players that plays in about an hour.
The game uses a resource management system and technology tree for players to explore the island of Bermuda and discover interesting powers and artifacts that can be used throughout the game. The game can also feature a healthy dose of player negotiating if players hope to be successful.
Prince John is going to Nottingham! Players take the roles of merchants to gain profits by selling goods in the city while Prince is here. But at first, players must get their goods through the city gate which is guarded by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Will you play it safe with legal goods and make a profit or risk everything and sneak past with illicit goods? Be careful because Sheriff is watching for liars all the time and he can take your goods for himself!
Will you be able to make a deal with the Sheriff or will you persuade him to inspect another player while you quietly go through gate? It’s time for you to become strategy-minded merchant and get rich!
Cthulhu Wars – is a strategy board game published by «Green Eye Games» where players have an opportunity to become the alien race and god taken from the Cthulhu mythos created by H. P. Lovecraft. This game is quite large and includes 64 miniatures of cultists, monsters, aliens and Great Old Ones that differs in height from 20 mm to almost 180 mm. Main designer of this piece of horror is Sandy Petersen. The artworks have been created by Richard Luong.
Soldiers of God is designed for playing tabletop battles during the period of the Crusades. The book is in A5 format, is printed on high quality, glossy paper and comes complete with a deck of action cards to play the game – so the first thing to say is that the book looks great. It contains photographs of nicely painted miniatures, both to illustrate rules and as eye candy.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. How you remember the games that you played many years ago can be very different from the reality. They were the games that defined your history in gaming so you place them upon a pedestal.
Space Crusade is one such game. It introduced me to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, opened my eyes to the world of tactical miniatures games and cemented my love of hobby board games. But is it any good, or do the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia obscure the reality?
A new Space hulk has been discovered by the Imperium of Man, and the chances of a millenniums old spaceship appearing from the warp and not be filled with the agents of Chaos is quite frankly next to zero so you take the role of a squad of Space Marines from either the Blood Angels, Ultramarine or Imperial Fists chapter, while another player controls the alien menace occupying the ancient space ship and blast the crap out of each other.
Could this be the end for Shut Up & Sit Down? The year has barely started and yet it already seems that Quinns is... is leaving us? For a board game? Have any of you seen him? Please get in touch!
Face it, this was inevitable. We all knew the day would come. But why, of all games, was it Concordia? What's so special about it? And how will Matt and I cope with the news? (Clue: WE WON'T.)
In Abyss you must gain ally cards to recruit lords and locations for Victory Points. This game has a blend of press your luck, resource management and set collection.
Happy New Year (to those that celebrate it at this point in time)! :DI hope your new year is full of all the gaming you want. My the dice roll in your favor.But as we look forward to the future, we mu
Happy New Year (to those that celebrate it at this point in time)! :D I hope your new year is full of all the gaming you want. My the dice roll in your favor.
But as we look forward to the future, we must look back and reflect on the past... namely, we need to look at some reviews for games. So let's get right to it.
Today's review article topics include: Isle of Skye, Diamonds, KLASK, T.I.M.E Stories: The Marcy Case, Codenames, Le Havre: The Inland Port iOS, and Dark Stories.
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King is a tile-laying/price-setting game with variable scoring for two to five players. Players set prices, purchase tiles, and place those tiles in their own territories to score points. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
Diamonds is a new take on classic trick-taking games like Hearts or Spades. The goal is to score the most points by winning (and losing) tricks.
The game covers between four and six rounds, depending on the number of players, which ranges from 2 to 6.
Each round, players are dealt a hand of ten cards out of a 60-card deck. This deck is similar to a standard playing-card deck with the four suits – hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds – but instead of 2-10 and face cards, you’ve simply got numbered cards 1 through 15 in each suit.
Like most games of its ilk, the rules of Klask are nearly self evident. Use the strikers to knock the ball into the opponent’s goal and you earn a point. The strikers are attached the surface via a magnetic peg underneath the playing area which you’ll use to maneuver them. But scoring a goal is not the only way that points are handed out. If you ever lose control of your striker, lose your striker in your own goal or if at least two of the magnetic pylons attach themselves to your striker you will award your opponent a point. After every point, the board is reset and play continues until someone scores six points wherein celebratory dance will commence.
