# Recent board games and what I thought [add your own capsule reviews]



## Morrus (Dec 20, 2012)

OK, so this is about recently played board games and our impressions of them. Here's a couple I played recently. Please share your own experiences! Keep it brief, though!

SMALL WORLDS -- a friend bought this off the back of Wil Wheaton's Tabletop show, and we played it last week. I loved it! You get a race and a trait, making for a possibility if a large number of potential unique races and playing experiences/styles, and priced to try to dominate the game board, which consists of a map with spaces with different terrain in them.  Took us a few minutes to learn the rules, and a couple of hours to play. Flying vampires would be scary...

LORDS OF WATERDEEP -- I enjoyed this a fair amount. Not as much as Small Worlds, but a goodly amount nonetheless. It would be improved with something other than coloured wooden blocks representing character classes. Just the right level of complexity to learn for an evening's play - the rules are fairly simple, and a game can last 2-3 hours.  We found non-gamers picked it up easily, too.


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## Jan van Leyden (Dec 20, 2012)

OK, here we go. The three most successful new games in our group since October.

TERRA MYSTICA -- city building and land development with four different resources, partly using completely different mechanisms for different resources. Some variation due to the 12 (?) different people available. Played it four times, had some fun, but will welcome a pause.

KEYFLOWER -- land development, again. Interesting auctioning mechanism and very different avenues to amass victory points. Interesting, but doesn't really click with me.

ESCAPE -- you are all Indiana Jones in a Mayan temple when the clock starts ticking. Uses a MP3 file to limit playing time to - I think - 8 minutes. Each player has a set of special d6 which you can roll as often as you like to get combinations to move, search, and other things. One black symbol blocks this dice. Extremely hectic game play, hard to win.


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## Crothian (Dec 20, 2012)

A Few Acres of Snow: This is a good two person strategy game.  It has good use of a board and deck building aspects.


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## Agamon (Dec 20, 2012)

TERRA MYSTICA -- An area enclosure type game that has rules elements from Small World, Puerto Rico and Hansa Teutonica.  The 16 races aren't perfectly balanced,  but the game is pretty up front about that (some are beginner, some are advanced)

SEASONS -- A really fun card drafting style game with dice and a fantasy motif.  You need to play it a time or two to get how the cards work before doing the actual drafting of your decks, but after that it's a pretty good strategic game.

THE GREAT ZIMBABWE -- Cool artwork in this game.  A civ style, route building game with a neat point mechanic: every time you take something that makes you better, it increases the amount of points that you need to win.

Edit: Heh, Jan did TM, didn't see, that.


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## pogre (Dec 21, 2012)

SUMMONER WARS -- A two-player combat game between different races represented by cards. It uses cards and a grid, but plays a lot like a miniatures game. Each race had a flavor and different combinations that work well together. Resolution is via a simple die mechanic. My boys (ages 13, 9, & 7) really enjoy it. Fast set-up and you can easily play a game in 40 minutes. Very fun game.


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## MerricB (Dec 23, 2012)

Morrus said:


> LORDS OF WATERDEEP -- I enjoyed this a fair amount. Not as much as Small Worlds, but a goodly amount nonetheless. It would be improved with something other than coloured wooden blocks representing character classes. Just the right level of complexity to learn for an evening's play - the rules are fairly simple, and a game can last 2-3 hours.  We found non-gamers picked it up easily, too.




2-3 hours? Really? Something seems wrong there. A typical game with 2-4 players of LoW takes an hour, and 80 minutes with five players. 

Some people have created custom meeples for the game, though: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/807557/custom-meeples-updated

Cheers!


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## MerricB (Dec 23, 2012)

Most of the games I've played (so far) in December...

*CARD GAMES:*

*Sleuth* - a Sid Sackson game from 1971, recently republished by Gryphon games, and one that I adore. It takes the basics of deduction games such as _Clue_ and _Mystery of the Abbey_, and strips away most of the complications to present a very elegant game. You have to work out which jewel card is missing from a deck of 36 cards by asking questions of the other players. The difficulty is that you can only ask a limited set of questions; a deck of Question cards is used to determine which cards you can ask. Highly recommended. 3-7 players. Playing time about 30-45 minutes.

*Star Wars: The Card Game* - a new release by Fantasy Flight Games (it came out this week), the game abstractly models the struggle between the Rebels and the Empire. It's a Living Card game, which makes a non-random CCG. You play cards representing characters, ships, vehicles and forces of the game, and attempt to destroy the opposing player's objectives. The Light Side win if they destroy three Dark Side objectives; the Dark Side win if their counter reaches 12. There are some interesting mechanics in the game, and deckbuilding is unusual: cards come in groups of six, all of which must be added together to a deck. Two decks of each side are prebuilt in the box, and seem nicely balanced against each other for those who don't like deckbuilding. 2 players. Playing time 30-45 minutes.
*
A Game of Thrones: The Card Game* - another LCG. This has been around for a while, but has received a new lease of life with the release of the HBO series. It isn't my favourite card game, but it plays with four players very well. The basic set comes with four preconstructed decks (Stark, Baratheon, Targaryean and Lannister) which are no more than adequate. The deluxe sets for each house are required to play the game well, so only for people who really like investing in these games. 2-6 players. Playing time 30-120 minutes. (about 30 minutes per player).

*The Kaiser's Pirates* - by GMT Games, this game has you in World War I, controlling a fleet of German ships trying to sink Allied shipping. You play both the Germans and the Allies, either furthering your own (German) ends or as the British, working against the other player's fleets. It has an incredibly poor rulebook for a quite simple game, which is reminiscent of Naval War and its derivatives. I find it light but fun. 1-4 players. Playing time 20-60 minutes for a round (suggests 3 rounds).
_
Ivanhoe_* - *by GMT Games, this is a Reiner Knizia game that is simple but brilliant. You're trying to win four or five tournaments (Jousting, Sword, Axe, Mace and Unarmed Combat) by playing cards that match the tournament you're in and getting a higher score than your opponent. Event cards change things up, perhaps even changing the type of tournament (Change Weapon, Unhorsed and Disarmed!). You need to think to win, as the play is quite subtle. Highly Recommended. 2-5 players. 30 minutes playing time.

*Android: Netrunner* - by Fantasy Flight Games, another LCG, and the reissuing of Richard Garfield's original designed, cleaned up about 15 years later. This is an exceptional game, with play requiring a great deal of skill: a lot of bluffing and calculation is required. The preconstructed decks in the core set are fine to play as-in, and are nicely balanced. Two sets of the core for each player are recommended for deck-building purposes. Highly Recommended. 2 players. 30 minutes playing time.

*BOARD GAMES:

**D-Day Dice* - a co-operative game from Valley Games for 1-4 players. An expansion adds in a fifth German player who works against the others. This has been surprisingly addictive (and a lot of fun solo or with four). You roll and reroll dice and try to get sets to trigger additional effects. The dice give you men, items, specialists and courage, which are used to overcome the challenges on 8 scenario boards. It's pretty easy to learn, and plays quickly. 1-4 players. Playing time 30-60 minutes. Strongly recommended.

*Poseidon* - the 18xx series of train games are big, complicated and fun, if you can get around the 3-5 hour playing time. Poseidon (from Z-Man Games) brings the stock-market/train manipulation into Ancient Greece and makes it a lot more accessible. However, you lose a lot of the elements of stock-market manipulation that made the original 1830 game great. 2-5 players. Playing time: 90-120 minutes.

*Mage Knight Board Game* - a fantasy adventure game by Vlaada Chvatil and published by WizKids/NECA. This is a truly great game, but it a lot heavier than it might appear and requires a certain tactical mindset to play well. It's a variant on the Deckbuilding style of game (e.g. Dominion), but the deckbuilding is for your capabilities as you move around a random map and encounter Keeps, Cities, Mage Towers, Dungeons, Monsters and more. A high tolerance for the randomness of your deck is required, and a modicum of patience. An expansion is coming out soon, and I'll probably play it a lot more once that arrives. 1-4 players. Playing time 60-180 minutes depending on scenario and # players.

*Mage Wars* - its only just a boardgame - it's really a version of Magic: the Gathering where the monsters deploy to a board. The chief innovation is to have cards drawn non-randomly: you pick two at the beginning of each turn which you can play from all of the cards in your "spellbook". Nice production values, but the game played far too slowly for me; experienced players take 60-90 minutes, it took me more like 120-150 minutes for the two games I played, and the game isn't good enough to warrant my further study. Avoid. 2 players, 60-90 minutes (if experienced).

*Brass* - one of Martin Wallace's masterpieces. It's the Industrial Revolution in England and Wales, and you're building coal mines, steel mills, cotton mills, ship yards and ports, and connecting them by first canals and then railways. I really enjoy this game (the later version, Age of Industry, isn't so great). It's a eurogame/economic game for serious gamers. Highly recommended. 3-4 players, 90-120 minutes.

