One Gamer's Opinion

Feb

Ranking – a structured, bluffing, Apples to Apples.

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Board Game Reviews, Luck and Betting Games, Party Games | No Comments »

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I pulled out Ranking. It’s a game that is published by Rio Grande, which usually means it’s going to be a Euro style resource management game. However, my game acquisition team was telling me it was party game… maybe… They seemed extremely unsure, but were certain it wasn’t a resource management game. So off I went tromping off into the relatively unknown to learn Ranking.

The king tiles are used to keep track of who is playing each color. Then the small colored markers are used to make guesses about who owns each tile.

The first thing I noticed when opening the box was the artwork. It’s fun, colorful, cartooned, and whimsical. There is also a whole lot of it! The game comes with lots and lots of tiles, each with a picture of an item on one side, 5 colorful ‘king’ markers, and a cartooned castle score track. All and all the game looked really good, but largely like something I would expect to see children playing, rather than a group of adults.

But as I read through the rules, it started to become clear that the strategy and bluffing in this game is subtle enough that most kids would never have clue. You see, each round there is a question, such as “What is a mail man most likely to see on his route?”, and players submit a tile from their hand of tiles that they think fits that answer the best. All of these tiles are shuffled together and lined up next to the number “3″ right in the middle of the tower. Each turn a player is going to pick two items that are in the same row and argue that one is more fitting than the other. For example if a basketball and a canoe are on the same row a player might argue “A basketball is going to be much more common than a canoe. We are in Indiana! Basketballs goals are in every driveway. But a canoe is usually stored in a garage, and is therefore out of sight of the mailman”. Then that player would move the Basketball token up to the number “4″ on the tower, and the canoe would be moved down to number “2″ on the tower.

A look at a game in progress. The tile at the top of the image has been promoted to the number "6" place on the tower, so it is presumably the best answer. However two people believe that red was the one that placed that tile. If red really did place that tile, they will only get four points. If some other player placed that tile, then they will get six points.

Now it’s time for the real question in the game, do you think that you know what token that player contributed? Players always want their tile to rise higher on the tower, because the height on the tower is the number of points a player receives at the end of the round. Those points are counter balanced by other players correct guesses. If you think the Basketball, from our previous example, belonged to that player you would put your chip of their color on that tile. At the end of the round the player scores the height of their token on the tower, minus the number of correct tokens on that tile.

One complaint that I heard was about when you were allowed to make guesses. If the blue player just moved tiles, then you can only make a guess about who blue is. If you aren’t sure, you can hold on to your blue chip and wait till the next time it comes back around to blue’s turn and then make a guess. But what if the round ends before it gets back to blue? You are stuck with tokens you didn’t play. There isn’t any sort of a penalty for this, just the loss of an opportunity. My players suggested the house rule that “At the end of the round, players may place any remaining colored tokens they have”.

Apparently, I am awful at bluffing. I would move several tiles around and no one would place a chip, but as soon as I went to touch my tile, everyone dropped their chip on it. It was as if I had “Yes, my tile is the ping pong table” written across my forehead in permanent marker. Needless to say, I had a couple of rounds where I didn’t get any points at all.

One thing that was pretty nice about this game was that it wasn’t super long. I would estimate that the game took us about a half hour to get through, which felt about right. If it was any shorter, it wouldn’t be satisfying, but any longer, and I could see my players getting restless. The half hour playing time is exactly what was estimated on the box, which I am so grateful when that is relatively accurate.

A look at some of the question tiles. These are two sided and the game comes with a lot of them. Given that we only used three per game, I think we have a lot of games to play before we see repeat questions.

After each game, I always ask my players for opinions, and what I got surprised me. They all felt pretty lukewarm about this one. It was ok, I had certainly brought them worse to play, but nothing about this game really got them excited. I on the other hand really enjoyed the bluffing elements, as well as the creative elements required in coming up with reasons for your decisions. So certainly some differing of opinions.

When I probed my players further they described the game as “A more structured Apples to Apples”, which is a unique look at the game. This game certainly has some mechanics that are similar: You have a hand of cards (or tiles in this case). You submit one secretly into a pile that is shuffled and read aloud by a starting player. You replace your played tile from a draw pile. You do argue that one answer is better, or more worthy, than another. Certainly some similarities I had never thought about.

So this week is a split decision. I would recommend this game, but my gaming group wouldn’t. I’m sure I will beg them to play this game with me again, and given that they didn’t absolutely hate it, they probably will. But I don’t expect to see any of them requesting that this one be pulled back out.

Feb

The Blood-Red Banner: The Alamo – Disappointing, all around

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Board Game Reviews, Luck and Betting Games, War Games | No Comments »

Being a reviewer, I’m sure that many think that I crave blood and go for the jugular. This is resoundingly not the case. I’m more of a “benefit of the doubt” kind of person. I try to see the advantages and who a game *might* be good for, rather than simply who it is not a good fit for, however, every once in a while I find a game that is going to make me sound like a cold hearted, blood thirsty, monster. Today that game is “The Blood-Red Banner: The Alamo”.

I wasn’t familiar with Victory Point Games before my game acquisition team had this, and a handful of their other games, arriving on my door step. When I opened the box and saw all of the baggies I was mildly confused, but then presumed that these were similar to Cheap Ass games. Cheap Ass games, or games of a similar style, usually come in very cheap packaging (such as baggies, or very plain black and white boxes) and they only have the components that are required to play and are unique to the game. So special cards, boards, and tokens might be provided. However, if the game needs a standard die or pawns, you’ll need to supply your own. This keeps the game cheap, usually $5-$10. Looking at the Victory Point Games, they seemed to fit this model. The games each came in a baggie or manila envelope and were printed on cheap card stock. I didn’t have to supply any generic pieces, but the games didn’t really need any either, opting to have printed cardboard chits rather than pawns. I then noticed the price tag on the games, which are printed on the front insert for each baggie. The Blood-Red Banner was marked for retail at $17.95. Other games were marked as high as $40. I was a bit flabbergasted.

The "board" used in this game. I say "board" because it is made from a folded piece of card stock that has been printed on one side. Maybe "paper mat" is a better term. The Mexicans all start on the paper mat in the "4" positions of the track and progress toward the center until they breach the wall.