The Marcy Case is the first Expansion for T.I.M.E Stories, though I really wish it had been included in the base game. It's a set of large format cards that add a completely new time travelling adventure to the original game. You'll be sent back to 1992 to find Marcy, a young girl who for some reason is important to the future world.
Codenames isn't the kind of game I would normally play. It hasn't got miniatures, dice, Cthulhu or light sabres. It doesn't involve controlling territory, raising armies or levelling up. Instead Codenames is a simple game about word play and I'm beginning to think it's the best game of the year.
The premise of Codenames is paper thin but that doesn't matter, laid out is a 5 x 5 grid of Codenames which could be the names of spies, civilians or a deadly assassin. You will split into two teams and try and work out the names of your team's spies before your opponent and without finding the assassin. A spy master on each team will use word association to give clues to the identity of their teams' spies. For example they could say animal, and the code name could be horse.
In Codenames you are a spymaster, giving clues, or guessing the whereabouts of your spies. The group is split into two teams each with one spymaster.
You set up a 5 x 5 grid of cards. Each card has one word on it. The two spymasters have a key that shows them which cards in the grid belong to both teams, which cards are neutral and which one is the assassin.
Today, we are going to be looking at Le Havre: The Inland Port for iPad and iPhone. Originally designed by Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola), Le Havre: The Inland Port has the kind of designer pedigree that makes eurogame fans drool. This digital version was developed by DIGIDICED, their first foray into iOS board gaming.
The tabletop version of Le Havre: The Inland Port was always well received, but not one that gets a lot of attention. So let’s dive in and see how this translation worked out.
How hard is it to solve a murder? I’m guessing that unless you have a lot of fake science (I’m looking at you CSI, Zoom! Enhance!), it’s most likely not an easy task.
Today we are going to be looking at a new offering from Z-Man Games called Dark Stories. This pack of cards tasks players with figuring out how a person died; be it from a freak accident or murder most foul. What makes it difficult is that the players have very little to go on in the way of clues. Dark Stories is a small box with minimal components, does that mean small enjoyment? It’s time to find out.
Dark Stories is a deduction game for any number of players that will play for as long as you want.
Hello to everyone on this cold Saturday. I hope you're having a good day. I'm cracking nuts... for that fruitcake I've been telling you all about all week. They don't use the phrase, "nutty as a fruit
Hello to everyone on this cold Saturday. I hope you're having a good day. I'm cracking nuts... for that fruitcake I've been telling you all about all week. They don't use the phrase, "nutty as a fruitcake" for nothing, you know. I hope you have your own projects you're working on, be they gaming-related, culinary-related, or just whatever else you feel like doing.
What I feel like doing at the moment, though, is taking a small break from making small breaks (these are the jokes, people!) and share with you the reviews I've come across in the past week.
Today's articles feature: Black Hat, Ships, Above and Below, Traders of Osaka, The Bloody Inn, Hangtown, Rum & Bones, The World of Smog, Avarium Academy, The Builders: Antiquity, T.I.M.E. Stories, Bang! The Dice Game, Mysterium, Fury of Dracula, Pandemic Legacy, Between Two Cities, El Grandulon for Freebooters Fate, Opel Blitz by Rubicon Models, Star Wars Armada Wave 2, DreadBall Xtreme, and Pathfinder Battles: Red Dragon Evolution Set.
In the game of Hangtown, players become Gold Rush era Pioneers who are competing for riches, resources, property, and prestige. …They must also be prepared to deal with outlaws, shootouts, and hangings at the infamous Hangman’s Tree!
The game features a thoughtful variety of streamlined mechanics, which are notably innovative, yet traditional and familiar in feel—such as fresh spins on tableau building, worker placement, simultaneous action selection, variable turn order, and resource and hand management.
Avast ye pirates! Gather your crews and set sail for adventure on the high seas in Rum & Bones! Based on online MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) style games, Rum & Bones has 2-6 players taking control of legendary pirate heroes, each with unique powers and abilities, as their crews fight over Davy Jones’ legendary treasure!
Set in the fantastic steampunk The World of Smog created by Panache Animation, On Her Majesty’s Service is a stylish board game for two to four competing players. You’ll need to navigate the rotating tiles that make up the game board, trading Ethers and Artefacts in order to fulfill the quest set by Queen Victoria, all the while dealing with the Agents of the Shadow Master.