*Eclipse* - this is the big hotness of 2012: a eurogame take on a 4X space game: you explore, expand, exploit and exterminate in a game I don't find as compelling as everyone else, but my friends adore. You have to colonise nearby planets, improve your economy, research technology, design ships and send them against aliens and your opponents. It's a very approachable game, with a lot of strategy. Recommended for most gamers. 2-6 players, about 30 minutes per player.

*Rex: Final Days of an Empire* - Ah, the holy grail of science-fiction games, Dune, rethemed and rereleased by FFG. Dune is a classic game that I love, but Rex isn't quite as good: it's probably easier to pick up than Dune, but losing the theme of Dune strips away part of what made it great. The mechanics are still very good, but I'm not so sure about the revisions that FFG have made. 3-6 players, though probably 5-6 is best. About 2-3 hours.

*Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan -* By GMT Games. A very easily learnt block wargame: wooden blocks represent the warring forces, and you use cards to deploy them into battle or move them around. You're working with a map of Japan, and trying to depose the current ruler (or trying to keep him in power). Not much politics - just straight up manoeuvring and battle - although some of your units might be treacherous! This game is a lot of fun, and plays very quickly. Highly recommended. 2 players. 60-90 minutes.

*Space Empires* -by GMT Games. The reason I don't warm to Eclipse as much as everyone else; _Space Empires_ is a game where, like Eclipse, you build up an empire and then send ships to attack your foes, but doesn't has quite so complex an economy as Eclipse, but the technologies you research are hidden from your opponent. In addition, each ship you built remembers the technology levels, so fighting in an opponent's home means you're probably some developments behind compared to them. Very challenging and enjoyable. It's recommended for wargamers, and isn't as approachable as Eclipse. 1-4 players. 120-180 minutes.


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## Agamon (Dec 24, 2012)

I was waiting for Merric to make a post.   I'll add a game I played last night:

_*1989: Dawn of Freedom*_ -- A variant of the popular _Twilight Struggle_ from GMT.  Pretty much the same game (card driven area control), but instead of taking place over the entire Cold War and the entire world, it takes place over the year 1989 and Eastern Europe.  The communists try to hold onto power while democracy slowly takes hold over the area.  I like the game both for its familiarity and differences to TS (one of my favs).


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## Challenger RPG (Dec 24, 2012)

*Settlers of Catan*: Awesome board game and one of the very few 'serious' board games I can get the whole family (and non-gamers) to play. We also own Seafarers and Barbarians because everyone loved the game so much.

*Monty's Maze*: An obscure, out of print game made in Toronto; it involves running around a maze, stealing treasures from other players, and getting chased by a nasty monster called a Keloy. There are also traps and camels to haul all your treasure. While a little simple for my tastes, the younger players simply love it and the pictures of large emeralds/treasures.


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## MerricB (Dec 24, 2012)

Agamon said:


> I was waiting for Merric to make a post.








> I'll add a game I played last night:
> 
> _*1989: Dawn of Freedom*_ -- A variant of the popular _Twilight Struggle_ from GMT.  Pretty much the same game (card driven area control), but instead of taking place over the entire Cold War and the entire world, it takes place over the year 1989 and Eastern Europe.  The communists try to hold onto power while democracy slowly takes hold over the area.  I like the game both for its familiarity and differences to TS (one of my favs).




An excellent game, and very challenging. Seems more prone to wild swings of scoring, but it's part of the fun. 

Cheers!


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## Stormonu (Dec 25, 2012)

Some ones I've played of late:

POWER GRID:  I played a 2-player game of this, and got the impression that with more players, it would be a lot better and far more cut-throat.  In the game you are essentially attempting to build enough power stations to light up a certain number of cities.  The first few turns and the game seems like it's going to be incredibly easy - until you notice the resources aren't replenishing as fast as your using them.  By about the 4th turn (fewer turns if you had more players), you're deeply involved in how you can screw the other player out of the resources you need to power your own plants.

KILL DOCTOR LUCKY - The clue prequel, you're trying to get insanely wealthy and addled Dr. Lucky alone in a room to kill him.  Meanwhile, the other players are trying their best to make sure the old man stays alive long enough so they can kill him instead.  For such a simple game on the surface it has a lot of strategy going on it and it plays quite whimsically.

FORMULA D - A very well-done racing game that captures the thrill of racing fairly well.  Setting your car's "gear" determines what polyhedral die you roll for movement; however, even the different-shaped die don't necessarily have from 1-to-number-of-sides; most have several numbers repeated giving you a somewhat smaller variation in movement.  Also, watch out for corners; in the game we played one "S" corner wiped everybody out except the slowest racer - who only made the corner by learning from the other's mistakes.  The game plays exceptionally fast - I think we finished the race in about 30 minutes.

CARCASSONE -  A tile-laying game that even my 9-year old loves to play.  Put down tiles depicting castle-like walled cities and lay claim to cities, the roads or the open fields between them.  You can play a single game incredibly quickly and it will leave you hungering to try once more as soon as you finish.  Loved it so much, I bought it for my iPad to play solo when no one is around (and improve my strategy as well )

AXIS & ALLIES:  This is an old, old game of WWII from the 80's.  I was just able to play the expanded version last night and wow, what a difference.  It was good back then, it's even better now.  You take on the role of one of five world powers in WWII - Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan and USA (if you have fewer than 5 players, one or more players takes on extra countries).  You build units (infantry, artillery,tanks,fighter planes, bombers, submarines, cruisers, destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers and transport ships) and then send them to war.  The objective?  Knock out the enemy's capital and/or capture enough cities to end the war.  It's a fun, fun game that's spawned several supplemental versions, expansions and knock-offs.  The only downside is set-up time and the first couple of games will take 3-5 hours to finish.  The good news: there's an on-line version of the game, and if you don't mind wanting to try your luck against the computer it's free!


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## MerricB (Dec 25, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> POWER GRID:  I played a 2-player game of this, and got the impression that with more players, it would be a lot better and far more cut-throat.  In the game you are essentially attempting to build enough power stations to light up a certain number of cities.  The first few turns and the game seems like it's going to be incredibly easy - until you notice the resources aren't replenishing as fast as your using them.  By about the 4th turn (fewer turns if you had more players), you're deeply involved in how you can screw the other player out of the resources you need to power your own plants.




You're quite right: Power Grid is one of my favourite games (you should see all the expansion boards I have for it), but it's best played with four or five players; even three players doesn't quite show its true awesomeness!


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## stevelabny (Dec 25, 2012)

I bought myself a bunch of games on Black Friday but i haven't had a chance to play them all yet.  MOST of them were meant to be playable by 1 or 2 people since I've been having problems finding people to join me and the gf.

KING OF TOKYO: We've played two 2-player and a handful of 3-player games with this. And this is probably the best short filler game I've played. Its basically just Yahtzee themed to a Godzilla movie with special power-up cards, but its a lot of fun and just gamey enough. 

TAKENOKO:  Easily the best looking game in my collection. I am a sucker for DaysofWonder-type "pretty" games, but this one is even better.  Build a hex bamboo garden with bamboo trees and use the frazzled gardner and hungry panda to finish objectives to score points.  Its really light (like Ticket to Ride - light) with a little bit more explanation at the beginning but because of its theme, its the perfect gateway game.  We've already played a few 2 player games and tried it with her dad and then her sister, neither of them gamers. 

INDIGO: Build your twisty, turny pathways to try to score the gems.  Only played once so far, but it was just the right level of brain hurt for a game like this.  I'm pretty sure the more its played, the more far-reaching strategies will present themselves, but there is going to be an element of random that will turn some people off I bet. 

MAGE KNIGHT:  I played once by myself, and although the general consensus seems to be you need to play a few times to get the hang of it and see the depth, I'm pretty sure I saw a lot of the reasons why people sing its praises. It did a good job of capturing the D&D / on an adventure / leveling up feeling while still being a board game.  Definitely not for everyone, but I'll be playing it again soon. 

MANSIONS OF MADNESS:  Only took it out to test it out. This one requires a keeper/DM, which is something I've tried to avoid for board games, but I really like the idea of lock/puzzle mini-games in a board game.  And it seems simple enough to play with people of different gamer levels.  Looking forward to playing this one. 

SMASH-UP: Another one I solo-tested but haven't played yet. Shuffle two factions together and then use their special powers to control bases.  It had me at Ninja Pirates vs Wizard Zombies. 

HEY, THAT'S MY FISH: A simple area-control game with cute penguins.  If the other players aren't trying to plan their whole game out, it should be lightning quick. 

DIXIT: I tend to hate any party game because they wind up being too silly, too subjective, or too lop-sided (like Trivial Pursuit).  Dixit seemed to be the solution to that.  As soon as my gf saw the artwork on these cards it became her favorite game, and we've literally played this with every single person who has walked in our house in the last 2 weeks. 
It was such a hit, I immediately ran out and got the expansions.  Everyone loves this game. 