So the game came out of the packet and I began reading the rules… or trying to read the rules. I like to think of myself as a seasoned rule reader, but these were long, complicated, and generally just hard to digest. The game isn’t hard. Once I knew what I was doing, it was surprisingly simple and remarkably dull (but we’ll get to that). Why were the directions so awful? Firstly the rules to this particular game were a single 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Double sided. With small font. Each side containing three columns of text. I’ve seen games that were ten times as complicated with a shorter explanation of the rules. Besides the general length, they were also spaghetti rules, with each section referencing other sections via section numbers and sub numbers (things such as ”See Section 4.2.3″). Spaghetti rules are maddening! And beyond that, the rules just were not written in very plain English. It took roughly a half hour to get through the rules and really know what was going on…. the game is only slated for 15 minutes, and in reality took closer to 5 minutes. So it shouldn’t have taken me half that long to get through the rules.

One of the cards used in the game. This indicates that the Brown, Yellow, and White Mexican tokens will move forward on this turn. It also states that you get one action point (can attack or move) on your turn. Occasionally you'll be granted two actions, but one seems to be standard.

So what is this game actually about? It’s a solitaire game about the Alamo. Mexicans are rushing the fort and it’s your job to beat them back. Eventually they are going to get through your defenses, but you should hold them off for as long as you can. Each turn you flip a card and either place the Mexicans pictured on the board, or progress them forward along their given track. Then you have a choice between moving one of your forces, or fighting. If you choose to fight you pick the Mexican to attack that is within range of your guy (indicated on the board by lines) , and roll a die. If you roll higher than the number listed on that Mexican’s chit, then they move backwards one space. Otherwise, they stay where they are. Once a Mexican breaches the wall, the game is over. You count up how many cards you have left in the deck, and that determines how well you did. Game over, that’s it. Sure, there are a few finer points to the rules, here and there, but that is the bulk of it. I described it in a paragraph, the author of the rules took several thousand words.

As I mentioned earlier the game was remarkably dull. Perhaps that comes across as harsh, but for me and for other testers who played it, this was resoundingly the case. The player is given only one choice each turn: attack or move. Everything else is determined by luck. The card flip is luck. The dice roll for the attack is luck. Luck luck luck. We found little to no skill in this game, which would have seemed to be paramount for creating an interesting solitaire game. Ya know, something to engage a person’s mind? After doing a little research of this game, I found that this is the simplest game in their series. It’s made for beginners to this style of system. Fine. But even for a beginners game, I still expect there to be some game to it. This was a game that played you, rather than you playing the game.

Between the confusing rules, the high price tag compared to the cheap components, and the poor game play I think it goes without saying that I really can’t recommend this game. Having skimmed some of the other games they published the price tag and awful rules seem to be a virus that they all have. We’ll just have to hope that the game play is better on some of the others.

Feb

Gamer Challenge for the week of January 30th

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Events and Tournaments | No Comments »

Each week the gamer challenge comes from the BGG gamer calendar for 2012. This weeks gamer challenge was to play a game lasting longer then four hours. If you are interested in the calendar check out: www.boardgamecalendar.com/pages/what-is-this

Each week the gamer challenge comes from the BGG gamer calendar for 2012. This weeks gamer challenge was to play a game lasting longer than four hours. If you are interested in the calendar check out: www.boardgamecalendar.com/pages/what-is-this

This week’s gamer challenge was to play a game lasting longer than four hours. If that phrase conjures for you rememberances of a purple pill commercial with an older man walking hand in hand on a pier with a similarly aged woman, don’t worry, it did for us too. More than one joke was made about that this week, and somehow I think that is why the bar was set at four hours, rather than three or five.

My typical game night with friends is on Monday (although you’ll see me gaming with one or two other people throughout the week). However, Mondays are a loud get together with a minimum of eight people and an upper limit closer to 18. We often play party games, or other shorter games. Games lasting two hours, such as Agricola or Powergrid, are about as meaty as we get on these nights. Why is that? Because the night is more about socializing. It’s loud, so rules are hard to hear. We have dinner together which takes away from our gaming time. It’s on a week night so no one can stay super late. I wouldn’t trade my Monday game night with friends for the world.

A stack of potentials. Ultimately we chose Empire Builder.

Getting in a game that would take longer than four hours on a Monday night wasn’t going to happen. So approximately two weeks ago I sent out a round of facebook invites to my friends for a game night on Thursday, February 2nd. I explained the kind of game that we would be playing, but left the specifics wide open.

Over those two weeks I asked around to a lot of folks what they thought we should try. Nearly everyone suggested “Dungeons and Dragons” right off the bat, and I certainly agree that four hours is nearly no time when you are talking about role playing. However, to meet this challenge it really felt like we should play a more traditional board game, so I nixed DnD and we moved on. What else? Diplomacy, Epic Munchkin, Civilization, Talisman… all, and more, were suggestions. They came in from all over: Facebook, Twitter, and friends. In the end we decided to go with one of my old favorites that I never get to play (because it’s such a long game): Empire Builder.

Empire Builder is a train game that uses the crayon railroad system. What this means is that as you build your railroad across the country, you draw it directly on the board with your color of crayon. Then you can travel your train (pawn) up and down the track to pick up goods from given cities and deliver them to other cities that are in need, for a fee of course. The winner is the person who can connect to at least five of the major cities and have $250 million first.

Near the start of our game.

This is a tough game, the money is very very tight. Especially in the early game. Building one length of track costs $1 million. Building across a river or through the mountains cost $2 million. Connecting to a minor city costs $3 million, and connecting to a major city costs $5 million. You only start with $40 million at the start of the game, so it’s easy to use that up really really fast.

About an hour into the game I found myself with my back against the wall. I had spent all of my money, and had borrowed the maximum amount allowed from the bank ($20 million). I had three goals on the table in front of me, but none of them were remotely feasible without a lot more money to spend on track. I was screwed. Luckily the game allows for a reset button. I had never had to use the reset option before in my previous games, and was a bit embarrassed that I was doing so poorly, but press it I did. While the game continued on like normal for my opponents, for me everything went back to the beginning of the game: my track was erased from the board, the loads I was carrying were dropped, the goals I had were discarded for new ones, and all of my debt was erased and I was given $40 million more dollars. After the reset I did much better, and was having a much more typical game.