In the Japanese high school-themed battle board game Avarium Academy, each player assumes the role of one of Avarium Academy’s eight unique Idols and tries to win the game by:
Completing their Idol’s win condition, Having the most merit points at the end of the game, or Expelling all other Idols from the school to be the last one standing! Avarium Academy has a quick set-up of just five minutes while games generally take 20-30 minutes. With its unique Idols, huge variety of interactive students, and powerful and tricky schemes, Avarium Academy is a fast-paced battle board game that promises a familiar yet different experience with each game!
The Builders: Antiquity tasks players with organizing laborers with special skill sets (resources) to erect structures from the days when civilization was considered “classic.” The general mechanics and basic game play are identical to its predecessor, Middle Ages. You can reference our review of that title anytime. This follow-up design adds a few new elements: tools, loans, prisoners and universities. Alas, still no trade unions. If we’re lucky, maybe those will be included in The Builders: Industrial Revolution?
T.I.M.E. Stories is a game that emerges from the rapidly expanding branch of gaming that focuses on story exploration over competition or strict mechanical structure. Comparable to games like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, these novels-turned-boardgame have all the details written out ahead of time, and it’s up to the players to explore, discover clues, and resolve the plot before time runs out. T.I.M.E. Stories proves unique in this genre thanks to its merging of story-based elements with traditional tabletop tropes such as rolling dice, having actions and resources to collect and spend, and playing out on a board.
Bang! The Dice Game is, as it’s name would suggest, a re-imagining of the much loved card game, Bang! It’s a bluffing and player elimination game for groups of 3-8 players, set in the old American West. You’re going to be deceiving your opponents and making sure you end up the last gunslinger on their feet. Forget friendship, forget family, forget marital bonds. In Bang! The Dice Game, the only player you can trust is yourself (unless you forget which role you have and accidentally sabotage yourself).
Most players at the table for a game of Mysterium are psychics, trying to divine clues provided by one other player, who happens to be a ghost. This ghost was murdered and it’s up to the psychics to figure out by whom and how. It won’t be that easy, however.
The most infamous vampire of all times terrorizes the living again in this third edition of Fury of Dracula! This is a board game of deduction and gothic horror based on Bram Stoker’s classic novel. One player is the legendary Dracula who stealthily moves and spreads the vampirism through the Victorian-era Europe surrounded by stormy seas and fogs. Will you be able to stop or he will drink all of your blood?
Pandemic Legacy was published by Z-Man Games (release date: October 8, 2015). The game was designed by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock. The illustrations were done by Chris Quilliams.
Pandemic Legacy belongs to the Pandemic game family.
There is a blue edition and a red edition.
The game came out as “Season 1”. Whether there will be any other seasons is still unclear.
In spring of 2015, we previewed a tile drafting game called Between Two Cities from Stonemaier Games. Their Kickstarter campaign successfully funded with over 5,000 backers pledging for a copy.
Months later, the game has finally made its way to our doorsteps (on time I might add) and we were able to give it a go. Designed by Matthew O’Malley (Princess Bride: Battle of Wits) and Ben Rosset (Brewcrafters, Mars Needs Mechanics), Between Two Cities has players drafting tiles for two different cities that will be built concurrently with their neighbors. Does it work? Let’s jump into this tile placement game and find out.
Between Two Cities is a tile drafting and placement game for 1-7 players that takes about 20 minutes to play. Between Two Cities plays well with any amount of players.
Freebooters Fate is big - and it is getting bigger. With El Grandulon the game reaches a new size and presents the first ogre miniature for the Pirate Skirmish.
It’s here! It’s finally here! After months of delays, the second wave of releases for Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars Armada has arrived. I got my shipment yesterday, and decided to snap a few pictures while I was unboxing everything. They are all posted up on the Man Battlestations blog, along with my impressions.
The fearsome Red Dragon, what an iconic RPG enemy! Join us for a look at the Pathfinder Battles: Red Dragon Evolution set, containing 3 RPG fantasy miniatures that will strike fear into the hearts of your adventurers. This set from Paizo Publishing and WizKids Games is available for $19.99 direct from Paizo.