Still in box: Arkham Horror (for solo/duo play) , Mission: Red Planet (because I love role selection, like worker placement and dig most Bruno Fadutti games and its going OOP)   and Lords of Waterdeep (which everyone seems to think is awesome and I'm hoping will make my RPG friend play a Euro). 

What was sold out everywhere: MICE & MYSTICS: I want to use this to introduce other people to RPGs.  I'll get it soon. 

What I played for the first time even though I got it last year: 

SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT:  A Days of Wonder pretty game. Its a co-op with a hidden traitor mechanic. we played 5 players. I wound up the traitor, but I did not have to make a single offensive maneuver to win because the deck was loaded against the group. Pretty sure most people thought it was interesting enough to try again to see if the game is always that tilted towards evil.  Another game that takes a while to explain, but by turn 5, each turn should be taking seconds.


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## mach1.9pants (Dec 26, 2012)

The new Dungeon anyone? How about with math bright 7 and 9 yr old boys?


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## Lwaxy (Dec 26, 2012)

ESCAPE is indeed cool, and you need to cooperate, too, to get out of the  trap. We played it at the Essen Spiel, however, the small expansion  pieces were so expensive compared to the rest we didn't buy it after  all. Bad marketing strategy.


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## oni no won (Dec 26, 2012)

Innovation- a card game that has a civilization theme to it.  Each number represents a technological period in Earth history.  What I loved about this game was the "splay" mechanic in which you spread your layers of cards in the direction indicated.  The game gets more chaotic as you go up the tech tree.

Roll Through the Ages- another civilization themed game but uses dice.  The game comes with a thick pad of paper that is given to each player and is used to record that player's monuments bought, disasters, and advancements.  It is an easy pick up game and I've had a lot of success introducing boargames with this game.  In fact people who hate dice games in general ended up ordering the game for themselves!


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## IronWolf (Dec 27, 2012)

mach1.9pants said:


> The new Dungeon anyone? How about with math bright 7 and 9 yr old boys?




The new Dungeon should be fine. I've been playing it with my 9 year old son and my 5 year old daughter. Both do just fine with it. I've enjoyed playing it.


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## Nellisir (Dec 27, 2012)

I've been slow to get into board games; my daughter just turned 6, so most of the games are out of her reach, and my wife has no interest.  A new game store just opened in town, however, and they're running board game nights twice a week, sooo...  

That said:
DOMINION - Own it, played it several times, enjoy it more each time.
SETTLERS OF CATAN - Own it, played it once, looking to play it some more.
CARCASSONNE - Own it. Beautiful game.  Excellent starting game.  My daughter & I play this regularly with some simplified rules.
SMALL WORLDS - Own it, played it once.  I'm not wild about the quantity of fiddly bits, but it's fun.

I just bought GLOOM a few hours ago, have not even opened it yet.  Planning on buying DUNGEON very soon.


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## RangerWickett (Dec 27, 2012)

I'm planning to try out RISK: LEGACY next weekend. A friend of mine got me an indie Cold War spy board game that I don't remember the name of, but will try. And then there's my friend's game SHADOWRIFT, which is a cooperative deck-building game where a party of adventurers defend a town against oncoming monsters. It's like The Magnificent Seven meets D&D.

Someone posted a video walk-through on Board Game Geek: [video=youtube;Twg1iPDbloo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Twg1iPDbloo[/video]


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## Ariosto (Dec 27, 2012)

The big ones in my gang have been Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.


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## Deano Calver (Dec 28, 2012)

Civilization The board game : Good game, but as a lover of the original board and computer games it just didn't hit the right spot. Probably shouldn't have used the name, so I wouldn't compare it with Civ 5 PC


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## Stormonu (Dec 30, 2012)

Another game I remembered:

BANG - This is a spaghetti western non-collectible card game.  One person is the sheriff, most of the others are outlaws out to kill him.  There's also the Renegade, who wants to see the outlaws defeated but also wants to replace the sheriff.  And the deputy, whose job is to protect the sheriff  (the deputy shows up when you have more than 4 players).  It's a fast and frantic game that can be played several times in a single hour.  From hiding behind a barrel to shooting from the back of a horse, it's a hoot.  Lord help ye when someone pulls out the dynamite or the injuns show up...


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## Morrus (Jan 10, 2013)

ROBO RALLY - OK, this is my current favourite. I haven't had this much fun with a boargame in ages! It's an old game, but new to me. Each player program's five moves (forward, rotate left, back up, etc.) from a choice of nine randomly selected options at the start of each turn, and then everyone follows through one move at a time in order. The board itself - there are several - has conveyer belts and pushers and lasers and things, and generally your planned set of moves goes awry by the time you reach the fifth.


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## Wednesday Boy (Jan 10, 2013)

Stormonu said:


> Another game I remembered:
> 
> BANG - This is a spaghetti western non-collectible card game. One person is the sheriff, most of the others are outlaws out to kill him. There's also the Renegade, who wants to see the outlaws defeated but also wants to replace the sheriff. And the deputy, whose job is to protect the sheriff (the deputy shows up when you have more than 4 players). It's a fast and frantic game that can be played several times in a single hour. From hiding behind a barrel to shooting from the back of a horse, it's a hoot. Lord help ye when someone pulls out the dynamite or the injuns show up...




Excellent suggestion!  I love that game.

It's not a boardgame but recently I played a game called Morphology that I loved.  It's basic premise is Pictionary but instead of using a pencil to draw your word, you have use the junk that comes with the game.  The junk includes a shoe string, some glass beads, some mini popsickle sticks, colored dice (sans pips), some pegs, etc.  You also roll a die to see what sort of handicap you incur, such as doing it blind, only using the shoe string, only using three items, etc.  The most interesting part to me was seeing our learning curve.  At first we were clumsy at "drawing" with the objects but as we played more we got better at the drawing but also at interpreting how our teammates created their pictures, which made us better guessers.


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## MerricB (Jan 10, 2013)

Morrus said:


> ROBO RALLY - OK, this is my current favourite. I haven't had this much fun with a boargame in ages! It's an old game, but new to me. Each player program's five moves (forward, rotate left, back up, etc.) from a choice of nine randomly selected options at the start of each turn, and then everyone follows through one move at a time in order. The board itself - there are several - has conveyer belts and pushers and lasers and things, and generally your planned set of moves goes awry by the time you reach the fifth.




It's strange to hear you describe it as an old game, Morrus, because I played it when it was new, back when I was at university some seventeen years ago or thereabouts...

It is a great game. It's also an extremely significant game, because if Richard Garfield hadn't been trying to find a publisher for it, he never would have met Peter Adkison, who never would have asked him to design a quick portable game that could be played at conventions... and we wouldn't have got Magic: the Gathering as a result... which led to Wizards buying TSR and designing D&D 3E...

When the game was first published, it didn't have the nice player boards that the current edition did. Instead, you had to stack your manoeuvre cards in a little pile and reveal the cards from the top down. Many, many players would accidentally reverse the order of their cards, causing some hilarious robot movements! 

Have fun with it!

I should be getting the latest Spiel des Jahres award-winner tomorrow (Actually Kennerspiel des Jahres, the award for more 'gamer' games than the family games the SdJ normally goes to). It's called Village. I'll post a report after I get back from playing the Marvel RPG. 

Cheers!


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## MerricB (Jan 10, 2013)

Played the HBO edition of GAME OF THRONES card game yesterday. Fun, if simpler than the full game. I've posted a longer report elsewhere. I don't recommend it highly, except if you want a cheap way of seeing what the LCG is like.

Cheers!


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## Morrus (Jan 10, 2013)

MerricB said:


> It's strange to hear you describe it as an old game, Morrus, because I played it when it was new, back when I was at university some seventeen years ago or thereabouts...




Util recently, I've always been an RPGer and had played few board games (other than family boardgames like Monopoly, and some skirmish or wargames).  So a lot of stuff familiar to you is new to me!

I have _Eclipse_ on my Amazon wishlist, so I'm hoping for that for my birthday - but that's in June.


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## Jan van Leyden (Jan 10, 2013)

MerricB said:


> I should be getting the latest Spiel des Jahres award-winner tomorrow (Actually Kennerspiel des Jahres, the award for more 'gamer' games than the family games the SdJ normally goes to). It's called Village. I'll post a report after I get back from playing the Marvel RPG.




Hey, that's a good one! Indeed my favourite of the 2012 German crop. Have fun burying your family members at just the right point in time!  The way to the undertaker's paves the way to your victory!


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## MerricB (Jan 10, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Util recently, I've always been an RPGer and had played few board games (other than family boardgames like Monopoly, and some skirmish or wargames).  So a lot of stuff familiar to you is new to me!
> 
> I have _Eclipse_ on my Amazon wishlist, so I'm hoping for that for my birthday - but that's in June.