Gaming sessions for games like this seem to have a different feel to them. For starters, everyone doesn’t stay at the table the entire time. We have a new puppy in our household, and on a couple occasions people took their turn and then went to feed/potty the puppy. Other times, there was scampering off to the kitchen for beverages, Cheetos, or cake. Play continued between these temporary disappearances and shouts of “It’s your turn!” could be heard from across the house.

Another major difference between this and other, shorter, games was that distractions were welcomed. We had the TV on in the background (something we do not often do while gaming) so that as you were waiting for your turn to come back around you could watch “American Idol”, or Netflix, something to entertain you so that you were not just staring at the board for the next five minutes. Also, the use of a “filler” game was employed. Raymond (our third player) whipped out his phone for a rousing game of ‘Go’ while waiting for his turn to come back around.

All total, our game took approximately four and a half hours to finish. We started at just a few minutes before 7pm, and we finished right at 11:30pm. It was fun, and good to play an old favorite. By the end of the game we all were touching at least five of the major cities, and we were just racing to make the most money. Raymond ended up winning with $257 million. Tristan had $142 million. I finished off with $105 million, not too bad for restarting an hour in.

Our end game. I think the pretty drawn board is something that draws me to this game.

Next weeks challenge is particularly challenging: Play a game with Todd. Yes, Todd. Do you know a Todd? We don’t, and so we are scouring the Indianapolis area for a willing Todd to come game with us. If you know anyone who might fit this bill please have them contact me at victoriabn@gameparadisestore.com and we’ll set up a time to game together!

Feb

Last Word – Word Game or Party Game?

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Board Game Reviews, Party Games, Word Games | No Comments »

“What shall we play tonight?”

It was a Saturday night and a few of us were sitting around, just killing some time. The Super Bowl is in town, and thus many of my group is staying in rather than battling with the crazy sport fans and excess traffic. So there we sat, attempting to find something to amuse ourselves with. Upon digging through the pile of “still needs to be reviewed” games, we found Last Word.

Last Word is a party game produced by Buffalo Games. However, oddly, it’s a party game that can be played with as few as two players. Our first few games we had three players.

Once I read through the rules, some debate broke out among us custodians of the Game Paradise Library. Was this really a party game? Or should this be filed as a word game? You see, this is a game about coming up with words that fit a category and start with a given letter. The person who spits out the “Last Word” before the buzzer goes off is the winner of the round and receives a point. Clearly this has elements of both, and thus the debate still rages on. I started out the debate on the “it’s a party game” side of the fence, but my mind has been swayed.

As I said, the first night we played with three players. The game was fun and fast paced. We got a lot of giggles about some of our answers which spanned everything from the predictable, to the absurd, and even to the more ‘adult’. The scores were all close, and when I lost, I demanded a rematch. Given that the game only took us maybe 20 minutes, a rematch wasn’t a huge time investment. After our second game, we all agreed that on the next game we needed to try it with some fresh blood and more players.

So our usual game night rolled around and I pulled Last Word back out. ”Oooooo, what’s that one about?”, came the calls from my players. So I gave a brief synopsis of the game and suffixed it with “It’s really good, I think you guys are really going to enjoy it!”. With that, I ended up with seven players for our game.

We all crowded around my table and I gave a more detailed explanation of the rules. There really aren’t that many rules, so it didn’t take long, and we were off.

The first thing I noticed was it is a lot more difficult to figure out who said legitimate answers, and who said it last, when you have a cacophony of seven voices. One of our friends who didn’t play ended up standing there watching us, and playing referee for timing disputes. Even with a referee there were some disagreements about who was last, and who had valid answers. Then there were the similar answers….

“Italian Foods that begin with the letter G!”

“Gorgonzola Chicken.”

“Gorgonzola Cheese!”

*BZZZZ!*

“Wait, you can’t just use Gorgonzola again with a different suffix.”

“Sure I can. It doesn’t say I can’t!”

Things went on like that for a while. I actually had one player who quit halfway through because she felt ganged up on because votes on whether a word was legal or the timing of it never seemed to go her way. Also the fun, quick, 20 minute game now seemed to be a thing of the past with the game creeping closer to an hour long. When the game was finally over I asked my players, “So what did you all think?” Groans and shrugs filled the table. It was clear that this one was going to go on a shelf for a while.

So is this a word game, or a party game? As I said, my mind was changed. To me, this is a word game. Why? Because the cornerstone of a party game, in my mind, is the number of people you can play it with. This was a fun game with three, but with seven (and the game theoretically supports eight), the game was unwieldy and all the fun was sucked out of it. So “not fun with a large group” knocks it right out of the running for a party game, and lands it firmly in the realm of “word game”.

Having played it in both a small group, and a large group, I don’t think this game is “bad”. I just think it has a very limited player size range. This game really needs at least 3 (so you can democratically resolve disputes), but I think would become unwieldy with more than four. If evaluated as a 3-4 player word game, it’s fun and faced paced and I would totally play it again. But as an 8 person party game, this game can go back on the shelf. It simply wasn’t enjoyable with that many people.

Jan

Zombie Ninja Pirates (Oh my!)

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Board Game Reviews, Theme Games | No Comments »

When this game, and the expansion deck arrived, we immediately started butchering the name.

“What should we play tonight?” ”Well Zombie, Pirate, Fairies just arrived.”

“What should we play tonight?” “Well we could try Pirate, Witch, and the Wardrobe.”

“What should we play tonight?” “How about Vampire, Zombies, Pirates? Oh My!”

It became a running gag. Every time the name of the game was said, it was elaborated on, in some creative way, to get a giggle out of the others (and because we never could remember what it’s proper name was). This became an absurd game all it’s own.

One night I finally settled down to read the rules and get us going. Much to my pleasant surprise, the rules were short. You would think that most card games would have pretty short rules, but some designers try to squeeze a lot into a card game, and so some card game rules take longer to read than to play the game.