Welcome once again to Saturday. It's been quite a morning over here. Rather busy for a Saturday. Biggest thing I've been working on is my decision to magnetize my Betrayal at Calth set (yes, this mean
Welcome once again to Saturday. It's been quite a morning over here. Rather busy for a Saturday. Biggest thing I've been working on is my decision to magnetize my Betrayal at Calth set (yes, this means it's not 100% assembled yet. The games I've been playing of it have been using stand-in figs for much of it. It happens). The only problem comes from maneuvering small, fiddly pieces that, very literally, will move on their own. As such, I have glue all over my fingers. Thankfully, though, on at least one occasion, that's helped me when my drill bit slipped and instead of giving me a scrape, it just gouged the glue that'd built up there. So, an asset hidden in a liability.
But that's a story for when I post the review later today. At the moment, we've got other reviews/previews to deal with.
In this batch we have: Late French Napoleonic Infantry from Perry Miniatures and Warlord Games, Dark Moon, Clockwork Kingdom, Queen of the Hill, Dice Masters: The Amazing Spider-Man, Conquest at Kismet, Barony, Star Wars Armada Wave 2 Ships, Tides of Time, Pentoggle, Mars Attacks Miniatures Game, Risk: Star Wars Edition, Space Cadets: Away Missions, Bomb Squad, Escape the Nightmare, and T.I.M.E Stories.
In this latest Review Battle Brush Studios' Sigur is taking a close look at Warlord Games' Late French Line Infantry and Perry Miniatures' French Napoleonic Infantry 1812-1815. Seeking out differences between the two sets and comparing the two sets by categories.
Dark Moon, which if you trace its origins far enough, is a game inspired by a game, inspired by a game, inspired by a television show, inspired by an earlier television show.
In hopefully clearer terms, Dark Moon by Evan Derrick is a re-skin of a game called BSG Express, a once downloadable and free, quicker playing version of Battlestar Galactica the Board Game, which was inspired by the series, which was of course inspired by the original television series long before that.
I love Battlestar Galactica the board game, and by extension, I loved BSG Express and now Dark Moon. Like its predecessor BSG Express, Dark Moon successfully distills Fantasy Flight's popular game down to its gooey, duplicitous center. Gone are the locations around Galactica, and the space battles. But don't fret, this isn't a game about humanity's struggle against the skin jobs and the search for a new home. Dark Moon exists in that sci-fi sweet spot, the microcosm -- a small band of people trapped by circumstance in an inhospitable place.
Follow the link to read the full blog post or stream the podcast episode!...
Clockwork Kingdom is a game in which each player takes the role of a lord attempting to claim the throne in the wake of the king’s death. To start the game, each player has a small army of loyal steam-powered automatons to do their bidding. Each player must choose where to send his servants, whether to get supplies from the market, build useful contraptions in the workshop, or even attempt to acquire powerful alchemy stones, all the while warring with opponents in a number of battlefields in an attempt to control the kingdom by force.
However, players have more at their disposal than simple automatons. Throughout the course of the game, players can also recruit Alchemists, Professors, and Artificers to their cadre of loyal vassals, each with their own unique abilities. To claim the Clockwork Throne, players must make difficult decisions to outwit their opponents in an attempt to gather resources, obtain workers, manufacture contraptions, and dominate battlefields.
The extremely addicting and fun thing about games that push your luck is that one moment where you tell yourself this is the last card you will be taking… then you survive and you change your mind that you will be drawing just one more… and you still survive! And you promise that this next one would really be your last – and you survive yet again! Nothing beats that moment of suspense as you push your luck to the extreme, only to be rewarded by glorious victory for your bravery.
In the light and casual game Queen of the Hill, players are queens vying for control of a celestial hill. Taking turns, they attempt to Summon, Draft and Recruit the strongest female warriors from different worlds and eras to join their army. However, this is a very dangerous act, and they cannot always control what they Summon. At the end of every round, players compare their total warrior scores Drafted and the highest score wrests control of the hill. Control the hill twice and a player wins the game! Watch out though, the Dark One (also the only male in the game) might accidentally be Summoned and he will prey upon all the ladies. If you push your luck too hard, you might end up drawing him, and he will clear all your points and force you to end your recruitment. How lucky are you feeling today? How far do you dare to push your luck? The more you push your luck without drawing the Dark One, the more likely the next opponent will attract him. And the more you push your luck, the more your foes are forced to push theirs if they are to beat you! The pressure is ON!