In fact, my own fascination with boardgames is relatively recent; most of my boardgaming started about 12 years ago (yes, after 3E came out!) when I found Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. And my *major* infatuation with boardgames is really in the past six or seven years. And, I've got to say, you've come in at a great time for boardgaming, Morrus. You really have a lot of very, very good games to choose from, and most of the ones you'll want are readily available.

Pre-2000, the boardgame scene was actually pretty poor. The advent of the "Eurogames" onto the market has caused *everyone* to lift their games. 

Cheers!


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## fba827 (Jan 12, 2013)

Games I played in the past month (some older but still new to me)

*Agricola* (ZMan Games)
This was fun and had some varience that would add to replayability. I couldn't play this -all- the time but could enjoy playing it once in a while. It's a resource management / build your community style game

*Castle Panic* (Fireside Games)
This was fun, once or twice. after that it just felt repetative. At best i'd replay it with different people but not a good candidtate for a regular thing with the same group. as a bonus though it is simple enough for kids to play too. It's a cooperative game to defend the tower before the goblins/ogres/etc get too close and attack.

*Drako* (CHG)
This game is VERY thematic and fun. That said, it is low on replayability, or at least not replayable in succession, but i could see myself playing it every "once in a while" and still enjoying it. a two-player game, one side dwarves one side dragon, each trying to destroy the other.

*Forbidden Island* (Game Wright)
A very simplified version of Pandemic (same designer). Quick but still fun. Cooperative game to collect treasures and get off the island before it sinks

*Hanabi and Ikebana* (don't know the publisher)
(Note this is two games in one, I only played Hanabi).this was a very different and fun logic game. simple enough to understand but a lot of strategy involved. You hold a hand of cards such that it is facing away from you and other players give each other clues to try and get each other to play cards in a certain order. (the game is near impossible to find in the US, I played it with someone who got it from europe where it is easier to find)

*Last Night on Earth* (Flying Frog Productions)
If you play with people who can get in to the 'story' of it, it's a lot of fun to play up the dramatics of it. but if not, then it becomes very dry and mechanical.  Basically, small townsfolk trying to accomplish some 'task' before zombies take over the town. i enjoy the game over all though.

*Minotaurus* (Lego)
a simple game. kind of silly fun. but had a lot of fun playing it. only played it once so don't know what replayability will be like. it's a lego maze, trying to get your guy to the center before the minotaur gets you (and other players can sometimes shape the lego maze to make it harder for you to get to the center)

*Pandemic* (ZMan Games)
Cooperative game to cure plagues before humanity is destroyed.  It would be fun once in a while but not 'all the time'

*Star Fluxx* (Looney Labs)
It's Fluxx! Need I say more? but themed with stuff from star wars/star trek/dr who (for those who have never heard of fluxx, it's a card game where the rules change every round based on who plays what card as you try and get a winning combination of cards)

*Stone Age* (Rio Grande Games)
It's a resource management / build your community style game, similar to agricola. unlike agricola it didn't have the variability from the card draws but it was still fun.  But, like agricola, not sure i'd play it -all- the time.

*Sentinels of the Multiverse* (Greater Than Games)
A non-collectible card game where each player has a deck that represents a comicbook style superhero. You work together to defeat the supervillain (represented by another card deck). I personally really enjoy the game, though I will fully admit that other people seem to either really like it or really dislike it. Because there are lots of heroes to choose from and lots of villains to choose from, combined with randomness of card draws, there is a lot of variety for replay. (though this game/publisher is still small enough that it is harder to get this game outside the US due to shipping costs)


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## GreyLord (Jan 13, 2013)

MerricB said:


> In fact, my own fascination with boardgames is relatively recent; most of my boardgaming started about 12 years ago (yes, after 3E came out!) when I found Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. And my *major* infatuation with boardgames is really in the past six or seven years. And, I've got to say, you've come in at a great time for boardgaming, Morrus. You really have a lot of very, very good games to choose from, and most of the ones you'll want are readily available.
> 
> Pre-2000, the boardgame scene was actually pretty poor. The advent of the "Eurogames" onto the market has caused *everyone* to lift their games.
> 
> Cheers!




I disagree...as a Wargamer speaking of course!!!

I was a Wargamer before I was a Roleplayer!!!

So was Gary (rest his soul)!!!!

There have always been some great games out there, the landscape has just changed over the past decade.

It's an exciting time though, over the past five years we've seen MANY reprints of old popular games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s!


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## Nellisir (Jan 13, 2013)

I bought and played *Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries* last week; it was only my second time playing a Ticket to Ride game, and I enjoyed it a -lot- more than the first time.   Half of the fun is trying to figure out where you're going to go.  

I played *Gloom* two nights ago, with 4 people.  Two of us "got it" right off, one picked it up gradually, and one had a very hard time reading the cards and understanding the game.  She won, largely because we left her alone except for helping.  The two of us who "got it" had a great time with it, though -- it got heated and tricky towards the end, trying to off the right (or wrong!) people.

We played *Cards Against Humanity* as well.  That game has serious issues.  I love it.

I've played Forbidden Island a number of times, and frankly, it's never been very exciting.  Never lost.


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## Mathew_Freeman (Jan 15, 2013)

*Lords of Waterdeep*: Got this for Xmas and have played it a couple of times so far. Just to add to what other people have said above I really enjoyed playing it. Simple mechanic that everyone picked up nice and quickly, had a nice feel to it, competitive without being too back-stabby. And I suck at it. Finished last and second to last.

*Cards Against Humanity*: Love this game for it's absolutely edge-of-the-line humour. Was very lucky to be involved in a playtest last night for a UK expansion - look out for it later this year. We pushed to keep "eating Stephen Fry's brain to gain his intelligence" as a new white card.

*Ascension*: A deck building game, similar to Dominion in a way. On your turn you purchase new heroes and constructs to go into your deck whilst also defeating monsters, all to earn honour (the victory point equivalent). There are various suites of cards themed on different in-game mechanics (e.g. the Englightened cards tend towards improving existing cards by swapping them out or drawing more cards, whereas Void cards help you defeat monsters or trim down your deck by getting rid of poor-value cards). I have this on my phone and I think it's fantastic, do get it.


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## Mathew_Freeman (Jan 15, 2013)

*Lords of Waterdeep*: Got this for Xmas and have played it a couple of times so far. Just to add to what other people have said above I really enjoyed playing it. Simple mechanic that everyone picked up nice and quickly, had a nice feel to it, competitive without being too back-stabby. And I suck at it. Finished last and second to last.

*Cards Against Humanity*: Love this game for it's absolutely edge-of-the-line humour. Was very lucky to be involved in a playtest last night for a UK expansion - look out for it later this year. We pushed to keep "eating Stephen Fry's brain to gain his intelligence" as a new white card.

*Ascension*: A deck building game, similar to Dominion in a way. On your turn you purchase new heroes and constructs to go into your deck whilst also defeating monsters, all to earn honour (the victory point equivalent). There are various suites of cards themed on different in-game mechanics (e.g. the Englightened cards tend towards improving existing cards by swapping them out or drawing more cards, whereas Void cards help you defeat monsters or trim down your deck by getting rid of poor-value cards). I have this on my phone and I think it's fantastic, do get it.


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## GX.Sigma (Jan 16, 2013)

*The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (FFG):*  It told me it was not a CCG. It lied.


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## MerricB (Jan 17, 2013)

Last week's gaming:

*The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (FFG)*: This is a 1-4 player game by FFG using the Living Card Game model; that is: it's like a collectible card game (you build decks from your collection of cards and then play them) with two difference. The first is that it's non-random. You only need to buy one of each 60-card monthly booster to have a full playset (although the core set is annoyingly distributed, you probably need 2-3 of them). The second is that it's co-operative. Each new booster has a new scenario to play against. Scenarios range from easy to hard, from well-constructed to annoyingly broken. Generally it's a fun game. We played a four-player game of _The Battle of Lake-Town_, a special scenario debuted at GenCon 2012, and lost horribly as Smaug burnt down Lake-Town and killed our characters. 

*Village*: This is a new Eurogame which won the Kennerspiel des Jahres award (The Kennerspiel award goes to more "gamer" games than the regular award, which is normally more family-oriented). It's a fascinating resource collection/spending game where your family members (who enable some actions) die during the game. Part of the fun is making them die when in the right profession - as where they die can give you VPs at end of game! It's a nice game for 2-4 players, although probably better with 3-4 than 2.

*The Adventurers: Temple of Chac*: This is an "Indiana Jones"-like game - you have to get in and out of a temple filled with treasure whilst avoiding crushing walls, a rolling boulder, trapped tiles over lava, a rickety bridge and a raging waterfall. It has a number of very nice mechanics: you travel slower the more treasure you're carrying, and there's a memory sub-game for identifying the trapped tiles. It's fairly light, and quite luck-based, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.