However, when I finished the rules I rolled my eyes. Ah, this was one of those games.

Play a card.
Discard if you like.
Draw.

That’s the game play in a nutshell. Not very exciting, and really more of a throw away. ”Oh well,” I thought “lets get this over with”. I called my players over to explain the rules to them. Upon hearing the rules, one of them bowed out and sought something else to do. This was not looking good.

But then we started playing, and it was simple, but it was funny. The game was also comprised of some very simple, yet very effective mechanics for easily keeping score. We found ourselves playing, at a rather quick pace, and giggling about it as we went. Soon the player who had wandered off came back to see what all the fuss was about.

The fuss was a simple game in which you try to earn points before the “End Game” card is revealed. You earn points for being different types (Zombie, Ninja, Pirate, or Mad Scientist), and for having gear that goes along with your type. You also lose points if you have gear that conflicts with a type that you have. The easy, effective scoring mechanic was that you play your card upright if it gives you positive points, sideways if it has no effect, and upside down if it gives you negative points. It becomes very clear to your opponents, without having to read every card you have, the general nature behind each card.

Getting gear on the table is as simple as playing it down. Nothing special there. Getting to become a type is a different beast. You have to use cards in order to turn into that type. For example you can use a bite card to become a zombie. Without a card that can be used to become a type, you can not play down type cards. There in lies the one problem we had with the game mechanics, it became really hard to get both a proper object card to use with an appropriate type card. Sometimes the players went for half a dozen rounds before being able to become a type.

The player who wandered away didn’t have too long to stand and watch before he could join in, the games are each only a few minutes long. I would estimate maybe 15 minutes total. So we dealt him in on the next hand.

After a couple more hands of “Zombie Ninja Pirates” we thought it was time to break into the expansion “Vampire Werewolf Fairies”. We set the original game aside and delved into the expansion and played it as a stand alone. Now maybe we just have an affinity for Vampires (after all, who isn’t watching True Blood these days?), but we liked this set even better than the original. For me, the gags were simply funnier even though the game play was exactly the same. It was the same game with a different theme pasted on. The rules suggested that you could mix the two decks together, but after looking through all of the minor rule variations that were needed to do this, we declined that proposition.

This is purely and simply a beer and pretzel game. It’s humorous and easy to play, but it’s not going to replace meatier games on your game night. I could certainly see this game travelling with us to the bar, or being used as a filler game. It’s silly, and sometimes silly is exactly what you are looking for.

Jan

Gamer Challenge for the week of January 23rd

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Events and Tournaments | 1 Comment »

Each week the gamer challenge comes from the BGG gamer calendar for 2012. This weeks gamer challenge was to play the game that we owned with the longest name. If you are interested in the calendar check out: www.boardgamecalendar.com/pages/what-is-this

When we set out upon this challenge, I had little doubt as to what game would be played this week. You see, I am a computer programmer by day and a blogger and gamer by night. That means that when I needed a way to keep track of what games I own, I simply created a computer program that would allow me to enter new games, create unique skus for them, keep track of all of the parts, etc. I have a database behind the program that stores all of the data for each field, and when you define a field you have to set a maximum length. I had set the max length of a game name at 50 characters (because what game has a longer name than that!), and when it came to entering this game in our system, the program gave an error message. Fifty was too small for that huge 62 character name. It’s the only game I have ever run into with more than fifty characters. But users of BGG have come up with a list of long named games ,I should apparently keep my eyes out for.

So my typical night of gaming rolled around, and I told my players what we would be playing. Some got very excited, because of the Potter theme, and others groaned. For you see, this game is nothing more than a rehash of “Clue”. Much to my surprise, when I told my players “It’s just clue, everyone remembers how to play that, right?”, multiple people in the room chimed in that they had actually never played Clue. Well, at least this would be educational for them.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Mystery at Hogwarts Game, otherwise known as "Clue". The board layout is slightly different, and Hogwarts themed, but the game works the same way.

So we set up the board, I explained the basics of Clue, and away we went. The game was just how I remembered, slow, with seemingly pointless movement. Roughly 45 minutes later, one of my players made a guess and was correct, ending the game (thankfully!). We then moved on to more entertaining, but much shorter named, games such as: Red Dragon Inn, Catch Phrase, and Sentinels of the Multiverse (which has a pretty long name all on it’s own… hmm…).

This weeks challenge was kind of painful. Sometimes it’s nice to pull out a game you haven’t played in years. It pulls you back to a different time. However, sometimes there is a reason that a game has been shelved for that long: It stinks.

For those playing along at home, what games did you play this week? We would love to hear if your longest game name rivals our 62 character beast, and hopefully yours was a lot more fun! Next week the challenge is to play a game lasting longer than four hours, so pull out your old favorites and get cracking!

Jan

Sentinels of the Multiverse Card Game – a Super Hero Co-Op.

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Board Game Reviews, Theme Games | No Comments »

I kinda feel like this is “cleaning out the closet” week here at Game Paradise. Earlier in the week we reviewed Ninja, which was a game that sat in our queue for a while, because people found it to be intimidating. Today’s game, Sentinels of the Multiverse, has a very similar tale of woe.

This game came to us a couple of months ago and was promptly opened, and then promptly shelved for another day. This is a card game, and when you open the box the first time, cards are all you see. Lots and lots of different cards, with different backs, creating lots of different decks. We spent the first hour just sorting out all of the cards and bagging them up into their different decks.

All of the different decks of cards that come in this game. We were a little over whelmed.

The box that all of those cards had to fit back into.

Which brings me to my first component complaint about this game. When we opened the box, it was packed with cards, all the way up to the brim. Once we bagged them into separate decks, all of the cards would not fit comfortably back into the box. Just the width of the ziploc bag strips was too much for this very full box. Ya know, I kinda feel bad complaining about this. Normally my complaints are just the opposite: that the box is over sized. But this box is far from over sized, it’s a little under sized. Really the box needs to be about a half inch bigger in every direction, and then it would be perfect. Secondly, given the nature of this game, a box more like Dominion would have been more ideal. Then I wouldn’t have needed baggies.