The Amazing Spider-Man is the fourth Marvel Dice Masters set. As you’ve certainly deduced from the name, it revolves around the famously sarcastic web-slinger, his allies and notorious enemies – including new team affiliation Sinister Six. Other traditionally indie Marvel characters who have worked in some capacity on and off with the teen superhero receive the Spidey team group like Daredevil, Luke Cage and Ghost Rider. Although their abilities largely remain general in scope. The series also includes a smattering of popular unrelated extras, like Wolverine, Black Widow and Drax the Destroyer. The general mechanics and game play remain the same as with other sets and IPs across the system.
Conquest at Kismet is an asymmetrical two player card game. Each player controls one race, either Storm or Trice, and attempts to win the game by destroying the other player’s mothership. At the beginning of the game, each player is given the complete deck of blue or red cards and the corresponding mothership card. Players then alternate taking turns as the Attacker and Defender, playing cards and resolving combat, until one mothership is destroyed.
Barony is a strategy game for two to four players. Players strive to earn resources to purchase titles of nobility. The player with the most victory points when one player earns the title of duke wins the game and is crowned the new king.
Quinns I am so sorry that I blew up your space ship. I know you liked that space ship and you wanted to try out that space ship as part of Armada’s Second Wave of Expansions, so I apologise for shooting it until it exploded. It was only a small space ship and it did not take much shooting before the exploding happened, so you cannot accuse me of excess.
However, I hope this won’t colour your experience or your impressions of Wave 2, even though I, a completely inexperienced Armada player, blew up your space ship. And also a lot of your TIE fighters. Obviously I didn’t do great, being new to the game and a little overwhelmed, yet I still seem to have shot a lot of things. How do you feel?
In 2012, Love Letter rocketed into the gaming scene and introduced gamers to the micro game; a low-cost, quick playing game with minimal components. Once the industry saw the success of this juggernaut, there were no shortage of micro games to hit our tables.
To be honest, I got burned out on the micro game genre fairly quickly and said I was done with it. That was before I found out about Tides of Time. As any regular reader of this site knows, I’m a bit of a card drafting addict. Easily one of my favorite mechanics in gaming, Tides of Time brought us a two player only card drafting game that plays in about 10 minutes. Was Tides of Time enough to bring my out of my micro game stupor? Let’s find out.
Tides of Time is a card drafting and set collection game for two players that takes about 10 minutes to play.
The object of the game is to match either five of the same number tile (numbered one through five), all of a different color (red, orange, yellow, blue and green), or match five of the same color, all numbered one through five. Players earn points by placing tiles and completing rows of tiles. The player with the most points is deemed the best Pentoggler ever, at least until the next game is played.
Mars Attacks the Miniatures Game puts you in the shoes of the human resistance or invading aliens for the fate of the planet. Everything you need is in the box and ready to play including miniatures and terrain.
How in the name of all that's unholy do you review a game like Escape the Nightmare? It's completely unlike any other game I've played and as such its really difficult to suggest a point of reference. It's less a game and more a group stress test, where your heart is pumping and your brain is confused, because Escape the Nightmare is a game that purposefully messes with your head.
As hinted at by the title, the aim of Escape the Nightmare is to abscond from a dimension of hellish dreams and horrors. In order to escape you will need to collect 4 nightmares of the same type, and to get hold of these cards you merely agree to swap with another player. Of course this doesn't sound much like a nightmare. To make this game more hellish two simple rules are in effect; take the action listed on any card you are given, and you have thirty seconds to collect the set.
When reviewing a game, I generally play the game enough times till you feel like you know it. It’s important to have seen everything the game can offer before committing your thoughts to the internet. But in the case of TIME Stories I'm writing this review after just one play through because I now can't play this game again until I buy the first expansion. It results in what could be the most controversial game of 2015, but could also be one of the best games of 2015.
In TIME Stories you play as a TIME agent, and you have to travel back in time to fix temporal anomalies. Something is buggering with the natural order of the events, so it's your job to police the past. You'll do this by leaping into the bodies of people at the period and location of the event and then will then have a limited amount of actions to solve the mystery before the run ends and you are forced back to the start.