*Through the Ages*: This is my favourite boardgame. It's designed by Vlaada Chvatil (Dungeon Lords, MageKnight Boardgame, Space Alert) who is one of the most brilliant game-designers today. TTA is a civilisation game where you have to juggle your resources (ore, food, science & population) whilst trying to increase your culture and draft the technology cards you need. It's a long game - about one hour per player, plays 2-4 - but it's quite brilliant. Territorial ambitions are abstracted, rather than dealing with a map you fight over territory cards or use conflict cards directly against another player, so it doesn't play like a wargame, but you can't let your military slip too far behind. I can't recommend this enough for lovers of "heavy" Eurogames.

*Rex: Final Days of the Empire* - this is the retheme of the classic game of Dune. It's not quite as good as the original, as some of the additions dilute the original brilliance, but it does do some things right. You need six players for this one, and it takes 2-4 hours. Basically, the Sol Federation has started bombing the capital of the Galactic Empire, and you're all factions trying to gain control of the planet. Each faction has unique powers, and the interaction of them is brilliant. The original design is by the Cosmic Encounter team, and even if I don't like this as much as Dune, it's still good. Much more of a wargame than anything else!

Cheers!


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## Slickam (Jan 18, 2013)

Some of the games I've picked up through Kickstarter:

BATTLECON: WAR OF INDINES -- My favorite game of the last year. It's a 2D fighting game done as a card game. You choose your fighter (out of 18, plus promos and another 30 or so in their current Kickstarter project), which gives you a unique set of styles (Flaming, Armored, etc.) plus a common set of bases (Strike, Throw, etc.). Each turn you combine one of each to choose your move, which sets the range, damage and priority (initiative) of your attack. The game is for 2-4 players, either 1 on 1 matches, tag teams or boss fights. The standalone expansion adds a solo mode and 4 on 1 boss fights.

ALIEN FRONTIERS -- A game about colonizing a new planet. You get d6 spaceships, which you roll and allocate to different facilities. Each one takes different rolls to use (buying a new ship needs doubles, plus resources, stealing resources from others needs a run of 3 dice, ...) The game goes until someone lands the required number of colonies on the planet. Each colony is placed in a territory which gives a bonus if you have the most colonies there. It's a fun game for 2-4 players, but my group hasn't played it much recently.

SUNRISE CITY -- Sim City the board game. The board is made of zoning tiles that affect what types of buildings can be built on them. Each turn players take turn adding more zoning tiles, bidding on the tiles they want to place buildings on, then placing buildings. I enjoyed it, but the auction mechanics fell flat for the rest of my group.

EMINENT DOMAIN -- A 4X deck building game. Each turn you can play one card from your hand, then draw a card from the stacks of new cards to use a different action, which you can boost with cards from your hand. This lets you scan new planets to settle, research new technologies, attack or settle planets or produce or sell resources. Each other player can then either take the same action or draw a card from their deck into their hand. I've only played a couple games of this so far, but my group likes 4X games and deck builders, so I think it will be played a lot more.


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## Nellisir (Jan 18, 2013)

Played *Netrunner* last night for the first time.  I can see how it could be fun, but the person I was playing with had only played once, and preferred to (try and) explain the rules rather than just hand me the booklet, so.... after an hour and only 3 turns we called it quits.  That's probably at the edge of what I would call a "fiddly-bits" game.


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## MerricB (Jan 20, 2013)

I had my two games on the *Ticket to Ride: Heart of Africa* map this week. It is very definitely an expert-level board. Ticket to Ride is an exceptional (gateway) game where you try to connect routes across various maps that match the tickets you've drawn. The Heart of Africa map is very, very easy to block someone on, especially in 4-5 player games, and the colour scheme is coded to the various parts of the map, making it a lot harder to collect the right colours. The wild cards are *so* much more important. Highly recommended for lovers of the TTR series.

I also had my first game with the *Mage Knight Boardgame: The Lost Legion* expansion. I've mentioned MK before: IMO, it's the best fantasy adventure boardgame for people who like strategy games; it's sort of a combination of a deck-building game and Magic Realm, the latter because it gives you a very large selection of possible routes to victory. You can explore dungeons, kill monsters, find treasures, loot monasteries, recruit allies, and besiege cities in this game, and it's one I adore, though I don't think it's for the casual gamer. The Lost Legion adds a bunch more variety in terms of skills and spells to learn and monsters to fight, as well as adding a big co-operative scenario against the Lost Legion itself. The expansion pieces aren't quite compatible with my first edition MK set, but they're close enough to work.

I also got in six games of *Netrunner*. I love the game - of all the CCG-type games out there, it requires the most thinking while playing the game (rather than just having a good deck). The Fantasy Flight version is far superior to the original, and is very playable with just one or two core sets.

Apart from that, I've played lots of games of the LOTR card game, and few games of Brass and Village this week. 

  [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], have you tried the Doctor Who Card Game yet? It's a lighter design from Martin Wallace, one of my three favourite boardgame designers (The other two are Stefan Feld and Vlaada Chvatil).

Cheers!


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## Jan van Leyden (Jan 20, 2013)

We played a game of *Ticket to Ride: Legend of Asia* with our children and two friends who are very experienced in cut-throat TtR. The one aspect completeley new to me was the team play, where you play together with your neighbour. Players can/may/must share ticket and train cards according to very specific rules. It has to be a bad game as I lost.  My usual strategy of combining high-value cards with long routes, thus building up as much time pressure as possible, didn't work out. Well, more plays are necessary to explore the new strategy space!


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## MerricB (Jan 21, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> We played a game of *Ticket to Ride: Legend of Asia* with our children and two friends who are very experienced in cut-throat TtR. The one aspect completeley new to me was the team play, where you play together with your neighbour. Players can/may/must share ticket and train cards according to very specific rules. It has to be a bad game as I lost.  My usual strategy of combining high-value cards with long routes, thus building up as much time pressure as possible, didn't work out. Well, more plays are necessary to explore the new strategy space!




Very interesting! I haven't tried the team game yet.


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## Stormonu (Jan 22, 2013)

Here's another one we recently tried out:

ZOMBICIDE:  This game is the board version of Left 4 Dead.  Playing as one of several survivors of a zombie apocalypse, you take on different missions in your struggle to survive against unending hordes of zombies.  As you kill more zombies, you gain special abilities, but the "threat level" goes up, meaning there's more and more zombies to take down.  Woe to the group that lets one person get too experienced while the others lag behind...  The game comes with your typical shambler zombies (40 minis), runner/fast zombies (16 minis), fatty (tough) zombies (8 minis) and the nigh-unbeatable Abomination.   The rules are simple (though they've got some problems*) and the action is generally fast and furious - with lots of "oh-noes!!!" moments.  Best of all, the missions aren't "scrag 'em all" - the first one has you hunting the city for food and water and getting out of the city before the zombies overrun your group (which trust me, they WILL).  Most interestingly, guillotine games, which makes the game, has put together extra survivors (players) you can copy onto the blank side of the included character sheets and/or you can download their FREE app that not only tracks all the stuff for the characters (and does your dice rolls, if you're inclined), but includes all the characters - including the ones on their site.  Overall, its a great game with a lot of repeatability and customizability.

* Cars are stupid good (though you can still get your arrogant butt hauled out of them and killed pretty quickly), the zombie-split-and-multiply when following same distance path rules is annoying and the target priority rules (with ranged weapons and cars: target survivors in square first, then zombies) is a little annoying considering how easily you can get overrun (even when you thought you were completely safe).


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## Mathew_Freeman (Jan 22, 2013)

Games of Thones Board game: Take the role of one of six houses and battle your way to victory!

I've played this twice now and both times we've not had the full six players. This means some areas of the map are "NPCs" but can still be captured and still count towards the victory conditions. IMO, it's far too easy to capture NPC sites and the game revolves around stopping the people nearest to them from doing so. I suspect it'd be a much better game with all six players. Still, it's good fun and has a neat mechanic revolving around who sits on the Iron Throne (determining turn order). Needs at least another go.


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## MerricB (Jan 22, 2013)

Mathew_Freeman said:


> Games of Thones Board game: Take the role of one of six houses and battle your way to victory!
> 
> I've played this twice now and both times we've not had the full six players. This means some areas of the map are "NPCs" but can still be captured and still count towards the victory conditions. IMO, it's far too easy to capture NPC sites and the game revolves around stopping the people nearest to them from doing so. I suspect it'd be a much better game with all six players. Still, it's good fun and has a neat mechanic revolving around who sits on the Iron Throne (determining turn order). Needs at least another go.




I have the first edition of the game. In many ways, it's a retheme of Diplomacy with elements of Dune. Like Diplomacy and Dune, it doesn't work all that well with fewer than the full complement. The original was 5 players, with a 6th player added in an expansion, but the neutrals really cause a problem when you don't play with everyone. 