Ok, so the game is sorted and bagged. It has been set on a shelf, waiting for a day when I had more patience (or more guilt that it has sat there for too long), and today is the day! I pulled the game down and started reading through the rules. Surprisingly, reading through them didn’t take me long. The instructions are deceiving, because intermixed with the rules are a lot of character back stories, should you care. But if all you want to do is play the game, there is only about three little pages worth of stuff you need to read. Really not bad at all. Why was I so intimidated by this game?

Oh right, all the different card decks. Once I had read the rules, and started setting up for my first game, that rush of intimidation came flooding back. It took me a little while to separate the hero decks, from the villain decks, from the environment decks. This was largely because they didn’t have one unifying feature on the backs that distinguished which kind of deck it was, strike that up to component complaint number two. Instead I had to read the cards and make some logical deductions, which was kinda like a game in itself. Once I thought I had them all sorted out, we drew our villain, heroes, and environment at random and we were ready to go.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a co-op card game. Each of the players control a super hero who’s goal is to take out the villain and save the world from complete and utter destruction. You work together to accomplish this goal, talking about all of the different options you have and deciding what would be best for the whole. This is in the same vein as “Pandemic” or “Yggdrasil” but with the major difference being that this is a card game. You win by killing off the bad guy, you lose by all of your team dying or failing in a task dictated by the mission. Even if one of your team “dies”, you still have 3 abilities to be used to help the remaining team mates win. It’s not over until it’s over.

The evil master mind, Baron Blade.

So for our first run through the game we started with one of the “easy” villains, Baron Blade, whose ultimate goal was to use a lunar beam to pull the moon into the earth. We were fighting him on Mars, and so our turns were filled with perils such as oxygen leaks, and meteor strikes. We battled this villain using the super heroes “Fanatic”, “Tachyon”, and “Tempest”. Over nearly an hour and a half of grueling combat we destroyed the lunar beam and killed Baron Blade, saving the world from disaster.

How did we do it? Allow me to explain…

Each player has a deck of cards associated with their character. The villain also has his or her own deck of cards. On your turn you do a series of things: Play a card, use a super power, and then draw a card. Very very simple. The intricacies come into play with what is written on the cards themselves. I love this because it makes the game so easy to teach. By having simple base rules I can explain all the rules to new players in just a few minutes. After that, it’s just “do what it says on the card”. Given that it’s a co-op game, everyone can help each other out so that new players aren’t stumbling in the dark when it comes to the strategy.

Each players’ deck was tailored to who their character was supposed to be. Fanatic drew upon martyrdom in order to do damage, with most of her cards hurting her in order to play them. Tempest was all about controlling the weather, and so he could do lots of small bursts of lightening on his turns. The character that I played, Tachyon, was similar to the “Flash”. She was super fast, and thus got to draw and play multiple cards on her turn. Together our little fighting trio made a pretty good combo.

Having enjoyed our first game, we wasted almost no time in playing again. The next night we picked another super villain, Omnitron, to battle and squared off again. Having a better grasp on how the game worked we did better the second time around, and the game didn’t take as long. We wrapped up in about forty-five minutes. We all had a good time and we decided that we needed to get some fresh blood involved on the next game.

The super hero I played, Tachyon.

And that brings us to the epic battle with Citizen Dawn. The instructions warn you that her and “Grand Warlord Voss” are harder foes to vanquish, but given that we did so well the first two games, we could afford to have it ramped up a little. Right? It was as if we went right from the little bike with training wheels to the Harley with the souped up engine. The battle waged on for hours and my players simply couldn’t make headway. Every time they managed to play a piece of equipment or ongoing power that might help them limp along, she quickly devoured those cards, leaving them with nothing but a few more points of damage. In the end, we called it a wrap before the game was actually over, given it had already been more than three hours.

You might be thinking right about now, “Wow! Isn’t that really over powered?!”. Not necessarily. Each of the heroes are designed with certain advantages and disadvantages. Same with the villains. And then when you throw in the environment, things could be swayed heavily in your favor, or strongly against you. It’s all about the random draw. I personally think the battle with Citizen Dawn was a ‘perfect storm’. The environment we were playing in took away cards that you had in play, and so did she. This resulted in almost no cards in play the entire game. The characters we used to fight against her with were also pretty weak, given her ability to block damage, destroy goods, and get infinitely stronger by killing her little minions. With a different set of super heroes, we might have done just fine.

So what did we think? We had fun! While all the cards were intimidating, the game play wasn’t that hard to grasp. The very simple base rules (play one, use a power, draw one) made the game less about remembering the rules and more about interacting with the cards and the characters. The game also has an insane amount of replay potential given that you randomize the characters, villains, and locations each game, I have also had a little birdie whisper in my ear that they have an expansion for the game, so we are anxious to see what more they have added.

We are fans of co-ops in my household. Maybe that makes us slightly biased, but everyone seemed to have a great time with this one, including the ones who are not big super hero fans. This game was also created by a small game company, Greater than Games, which I always love to see. So with all of that said, I would recommend taking a look at this game, should you have the time and inclination.

Jan

Ninja, Legend Of The Scorpion Clan – an Advanced Scotland Yard

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Board Game Reviews, Theme Games, War Games | No Comments »

Ninja <Legend of the Scorpion Clan> has sat on my shelf for a while. I hate to let games do that. It eats at me, gnawing away at the part of me that likes to get them play-tested and blogged about promptly. The crazy thing was that I wanted to play this game. My players, however, found this one to be rather intimidating, so it sat there with me periodically begging that we bite the bullet and get this one reviewed.

A look at the game board. This board is comprised of an out wall, two castles surrounded by inner walls, moats, patrol paths, guard barracks, movement zones, and guard starting locations.

A look at the game board. This board is comprised of an outer wall, two castles surrounded by inner walls, moats, patrol paths, guard barracks, movement zones, and guard starting locations.

Why was it so intimidating? Well, it could have been the 16 page rulebook, or it could have been the complicated looking board and game pads.