Well, as I sit here, assembling The Horus Heresy set, working on articles related to it for next week and beyond, I think about other games and other review articles.Oh hey, here's a whole bunch of th
Well, as I sit here, assembling The Horus Heresy set, working on articles related to it for next week and beyond, I think about other games and other review articles.
Oh hey, here's a whole bunch of them in one, convenient spot for you. It's today's Review Roundup.
In this installment we have articles on: Age of Tyrants, Mansions of Madness, More Cash ‘n More Guns,DC Dice Masters: War of Light, The King is Dead, Fury of Dracula, Roll for the Galaxy: Ambition, Two Rooms and a Boom, Aura, T.I.M.E. Stories, WWE Superstar Showdown, and Pathfinder Adventure Card Game - Wrath of the Righteous.
Something stirs in the West ... Something huge ... I take my sauce to this sentence contained in Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien for the uneducated and NOT: the book is not released after the film but a good fifty years before thank you to revise your classics low floor moviegoers) who spoke of Mordor (well there is but it was not my fucking rot dramatic introduction slamming I like to do long brackets from the outset !!) to talk about a future project that seems figurinistique promised a real success.
As an investigator, you believe you have seen it all: grisly murders, seemingly unsolvable mysteries, and all the horrible nightmares that comes along with these things. Nothing surprises you anymore, and you would be shocked if you found something that did. But perhaps, this new job you have taken is a bit more than you can handle?
In Mansions of Madness, you play the part of the investigator, sent to explore a seemingly normal crime in a seemingly normal house. But things aren’t always as they seem. It appears that the unseen forces in the darkness are working against you. Not only are you unsure if you will solve the mystery, but will you even escape the house alive?
So you opened up your copy of Cash & Guns and you were pretty happy with all the contents; as advertised, you found both a stack of cash and a pile of guns.
But maybe, just maybe, you looked in that box and you said to yourself, “Really? This is it?”
I’ve got great news for you, stranger. There’s a new box in town, and once again it brings exactly what it advertises:
War of Light is the second DC Comics Dice Masters set. It revolves around the various Lantern Corps. It also includes the Teen Titans. Yep. There are a handful of popular characters and villains recurring from the first DC set, Justice League. However, here of course each of those is associated with its role in the War of Light story arc. The general mechanics and game play remain the same as with other sets and IPs across the system. You can reference our review of the original Marvel Dice Masters sets for the basic rules.
Being a gamer it also gives you an ideal time to break out the occasional party game and see if you can convert some non-gamers. This is always somewhat tricky to me because there’s typically no grey area with party games. They usually make the party epic or bust it up in my opinion.
So, given my boom or bust party game gauge, we look at the social, party game: Two Rooms and a Boom. This game breaks the party people in two teams spread between two rooms who try to blow the other team’s leader away. Does Two Rooms and a Boom make your party night epic or was it just another party game dud? Read on!
Two Rooms and a Boom is a social party game for 6-30 players runs between 7-20 minutes per play. Two Rooms and a Boom plays best with 12+ players.
More often than not, I look for games that provide me a thematic experience, with a rich story and setting and the ability to interact with both. However, there are also times when all I want is to play something abstract and strategic.
Some of my earliest gaming memories are of playing Uno with friends and family. There’s an elegance and simplicity there that sometimes I yearn for. To meet that want, I was interested in trying out Aura by Michael Orion and WhoaWorthy Games, a newcomer to the card game scene. Are Aura’s colors vibrant and vivid, or do they take on a dull and muted pallor? Read on to find out!
Aura is an abstract strategy card game for 2-4 players, that plays in about 30 minutes. Aura plays well with any number of players.
It's time for another of 2015's most breathtaking releases, and that's not a euphemism for a fart. Rather, T.I.M.E. Stories is a whole new kind of co-op board game. Your team will complete each time travel scenario in a blistering five hours and then it's time to buy a whole new deck, making this the most expensive game we've ever covered. Great Scott!
On the other hand, the only thing Quinns loves more than the movie Primer are board game expansions. What happens when an immovable force meets an unstoppable object? Tune in and find out.
Wrath of the Righteous is the latest base set in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game series. It follows the same formula as previous sets with a few new additions.
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