Cheers!


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## Wednesday Boy (Jan 23, 2013)

Mathew_Freeman said:


> I've played this twice now and both times we've not had the full six players. This means some areas of the map are "NPCs" but can still be captured and still count towards the victory conditions. IMO, it's far too easy to capture NPC sites and the game revolves around stopping the people nearest to them from doing so.




I've played this twice and we didn't have the full six players either.  The biggest strategic error that we had in both games was realizing too late that we needed to stop the folks closest to the NPCs from taking them.   I would like to try it a third time with that in mind.


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## chaochou (Jan 23, 2013)

Stuff I've played recently:

Netrunner (FFG): A quality update on WotC's original CCG (now an LCG with known card distributions in the packs). An assymetrical 2-player card game where one is a hacker trying to break into the servers of a corporation and the other is the corporation trying to protect itself long enough to carry out its plans. Clever and tense. New cards are being released monthly: either this is good as the game is constantly evolving, or it's not because it's a treadmill to keep up with the game. Right now I think the former, but fatigue could set in.

Mage Wars (Arcane Wonders): Superficially its a card game, but better viewed as a wargame with cards. Two mages battle it out in an arena armed with a deck of cards representing monsters, buffs, terrain, enchantments and equipment. It's very well done, intuitive, and gets you feeling like you are a mage in a life or death battle. Not quick to play, but I like it a lot.

Sentinels of the Multiverse (Greater than Games): Another card game - this one's a co-operative Superhero game where you all gang up to try and defeat a villain. Super easy to teach and play. Even with new players a battle can be done in 25 minutes. Not the deepest game ever, but does enough to capture the rollicking punch em up of a comic book boss fight.

Twilight Struggle (GMT): 2-player card driven game (CDG) covering the Cold War. You play either the US or USSR attempting to wrestle political control of Europe, Asia, S America, Africa and the Middle East by using cards for events - whether that's the Cuban Missile Crisis, the blockade of Berlin or by hosting the Olympic Games. Fans of this seem to analyse hands and potential plays with an almost chess-like devotion. I play it casually (and it's very good) but I think it's as deep as you want it to be.

Race for the Galaxy: A multi-player card game in which the actions of the other players are almost irrelevant in your pursuit of combo optimisation. Not my cup of tea.

Lord of the Rings CCG (FFG): As a game I don't really get it. But it is a) co-operative and b) sociable and c) something lots of people can agree on and d) allows people to make 'Horn of Gondor' jokes and e) I get to beat stuff up with Dwarves. So I forgive it its flaws.


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## Jhaelen (Jan 24, 2013)

chaochou said:


> Race for the Galaxy: A multi-player card game in which the actions of the other players are almost irrelevant in your pursuit of combo optimisation. Not my cup of tea.



That's only true when everyone's new to the game, though. Once everyone has a good grasp on the game and knows which cards there are, you will have to anticipate other players' actions in order to win.
I agree that it's probably not everybody's cup of tea, though.

Myself, I'm playing a lot of Netrunner recently. FFG's update is very good and I already liked playing the original. Even without data packs you can play it for a long time before it gets stale since your actions are more important than the cards.

I recently played Rex (an update of the Dune boardgame) for the first time (with six players) but even though I won I didn't really enjoy it very much. The victory conditions are a bit weird (to not call them random). Maybe it would take more games to appreciate it fully.


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## chaochou (Jan 24, 2013)

Jhaelen said:


> Myself, I'm playing a lot of Netrunner recently. FFG's update is very good and I already liked playing the original. Even without data packs you can play it for a long time before it gets stale since your actions are more important than the cards.




Yeah, I was a fan of the original. But I prefer the FFG version because I can take the base set to a game night and play against friends who don't collect knowing we've got interesting, playable and balanced decks straight from the box. That's a massive plus for me.

I played in an online tournament organised over at BGG before Christmas and it was a lot of fun. However, I didn't sign up for Tourney 2 which just opened simply because I haven't kept up with the metagame. I have What Lies Ahead and Trace Amount but haven't had time to use them, understand the new cards or construct new deck ideas, and being out of the loop in that environment would hurt.


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## innerdude (Jan 24, 2013)

Picked up Fantasy Flight's Cadwallon: City of Thieves over Christmas and just tried it out with the wife last week. Overall was fun, with a great "flavor" for the setting. As a two-player game it ran smoothly, even for the two of us never having tried it before. 

The concept is that you're a party / troupe of 4 thieves trying to get as much loot as possible out of the city. Each party member can only carry three treasure items, so you have to balance using party members to loot vs. protecting other members. On the surface there's no one complex rule, but it's managing your available resources as efficiently as possible. In play it's something of a cross between one of the WotC Ravenloft / Drizzt games and the old kids game Mystery Mansion or Clue. As a two player game I'd give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. It's fun and engaging, though I don't know that it's one of those games you'd want to play 2-3 times in a row. As a once a month game though, I think it would be great. 

Total play time for us was about 1:45, though that included learning the basic rules and setup. Once e eryone knows the rules, I suspect even a four player game wouldn't last much longer than 90 minutes. 

Couple of cons: out of the box it only supports 4 players. If you're like my group, we often have 6 or 7 people around on game nights. Also, I worry that with more than 3 players, the basic premise of stealing and looting gets lost in favor of simply attacking other parties, which is a fun diversion with two players, but would quickly become tedious with 4.


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## Jan van Leyden (Jan 25, 2013)

*City of Horror*: Zombies attack a small town. Try to survive for four hours.

The game sports some fantastic production values, with it's big gameboard including a 3d water tower, dozens of zombie stand-ups, 21 different citizen stand-ups and several sets of colorful, stylish playing cards.

You run a set of randomly drawn citizens who try to find solace in one of the five buildings, perhaps find vaccine and/or canned food and make sure that the other player's citizens are devoured by the zombies. Each citizen has a special ability she can use once per game, reducing the victory points to be scored for her survival at the same time.

Zombies are deployed and moved according to randomly drawn cards, which - with a special exception - you see only after you've decided on your move. Attacks occur in each building where a condition (more zombies than people, or three or more zombies) is fulfilled. Attack means that one citizen s devoured. The citizens inside said building vote on who gets the honor. Voting is subject to negotiations, blackmailing, promises and the occasional Action Card.

If there are some spoils in the building - vaccine or Action Cards - another vote takes place, this time to determine who gets to assign the goodies.

Each building also allows a special action (resting to reactivate a citizen's special action, swapping Action Cards, buying vaccine, looking at the zombie card before deciding on your move).

Now each building only has a few positions for the fearful citizens. When you want to move into a building but no space is available, your citizens ends up on the street crossing. You can snatch up a canned food token which is worth a random amount of VP at the end, but one of the citizens at the street crossing will be eliminated at the end of the round. Here, no vote takes place, but the zombie leader selects its morsel according to a distinct rule.

After four rounds the Air Force arrives and rescues the surviving citizens. You need to drop one dose of vaccine for each citizens in order to score his value. Additional points are awarded for additional doses of medicine and the canned food you've acquired (What? The Air Force rescues people, but they have to bring their own food?)

City of Horror essentially boils down to a series of negotiations. In our six player game, each player only had three citizens. With only four rounds in the game, each negotiation became a pretty much isolated affair. Typical deals like "Vote for me, I'll return the favour in the next similar situation" weren't made because the "next similar situation" was not sure to turn up. It never came to a heated negotiation between us because the situation was mostly crystal clear from the outset.

Now, we're all experienced Euro-gamers who dissect a game into its mechanical parts and anylse those parts to build a winning strategy: negotiating feels somewhat alien to us.  Players with more enthusiasm for this aspect may find City of Horror much more enjoyable than we did.

Another caveat: we played with the full complement of six players, which made it next to impossible to build a situation where you gain a majority of the votes on your own because of clever play. It was even hard to have two of your citizens meet in one place. This made a tactical play preferred by our group next to impossible. If we hadn't unanimously decided to relegate City of Horrors to the never-to-be-played-again container, I'd perhaps try it out with three players instead of six. Maybe there'd be more possibilities.

Even forgetting about our verdict, there remains a quandary. Price and production value are not adequate to the play value, IMHO. You'll experience 24 negotiation situations maximum. In our game we had about half of that number. The wiggling room for offers and counter-offers is very limited due to the lack of ressources one might offer, so many of this negotiations are very short affairs.

Such a game might have been realised as a little card game with a handfull of cardboard counters without taking away any of the play-value. All the rest is nothing but heavy, expensive eye-candy. If I had bought City of Horror, I'd be really disappointed.

Well, with the first bad experience of 2013 behind us, we're looking forward to all the new games this year will bring us!