When I first opened the box, it was the game pads that my players first honed in on. ”Oh God, that reminds me a lot of the Diplomacy pad.”, one of them said. You see, while we all think the game Diplomacy is the bee’s knees, we have played it for 10+ hours straight before, with no winner remotely in sight. Thus, my players have become a little jaded about games of that nature. So the game sat, receiving sneers and askance glances every time it was mentioned. I knew I had to take action in order to make this happen.

Typically rule reading with my group happens in one of two possible ways:

We wait and read the rules together. People moan and groan about getting through the rules, but then everyone knows all of the rules.
I read the rules and figure out the game and then teach it to the others. However, this results in small details being forgotten along the way (after all, I haven’t played before either!) and then people moan and groan when I suddenly remember something I had forgotten. Or we look up a rule and realize we were playing something wrong.

… given the 16 page rulebook, and my players reluctance, the only way I was going to get them to come to the gaming table with this was to read the rules ahead of time. Thus, little things were forgotten. Normally this can be mitigated by the existence of a reference card, unfortunately, one did not come with the game. So I did my best, and with lots of referencing of the rulebook, I got us going.

Scotland Yard, a game originally published in 1983. In this game you are also trying to track down a criminal who does not place their pawn on the board, but instead uses a secret pad to keep track of moves.

Ninja, Legend of the Scorpion Clan is a game that pits a ninja and a traitor against guards in a “track them down and kill them” sort of way. The “track them down” part is a key element of this game, and the whole reason for the game pads, because the ninja and traitor pieces are not placed on the board. Instead they move around in secret, being super stealthy and hard to find. After all, ninja, right?. This mechanic is almost identical to the one found in Scotland Yard, which is a game I really enjoy, so I was all jazzed up.

The ninja and traitor start the game each with an objective, such as “poison the well” or “kill the honored guest” that they must complete. The problem is that they must locate the well/honored guest/etc, do their task, and get back out alive. This is a little easier said than done. However, the ninja has a few tricks up their sleeve. First off, the ninja and traitor know the location of a secret tunnel on the premises (because they gets to determine the entrance and exit to it as part of the set up of the game), this will let them move around the board lightening fast, or make a quick escape. Secondly, they also have a handful of cards that they can play on the guards.

Some gamers at Gen Con 2011 playing Ninja. See that white paper with the red, blue, and black lines? That is the game pad I keep mentioning. Its a replica of the map on the board, just without the pretty artwork.

Some gamers at Gen Con 2011 playing Ninja. See that white paper with the red, blue, and black lines? That is the "game pad" I mentioned. It's a replica of the map on the board, just without the pretty artwork.

The guards start the game off with eight sentry guards, three patrols (of two guards each), two traps set, two hidden sentries, and eight sleeping men in the barracks, standing at the ready. It’s a well fortified area, so slipping in and out undetected is not likely to happen.

So my players set up all of their goodies. We were playing two on two, the boys were playing the guards, and us girls were playing as the ninjas. Because there were two of us, I got to play the head ninja, and my partner played the traitor. The first mistake of the night, was that I initially forgot to tell the guards about the sleeping guys in the barracks. By the beginning of turn two, I remembered and we got that fixed, but of course, there was the before mentioned moaning and groaning.

Within approximately the first three turns, griping began about combat. Each of the guards have one hit point. The ninja has three hit points. The traitor has two hit points. The boys who were playing the guards thought this was quite unfair.
“But you have like 20 guys on the board, and we have two, how is that unfair!?”, I asked. ”Because we have to track you down and find you. You can just run up and kill us. We would need a cluster of three guards to take you out.”. They seemed to fail to realize that a cluster of three guards is not an unthinkable thing, given that they had nearly 20 guys on the board.

Later, in an effort to track my partner and I down, the boys performed a “listen” move. They were close by, and thus would have heard me move, but my partner quickly played a card called “It was a cat”, which was suppose to negate them from hearing anything. ”Yeah, but we heard the cat, so we are going to go looking!” You see, normally when you try to listen for the ninja or traitor, and you hear something, you get to go investigate the sound. With “It was just a cat” the guards heard something, but they blow it off as nothing. I tried to explain this to the guards which led to me being frustrated and they thinking we were cheating.

The game continued like this for a while, until they found me, and did manage to kill me. But it was only round 7, and the rules claim that if you are killed before round 10, the first ninja was merely a “decoy” for the real ninja who then gets to enter the board. Basically, you get a reset, because the game wouldn’t be much fun if it ended that quickly. There was more murmurings of foul play by the guards.

The second ninja was able to get in and get the job done, and so was our traitor, although just by the hair of our chinny-chin-chin’s. I could take one more blow, and then I was a dead woman. My partner was in a very similar situation. Luckily, they lost track of me, and I managed to get off the board in mostly one piece. We had won, but barely. However, the guards didn’t see it that way.

“It was really unbalanced!”

“There was nothing we could do to stop you!”

“The ninja’s are always going to win!”

I didn’t quite see it that way, but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was hard to be a guard. The next game, I would definitely play as a guard so that I could see it from their perspective.

So a couple of nights later, I managed to talk Tristan into playing this with me. I was adamant that I needed to play as the guards, and that was fine with him. Who doesn’t like being a ninja? Because we were playing a two player game, I controlled all of the guards, and he controlled both the Traitor and the ninja, otherwise the game was exactly the same.

The figures used in the game. From left to right: Traitor, Guard type 1, Ninja, Guard type 2, drunken guard.

It didn’t take very long to teach him the rules and get him going, which I found to be a pleasant surprise, and this time I remembered all of the rules on the first go. It didn’t take long for me to initially find his ninja, and I got off an early hit. But then he disappeared back into the shadows. His traitor however stomped around pretty loudly allowing me to find him and slaughtered him and his reincarnation before the end of turn seven.

Wow, I already had one intruder down and now only the ninja was left. What were the boys complaining about? This really wasn’t that hard! As the game wore on, it did get harder though. The ninja managed to move slowly and cautiously, which lowered the alert level and thus shortened the number of cards I got. As the cards in my hand dwindled I found that right at the end, I really didn’t have much that I could use to effectively stop the ninja. Ultimately though, I have to chalk this up to the fact that I didn’t ration my cards very well. Early in the game I was spending cards as quick as I could, in an effort to track the ninja and traitor down.

