Archive for the 'Board Game Review' Category

Magnum Sal was a game that caught my attention just before last year’s Spiel in Essen as I like worker placement games; however, I never got to play it and, until recently, kept missing opportunities to do so at one of my regular groups.  Magnum Sal is a game about Polish salt mining – yes, you can’t beat it for having a theme that makes it different to other games.

Each player starts with a few miners which they can use to either go into the mine or they can be an assistant at a town building.  Each turn, players take turns taking 2 actions each (place workers, use building, extract salt).  The goal is to make as much money as possible (primarily by mining salt).  There are two distinct areas of the game: the town and the mine.

In the town, the player can use buildings to: buy tools (special one-use abilities and money at game end), hire extra workers, visit the palace (to fulfil a contract for lots of cash), pump water out of a mine (making it easier to get the salt out), use the market, etc.  Also, most town buildings have space for one worker so that they get income each time any player uses that building. Read the rest of this entry »

Alien Frontiers is a dice-placement and area-control game with a space colonisation theme for 2-4 players.  Players score victory points (VPs) by placing colonies on the planet (as well as for dominating planet areas and a few alien tech cards).  When any player has placed their 9th and final colony on the planet, the game ends and the player with the most VPs wins.

During the game, players take turns rolling their dice (spaceships) and allocating them to different locations (orbital facilities).  Each orbital facility lets you do different things such as gain resources (energy and ore), build spaceships, gain alien tech (special abilities), raid other players, etc.  Each facility requires dice to use it and most require a specific mixture of dice, i.e. doubles, a total of 8 or higher, a 3-dice straight.  However, the extra twist is that there are a limited amount of spaces for dice at each area and a player only gets their dice back at the start of their turn; therefore, opponents’ dice can block spaces so that other players are unable to use them. Read the rest of this entry »

Letters From Whitechapel is a game about Jack The Ripper.  If you’ve played Scotland Yard, then you’ll get a good idea about it if I say it’s like an advanced Scotland Yard; however, in case you haven’t, I’ll review this assuming no previous knowledge of Scotland Yard.

One player is Jack the Ripper who needs to perform a series of murders and the other players are the police trying to catch him before he has completed his grizzly activities and escaped.  Jack takes turns moving invisibly around the board (which shows many connected, numbered spaces) whilst the other players take turns working together as the police to move around and catch him.  The police do have some clues though – first, they know where the murder takes place so they know Jack’s starting point; second, Jack must say if he’s moving normally or using one of his special moves each turn; and, third, the police can detect if Jack has been through a space they investigate (next to their current position) so they can detect his trail.  Each night, Jack must get back to his hideout – the location of which is unknown to the police – before each night ends. Read the rest of this entry »

As with several games at the moment, Pergamon caught my interest because of the simple but potentially interesting game mechanics (as I mentioned in my On the Radar post).  During the game, players gather funds so they can excavate artifacts to then display in a museum to score victory points (VPs).

Each round, players first jostle for a share of the limited funding and players only know the rough total that will be available as the backs of the 2 funding cards each show their potential ranges (1-4 or 5-8).  Players place their meeple on the amount they want to receive and that also determines how deep they will be able to dig too.  When all players have set their requests, the funding is revealed and allocated to those who ask for smaller amounts first.  So, it’s possible to end up with nothing, although the last player gets everything that remains so can end up with more than they asked for. Read the rest of this entry »

The rules of Strasbourg immediately caught my attention as the game has an unusual but simple bidding mechanic as well as some placement too.  During the game, players use their influence to affect the guilds and score victory points (VPs).  At the start of the game, each player can keep 1 to 5 secret objective cards which earn VPs at the end (or -3 VPs if not fulfilled).

Each player starts with a deck of 24 influence cards (4 x values 1-6) which they will use over the game’s 5 rounds.  Each round, players draw as many cards as they like (one at at a time) from their deck into their hand.  Then, each player arranges their cards into any number of face-down stacks of their choosing.