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## Nellisir (Jan 25, 2013)

I played *Tzolk'in* and *Roll Through the Ages* yesterday, both for the first time.  I ended up winning Tzolk'in by concentrating on one area and not spreading myself out too much.  I had a series of bad rolls with Roll Through the Ages, but did alright -- I might have done better if I'd stuck to my plan to end the game ASAP.  Not doing so gave other people time to get more points but didn't help me at all.

I played *Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries* again (it's my game) last week and lost (again) by gambling and not completing two long routes.  I got shut out of one on the second round of play, and simply could not get the cards to complete the second.


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## MerricB (Feb 5, 2013)

This weekend was taken up mainly with roleplaying and reading, but I did get to play *The Manhattan Project* and a couple of games of *Archipelago*.

*The Manhattan Project* I've now played with 2 and 5 players, and both times it has been unimpressive. This is a game that got compared a lot to _Lords of Waterdeep_ when the latter came out, but the reason it didn't get more press was simple: it was mostly unavailable (I only just was able to pick up a copy), and it wasn't as good. Basically you're in a race to make atom bombs, and it's a worker placement/engine builder game where you gather resources, get buildings, use the buildigns to turn the resources into different resources, then turn them into bombs, and occasionally bomb your opponents back to the Stone Age. (Or not). In 5-player, it was horrible - too easy to block useful actions (like Espionage). In 2-players, it was better, but the randomness of the available building was massive; I was able to get a great engine, Sarah wasn't. So, I won. My recommendation: *Avoid*.

*Archipelago* is unusual. I've played three games with 3 players, and it's been greatly enjoyable. It's billed as a "semi-cooperative" game which means there's only one winner, but you can all lose if the natives rebel. Component-wise, it is beautiful. The rulebook is somewhat confusing (especially as it reverses the normal conventions for "round" and "turn"), but is adequate. The game itself is fascinating: you have a limited number of actions per turn, which you use to build buildings (markets, churches, ports and towns), gather resources, move workers, increase workers and explore. There are also progress cards you can buy that improve the engine of your islands. Meanwhile, you have to satisfy various internal and external demands that apply during the game; not satisfying them bring the game closer to a bad conclusion. What makes the game very interesting is that the end of the game plus the scoring conditions are hidden: each player has one end-game condition with its matching scoring conditions. Once *any* of the end-game conditions applies, then the game immediately end, and you score based on *all* of the hidden scoring conditions as well as one face-up "trend". We found ourselves paying more attention to the other players' actions in subsequent games, trying to guess where to score points. There's also separatist (wins if the island rebels) and pacifist (bonus points for few rebels) end conditions. It's a fascinating game, and one we'll continue to investigate. Game length can be set to short, medium or long. (About 1 hour - 4 hours). My recommendation: *Worth checking out*.

Cheers!


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## Jdvn1 (Feb 5, 2013)

fba827 said:


> *Sentinels of the Multiverse* (Greater Than Games)
> A non-collectible card game where each player has a deck that represents a comicbook style superhero. You work together to defeat the supervillain (represented by another card deck). I personally really enjoy the game, though I will fully admit that other people seem to either really like it or really dislike it. Because there are lots of heroes to choose from and lots of villains to choose from, combined with randomness of card draws, there is a lot of variety for replay. (though this game/publisher is still small enough that it is harder to get this game outside the US due to shipping costs)




I can certainly recommend this one - as long as you are okay with cooperative games and with losing sometimes. The expansions add replayability exponentially.


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## Jan van Leyden (Feb 5, 2013)

Last week I played a game of *Belfort*. It is a mixture of worker placement style and majority game. At first glance, the complexity is pretty high, may be even as high as in Agricola. I'll see that I play it again tomorrow so that I can give a more profound description and evaluation.


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## Cherno (Feb 7, 2013)

*Gears of War: The Boardgame* by Fantasy Flight Games, as usual this comes with lots of very detailed 28mm plastic miniatures and cardboard tiles. The overall art style of the components are taken directly from the videogame. The game itself does not use the well-known Doom:TBG or Descent mechanics but rather a simpler, more brutal approach to combat and exploration. It's a coop game against the system, so to speak. The Locust hordes are controlled by AI cards drawn each player turn. Players each take one COG like Marcus Fenix or Dominic Santiago which all have different starting weapons, ammo, and one special ability. Each player has a hand of cards that represent his health but also act as orders for his character, there's things like covering fire or getting a bonus to attack if you are in cover. And since I've mentioned cover: The cover mechanic is of course inspired by the videogame too; almost every maptile has obstacles with spaces that count as cover. Using these spaces to your advantage is very important if you want to stay alive, and it is one thing I must say is designed very well. The difficulty of the game partly depends on the scenario: Some are very hard and some are a walk in the park, and either way even it all goes well things can down FAST if you're not careful and make the utmost of your order cards. Players: 1-4. Game time can be quite long, 2 hours at least. Overall, I love this game and will surely play it again.


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## Nellisir (Feb 13, 2013)

OK, so I just played 3 games of *Evagari*, which no one has ever heard of because the guy who invented it hasn't had any luck marketing it.  I didn't plan on playing it; it was just the first game I could jump into.

That said, it's a pretty awesome game.  It's reminiscent of both chess (4 pieces per player. each with a different type of move: a "star/knight", a "circle/king", a one-or-two space "triangle/bishop", and a one-space "square/rook") and checkers (all pieces, except the circle/king, transform or flip into a circle/king under the right circumstances - sometimes inadvertently).  

The board has four 4x4 sections (16 tiles in a section), with the 4 corner tiles of each section being raised.  The 4 sections come together in a square, so the 4 center tiles (one from each section) form a platform in the middle of the board.  A non-circle piece on the center platform at the start of your turn flips into a circle.  The twist here is that instead of moving a piece, you can rotate your section of the board 90 degrees, pushing all the pieces into a different alignment with relation to the rest of the board.  A section with no pieces on it is taken out of play, and adjacent sections can slide into that space instead of rotating.

You win by flipping all of your pieces into circles, by being the last player with a circle on the board, or by accumulating points from captured pieces.  You lose when you have no circles on the board, or the game stalemates and you have fewer points.

Frankly, I was really impressed.  It's complex without being complicated, it's pretty quick (he's apparently done "speed" games that took less than 10 minutes, I think we averaged around 20 - 30 minutes), and the transforming board really shifts the game fast.  I would definitely play it again.  (Another nice thing: because the sections are all identical and symmetrical,  you can add on.  I suggested, and he's intrigued by the idea of, playing an 8-player, 9-section game with a fixed center section and 8 sections around the outside.  There are a lot of possibilities for variants.)

He's got videos here http://www.youtube.com/user/evagari (I haven't watched them), and a website here http://evagari.com/ (which is a little overwrought IMO).

Also, I really like the idea of a game that you could easily draw out on some paper and play anytime, anywhere.


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## Nytmare (May 22, 2013)

*NEW AND OLD STUFF FROM THE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS:*

Roll Through the Ages: The Late Bronze Era - Civilization building dice game

This print it yourself expansion for Roll Through the Ages puts the entire game into overdrive.  I've always liked the original, but frequently end games feeling like I never got a chance to play with any of the toys I built.  The expansion adds and tweaks a handful of developments, extends the game by moving one of the victory conditions by a couple of points, and introduces a new phase, trading.


Kingdom Builder - Territory grabbing point game

I really like this game.  There are three randomized aspects that completely change things around from game to game.  The board is built with four random map pieces, each board introduces a random piece that you can gather during the game to give you new additional options on your turn.  Finally you deal out three random victory point cards which tell you how to win points over the course of the game. 


Cash n' Guns - ...  Foam gun pointing bluffing game?

I had a bunch of friends visit from out of town, so we had a chance to bust out a lot of games that I haven't had a chance to play in a long time.  Cash n' Guns is a game about a bunch of bank robbers calmly and politely divvying up the money after a job well done.  They do this by drawing their possibly loaded guns on each other in an attempt to convince their friends to give them their (un)fair share.  I love this game, but my normal gaming group usually isn't big enough to make this game interesting.


Goblins Inc - Giant mechanical robot of doom building death match chaos

This game is everything I love about Galaxy Trucker, and none of the things I absolutely despise about Galaxy Trucker.  Players take on the role of a bunch of Goblin Mechanics competing to become the new boss of the Giant Mechanical Robot of Doom Factory.  The game plays out over two rounds of GMRoD on GMRoD combat, with players being randomly split into teams each round.  In addition, each player is given a handful of random "agendas" to choose from that dictate how they want to win points when the fight is over and done with.  These agendas tend to run the gambit of how well you think your team, and/or your robot are going to do, but there is the chance of getting an agenda that allows you to bet against yourself.  

Each round of the game is split into two different phases.  In the first phase, teammates build their robots, each taking turns to (quietly and without any communication at all) select pieces that their partner then needs to attach to their machine.  In the second, teammates take turns (once again, quietly and without any communication) swapping between piloting and operating the weapon systems.