In the end, Tristan managed to complete his ninja’s goal of killing my honored guest, and got himself off the board. But given that I killed his traitor, the game was considered a tie. But we were both okay with that outcome. I clearly saw things I could have done better, and so did he, which could make future rematches very interesting.

In the end, I think the boys were largely whiny about losing to us girls. Yes, the game gets harder for the guards, but it gets harder for the ninja’s team as well. Ultimately I really liked this game. It had the same flavor as Scotland Yard, but with more depth and general complexity. The added mechanics led to a world more of strategy, and I think adds more replay value.

Jan

Gamer Challenge for the week of January 16th

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Events and Tournaments | 2 Comments »

Each week the gamer challenge comes from the BGG gamer calendar for 2012. This weeks gamer challenge was to play a game via email. If you are interested in the calendar check out: www.boardgamecalendar.com/pages/what-is-this

Turning the page in the gamer calendar I saw that this weeks challenge was to play a game via email. No sweat! So I pinged an old friend and colleague of mine who I use to play a lot of email games with.

Games via email? How 1990 can we get, right? You have to understand something. A lot of cubicle dwellers need a midday distraction. We can’t exactly whip out WOW at the office. However, idly flipping to our email and taking our turn in a “play when you have time” game is completely do-able. In fact, given that I am not a smoker, I find taking my turn to be a nice alternative to the “smoke breaks” some of my other coworkers take.

So I walked into this challenge thinking it would be a breeze. We use to play a lot of games of Risk using a website called “Warfish” which would send out email notifications when it was your turn. Then you simply clicked the link, took your turn, and it would send an email out to the next person in the line. So we rallied the troops and got a game set up.

Now I admit, I was busy, and it took me a couple of days to get my initial starting places picked. Then the Warfish server went down, and I really had no option but to wait. So given that I had no idea how long the outage would be, I poked around on the internet and found another email game site.

GamesByEmail.com came to the rescue, and had some other really neat games. One of my old favorites, Twixt, was on the list and I got really excited. My husband and I use to play the game all the time, and so I invited him to play the email game with me. *Crickets* No response during that day, so when I got home I asked him if he got my email invite. He had, but hadn’t had time to sit in front of the computer and play a game.

“But you don’t have to sit there the whole time. Just make your move, and then go about your day. You’ll get an email when it’s your turn again. This is a very low stress activity!”

“Yeah, but I like to think about my turns, that takes time.”

In frustration, I took my search for a player elsewhere. I sent out a few different email requests to friends. More crickets. Then I lost a day to the SOPA protests, as many sites were blacked out for the day. So on Thursday, I talked to my old friend again, the one I use to play Risk with to find out the status of our game.

“Yeah, the server is back up, but we are waiting on Mike.” And there in lies the other bane. You have to get everyone to join that you invite to a game, or it just sits there, waiting. Likewise, if you are in the middle of a game with coworkers, and someone leaves on vacation, you are stuck waiting until they return. I explained to him that I had to get this task done, so being a good friend, he agreed to do some two player email gaming with me.

A look at the Twixt screen on the GamesByEmail.com website. I trounced my friend at this one.

So we started with Twixt on the GamesByEmail site. My friend had never played the game before, but he picked it up pretty quick. We found that the GamesByEmail system left a few things to be desired. It seemed that the person who started the game had to be the one to do a rematch, which annoyed my friend. I also found the system to be slightly buggy at times, as there was a time or two that I took my move and submitted it, but then the system thought I hadn’t. However, all and all, the game played pretty true and we had a good time. Like all good email games, it incorporated a feature that allowed us to chat back and forth each time we sent in our move. This always helps facilitate the smack talk, or the friendly advice.

After a couple of games of Twixt my friend pulled up Warfish and started a two player game of Risk for us. Warfish is a rather neat setup. It allows players to play many different variants of Risk (blind play, all at once, with cards, without cards, etc. You can even play on user generated boards, should you wish).

We played on the standard board, but with a “everyone plays blindly at once” variant. Basically, everyone sets their moves in secret and then the computer works out who wins and loses each battle and sets up for the next round. It’s a style of play that I am absolutely horrible at, but is a nice variant from standard Risk.

This is me losing handily at Risk. I am green, my friend is the dark gray, and a computer generated neutral player is the light gray.

In the end, this was harder to accomplish than I had imagined. Most people who are not well versed in email games seem to turn their noses up at them. But for us gamers who live in a cube for a minimum of forty hours a week, email games can be a saving bit of sanity for us. It helps us connect with friends in different offices, or just across that fabric wall, and it’s certainly a healthier option than joining our colleagues for a smoke break. So next time you need to infuse some sanity into your work day, take a deep breath and delve into the world email games, and hopefully you can talk your friends into a rousing game of email Risk too.

Next weeks challenge is to “play the game you own with the longest name”. Unless something changes between now and next week, for us this means “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Mystery at Hogwarts Game”. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. If you are playing along with our challenges at home, we would love to hear about your adventures in email gaming!

Jan

Fealty – a territory snatching game that I loved

By The_Null_Entry Posted in Abstract Logic Games, Board Game Reviews, Resource Management Games | 1 Comment »

I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this game. I knew Asmadi had a new game coming out towards the end of 2011. I knew the name was Fealty. That was all I knew. I knew nothing about the theme, the game play style, nothing. I was a blank slate. However, apparently the head of our game acquisition team knew a little bit more. ”Yeah, I was told that their goal was to pack as much strategy into a fifteen minute game as was possible”. All right! This sounds like my kind of game!

You see that? You've gone and made me whip out the "unhappy face". I hope your happy!

The first time I opened the box I noticed one thing immediately: they had American-ized the packaging. The box is, at least, twice as big as it needs to be. It’s closer on par with the size of Dominion or Ticket To Ride. Ya know what? Unhappy face! That is what you get! I didn’t want to have to do it, it hurts me more than it hurts you, but you deserve it. Why?! I would have loved the game just as much, if not more, if you had just put it in an appropriately sized box.

Ok, now that we are passed that whole ugly episode, let me tell you a little about the game itself. After I got over my bout of “unhappy face”, it was time to start punching out pieces and reading the rules. The rules are printed in full color on heavy glossy paper, and are really logically laid out. I was able to read the rule book from cover to cover without having to jump around through a booklet of spaghetti rules, and when I was done reading those rules, I pretty clearly understood the game. Maybe this doesn’t seem like a novel idea to some people, but when you read rule booklets as often as I do, you learn that they are not all done quite so well. Bonus points should also be awarded to this company because the rules are only a few pages long, and that is including full colored example pictures, big type, and question clarifications at the end. You could get through the rule book in under ten minutes.

While I read the rules, my players helped me punch out and baggie up all the parts. While doing this we found three black chips were included in the set. These weren’t mentioned in the rules at all. I started to think that maybe they were a misprint. As if the manufacturer had accidently added them to their die-cut, but then I flipped them over. One of them was a pink-ish red on the back, one was blue on the back, and one was yellow on the back. Each of them had a small drawing and a word on them. Anyone who is familiar with Asmadi games is probably giggling right now, for you see, they had added in a miniturized version of “Win, Lose, or Banana!” in their set of Fealty. We promptly used our new discovery to decide who would go first, giggling the entire time.

This is a "Duchy", one of the board pieces used in the game. Each of the boards is a six by six grid comprised of many different terrain elements: mountains, cities, farmland, roads, and forests. See all that white? That is the cardboard insert inside of the box. All of the duchy boards, cards, and pieces fit into that hole. The rest is wasted space that they fill up with a cardboard insert.

Interesting things to know about this game, before we delve into the rules and strategies: The game comes with several small boards, which are referred to as duchies. These boards are two sided, and you do not use all the boards in every game. Instead you use one more board than you have players and place the boards out in a ‘Carcasonne’ style, lining up key features like the roads, to make the board fit together. This gives you a very different random board for each game. In addition to the random board, there are two different decks of cards that can be used in the game. These cards have different affects and abilities. So having different decks also adds a layer of uniqueness to every game. The rules also allude to the potential of expansion packs in the future that would add new decks and mechanics.

So once you have chosen your board and cards, you are ready to go. So what is the story line? What is our motivation for this scene?

The king has died with no clear successor! The players – potential heirs all – are scrambling to put together their powerbases by dispatching trusted agents and allies to garner support across the breadth of the kingdom. Nobody wants open warfare, but some conflict is sure to break out.

-Fealty Rulebook

So you must claim the throne using your political wiles, in a piece laying, territory snatching, sort of way. This is where the cards come in.

Each player starts with an identical deck of nine cards. The cards correspond to nine tokens that can be placed on the board. Each of these tokens and cards are your agents, and each has special abilities and influence over certain areas of the board. For instance, the ‘Rangers’ only have influence over the forests. The knights have influence on any kind of terrain, but their range is limited to only what is immediately around them.

This picture illustrates a lot. This is a look at a game in progress. The numbers on the tiles are the speed of each agent, so the purple Knight will claim territory first, followed by the purple Guard Post, and then the red Court Noble will pick up any remaining pieces. The black token (with the swords) is a conflict marker. These can be placed by a variety of characters, as their special ability. This one appears to have been placed by the knight. It's purpose is to limit the impact of the Court Noble. The small, square, white token on the board simply indicates that this duchy has been played on this turn, and thus no one else is allowed to play on it this turn.

In addition to special abilities and terrain advantages, each of the agents have a ’speed’ that is represented by a number. The player with the lowest number is the fastest, and gets to place their piece on the board first, and then play continues in numerical order, going from fastest to slowest. At the end of the game, influence will be determined by allowing the fastest pieces to claim territory first, followed by the slower agents.

Each agent also has a range. This is indicated by the amount of symbols that each agent has on its token. For example the Knight has one diamond shown on it’s token, so it may claim any type of terrain that is exactly one square (orthogonally) away from it. The Guard Post has two squiggles (roads) shown on it’s token, allowing it to claim roads that are up to two squares away from it. But remember that speed dictates what order spots are claimed in. The Knight is faster than the Guard Post, so if those two were near the same road space, the Knight would claim that territory before the Guard Post could.

Really, that is heart and soul of this game. Figuring out the math, in your head, about what spaces are taken by your opponents, which ones you can steal away from them by taking first, and which spaces are being left completely unclaimed. If you can keep track of all of that in your head, you are doing really well, and will likely win.

There are other rules that effect your ability to place pieces. You can’t place on mountains, or spaces where there are other tokens (such as conflict markers). You can’t place a piece on the same duchy as someone else on the same turn. You can’t place more than one piece of your color in each row and column on a duchy (kinda think of Sudoku for that rule). Each of these limits your ability to play pieces and helps to compound the situation.

I really like how the card shows you the same thing in multiple ways. The number in the top left is the speed. The symbols below that number, running down the left hand side indicates the range. However, in the middle of the card is also a diagram illustrating that range again, using the symbol of the territory type it takes. This really seems great for people who think in different ways.

The one thing I’m not sure that I can say is that it’s the “most logic you can pack in to a 15 minute game”. It’s a ton of logic, there is no doubt about that, however none of my games have lasted for fifteen minutes. My first game was with three players, and granted I had to teach them the rules, but the game took closer to an hour. In a “short” (one less board than normal) two player game, it took roughly 25 minutes for us to get through a game with a player who was already familiar with the rules. The issue is there is soooooo much strategy involved that it takes most people ages to think through their turns. The rules suggest using a chess clock if you have one, and for this game, I think that is an excellent suggestion.

So, in the end, I must say that I love this game. I can certainly see us playing this one again and again and again. The ever changing boards keeps things fresh and eliminates the ‘best opening move’ repetition that I see in chess games, however the amount of strategy and logic seems to me to be on par. Unlike chess, I think the learning curve is relatively small. One of the biggest complaints by starting chess players is simply not being able to remember how each of the pieces move. With this game, all of that is printed in a very clear fashion, and in multiple places (cards and tokens). Asmadi did an excellent job designing a really good game, and I can’t wait to see what they do with expansions.

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