I was blown away by this game and can't wait to play it again this weekend.  It's just the right mix of light strategy, team work, chaos, and back stabbing to make me happy in a fast game.


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## Nojo509 (May 23, 2013)

I love Dominion, the deck building game. The core game comes with 25 Kingdom card piles, and in each game you only use 10 piles, so lots of replay, plus there are many expansions out there. This is a game I enjoy even if I lose. I just like trying to build up gold so I can build up victory points.


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## Nytmare (Jul 29, 2013)

New Games From the Past Couple Weeks:

*Death Angel *- A fast, co-op, 40K card game.  You play the part of a team of Space Marines, double timing single file through a Tyrannid infested Space Hulk.  Each player has the same basic set of three actions to choose from each round: (basically) Attack, Overwatch (Defend), and Move/Activate.  You have to choose your action secretly, and you can not choose the same action you used in the previous round.  The actions do slightly different things depending on which Marines you have on your team, and what set pieces you are next to in the ship.

You're trying to survive through four (maybe five?) random sections of the ship and make it to the final room where the actual, randomized win condition is revealed.  We started with ten Marines, lost all but 3 of them in the final two sections of the ship, and only managed to "win" by getting someone to the ships' self destruct button in the final room.

I only played one game of it, but it's a favorite of the group I was with.  They have 3 or 4 expansions for it, but have not yet felt the need to make the game more difficult.  I'm looking forward to trying it again.


*Kemet *- Fantasy Egyptian Wargame - A little bit of worker placement, a little bit of territory control, and a little bit of ability drafting.  You play the part of a warring, ancient Egyptian tribe.  On each turn, you have a bit of a resource management game, choosing how to spend that turns actions between a handful of different choices: Moving units, recruiting new troops, building or upgrading a pyramid (which dictates what kinds of abilities you can purchase), praying for more "prayer points" (currency), or by purchasing upgrades from three limited stacks of abilities.  The goal is to gain victory points in a handful of different ways (winning combat, holding key locations on the board, building up your tribe...)  Most victory points can be stolen, or taken away from players, but some are more difficult to get and are "permanent".

I really liked this one, and am probably going to add it to my collection in the next couple of weeks.  The army builds were really interesting and dynamic.


*Next Week *- Kings of Air and Steam - Supposedly it's a combination of Robo Rally and Merchant of Venus with a Steampunk theme!


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## Jhaelen (Jul 30, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> *Death Angel *- A fast, co-op, 40K card game.  You play the part of a team of Space Marines, double timing single file through a Tyrannid infested Space Hulk.



This one works really well as a solo game, too. I've played it over 30 times now, and despite the simple setup, only one type of enemy and few decisions you have to make each turn, there's a lot of variety in the game. It also manages to capture the theme really well and got my creative juices flowing: I think you could rather easily adapt the rules to turn it into a fantasy-themed dungeon-crawler. Since I'm not a fan of the WH40K setting, I'd enjoy that even more.


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## Nytmare (Aug 4, 2013)

Kings of Air and Steam - Programmed turn, economic, steam punk rail-and-air-ship game - We only played one game of this, and though I enjoyed myself, I don't know if I have a really good handle on the game.  It was unfortunately one of those new game where, between my turns, instead of being able to strategize and pay attention to what everyone else was doing, I was busy reading through the rule book answering everyone else's questions.  

The game is split into 5 rounds.  Each round is split into four turns. 

On each round your airships will be zipping around the map, picking up and redistributing goods to your rail lines, so that your trains can then deliver the goods to the cities that want them.

At the beginning of each round, you choose (program) four movement cards that designate how far (not where) your airship will travel.  On each turn, players simultaneously flip over their movement cards, and in initiative order (designated by the cards) decide where their ship moves, whether they pick up, or unload any cargo, and what action they want their ship to take.  The possible actions are to drift (move one space), build a new train depot (make traveling along a rail line possible/cheaper), upgrade your ship (make it's movement and carrying capacity better), upgrade your trains (increase the movement of your trains), make a delivery (move goods between your depots or a city), or to collect 3 dollars from your investors (get money from the bank).

After 5 rounds (plus one last run of deliveries for any goods already in the rail system) the game ends, and victory points are based off of a combination of money, your ship and train upgrades, and how extensive your rail lines are.

As I said, overall I enjoyed it, I don't think it's going to be one of those games that I want to play all the time, but I'm definitely looking forward to playing it again.  The production value of the game is through the roof.  Everything, the boards, the pieces, even the freaking box, are well made and have some serious heft to them.  The only minor quibble I have is that the (albeit beautiful) plastic airships are so big that they kinda get in the way of playing the game.  I think that, in the end, I would have been happier with some wooden meeple airships instead.


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## Xeterog (Aug 7, 2013)

Lots of good games mentioned here, but I'm sorta surprised that no one has mentioned *7 Wonders* yet.  Great game for 2-7 (8 with expansions) game that takes about 30-45 min to play no matter how many players you have.   I have the game and all the expansions, and we often play a game before everyone shows up for the evening, or after the main game (usually a RPG of some sort) is over for the evening.


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## Nytmare (Aug 7, 2013)

For those who aren't familiar with it, 7 Wonders is a card game built around the booster draft mechanic.  Instead of drafting cards to build a deck that you play with, you're drafting to build your empire a card at a time, adding to your resources, victory points, military strength, and general "rule breaking" abilities. 

7 Wonders is a game that I am always surprised to see played very solitarily.  I've played it a lot, with many different groups, and in general I only see people playing offensively via the games military mechanic and only rarely by their draft choices.  I would argue that it is unfortunately one of those games where the winner has a smidge too much to do with where people are sitting, over how well they're playing the game.  

It would extend the length of the game pretty dramatically, but I'd be very interested to try playing it with a Rochester draft.


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## Avaru (Apr 22, 2014)

*Asgard *is an awesome, although very heavy game with with a welcome chance of setting (norse mythology). It's a card-as-action game with cards being available to everyone all the time, but usage being limited due to other players using up slots. There is no "you cannot do that" in this game though which makes it a lot better than many others. Player interaction is intense and thrilling and the game has a really nice "showdown" part at the end.

*Vikings *may sound similar, but it's quite a different game. Easy to get into, it's a bit of a betting game. The game mixes getting "workers" with expansion at the same time and has some pretty neat economy system. Do not play anything other than the advanced rules, even on the first play.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 30, 2014)

Have played the iOS version of Eclipse.  Has anyone played both the board and the iOS version to compare them?  It's a good game, but seems flawed (to me): You can be majorly hosed by the initial hex draws, and the amount of victory points due to fighting is annoying.  Also, the techs seem wildly different in value (the two pip hull tech and the missile tech seem comparatively too good), and you can be likewise hosed by your order in obtaining tech.

Thx!

TomB


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## bob the happy zombie (May 8, 2014)

I must recommend 
*The castles of Burgundy *my favourite game can be played in about an hour and a half.
It has great mechanic which gives you controllable luck you roll two dice and can use the dice for a variety of actions. It is a classic idea collect the most VPs. You are rewarded for combinations of speed in filling the areas on your player board, completing set goals first or second, and collecting various sets of tiles.
The theme is not especially strong but the replayability is excellent with many paths and combinations that lead to victory. It should be noted that the standard boards are all balanced(they are identical) there are some advanced boards that are deemed to be superior to others.
You can play for free on a site called Boite a jeux if you want to check it out


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## Nytmare (May 11, 2014)

For about three weeks, the people at my local favorite game store were telling me I should try this new scifi deck building game.  Since I already had a favorite deck builder (and have about six or seven others that we hardly play at all) as well as a handful of scifi "build a Space Army" games, I foolishly ignored them.

I will never doubt them again.

Star Realms, is a poorly named masterpiece.  It is everything that I love about Dominion minus a handful of things I never realized I didn't like.  You are mighty Space Warlord/Emperor/Mega-Pope attempting to unite the universe by building an armada (deck of cards) and destroying anyone who refuses to be your friend (your friends). 

The game is amazingly combo-riffic.  You're slowly building your deck out of the ships (play them once) and bases (stay in play till someone destroys them) of four very different, distinct factions.  Each faction's ships have secondary abilities which trigger when you have more than one of those faction's ships in play; BUT a deck built up of only one faction will discover that though they are able to do one thing disgustingly well, they're outclassed in several others.

It is amazingly fast, and setup and cleanup are almost non-existent.  The majority of the cards exist as one single Trade Deck, so you're not spending a lot of time regrouping and resorting cards.

As you play, everyone's deck just gets better, and more streamlined and deadly.  The win condition is hit point based (aka Authority), and is tracked outside your deck, so your deck isn't getting more cluttered as you get more powerful.

The game is CHEAP and really compact.  15 bucks gets you a single set of cards, which you can use for a two player game.  Each additional deck of cards allows you to add up to two more players to a max (I think?) of six players.

Freaking.  Amazing.


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