Next, players bid for various items.  During each auction, the first player chooses whether to bid by turning over 1 of their card stacks and the rest of the players have the same choice.  The player with the highest total bid wins the benefit of the auction plus the 2nd and 3rd placed bidders may also win benefits too. Read the rest of this entry »

In Biblios, players are monks trying to make the best library and the player with the most victory points (VPs) at the end of the game wins. Biblios is a card game with some similarities to For Sale (as players spend the first game phase gaining cards and the second phase using those cards to get better cards) which already gives it a good start in my eyes.

During the game, players gain cards of 3 different types: coloured cards (which have values on them), dice cards and gold cards. At the end of the game, the player with the highest total value of cards in each of the 5 colours scores VPs equal to that colour’s value (between 1-6 VP).  However, the VP value of each colour (shown on coloured dice on the board) can change during the game because players that gain dice cards can alter 1 or 2 dice values up or down 1 or 2 points each depending upon the card.

In the first game phase, players gain cards. Players take turns drawing and allocating a number of cards equal to the number of players plus one.   The player can place 1 card in the auction pile, 1 card in their own hand, and the rest in the common area.  However, the interesting part is that the active player draws cards one-by-one so they must allocate each card before knowing what the next card is.  Read the rest of this entry »

Yggdrasil is a co-operative game where the players are Norse gods trying to stop the evil ones causing the end of the world.  The first thing that strikes you is the artwork which is colour-rich, polished and seems almost backlit – which will be familiar to you if you’ve played or seen Ghost Stories as it’s by the same artist.  The board shows the great cosmic tree that supports the nine worlds.

THE GAME
During the game, the 6 evil ones advance across the 8 spaces towards Asgard.  Each turn, the current player draws an evil one card and then takes 3 actions.  Each evil one card shows which evil one advances 1 space towards Asgard and each evil one has a power too which get stronger as they advance.  The players lose if 5 evil ones go past the 3rd space, 3 evil ones go past the 5th space, or 1 evil one reaches the final 8th space (Asgard).  The players win if they can exhaust the evil one deck without losing, so they need to force the evil ones back and this is done through combat and the Norse gods will need the support of Viking spirits to stand a chance of beating them. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Pirates (2^nd Edition): The Governor’s Daughter’ (which I’ll call Pirates from now on) was launched at Essen last year at the same time as ‘Merchants & Marauders’.  From reading the rules, Merchants & Marauders seemed like it would be the detailed game and Pirates would be a more simple Eurogame so they both interested me.

The Goal – In Pirates, players are racing to be the first to rescue the Governor’s Daughter who has been kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts.  To save her, a player needs to obtain both parts of the map to Roberts’ island, then go there and either pay him 50 doubloons or intimidate him (with 30+ reputation).  Each player has their own character with a unique ability and, during the game, players can upgrade their ship’s battle strength and cargo capacity.  Also, players have a hand of up to 5 cards which can be battle cards (altering battle strength), missions cards (giving personal goals usually involving sailing to a space and fighting) and crew cards (such as +1 battle strength for the next round). Read the rest of this entry »

Khan was released at Essen in October 2010 and I finally got my chance last night and it was worth the wait.  The setting is 1244 and each player is chasing out the existing 8 Mongol leaders in order to conquer more territory than their opponents.  Each player their own coloured set of counters representing their yurts (which are like large tents) and starts with some special action cards and a hand of 4 random cards.

The board shows various terrain areas with a river passing through some and the 8 Mongol leaders start on the board.  Next to the board are various Tetris-ish shaped tiles.  The goal is to place and own these to score points. Read the rest of this entry »

Prrrt is a game by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc – the same team that brought us the superb Mow (also by the same publisher and artist).  Prrrt definitely has a unique theme as players are aiming to take the least shame for farting in an enclosed space.  Yes, you read that right.

The game consists of 3 types of cards – shame, smell and location.  Each incident, a location is drawn which determines the direction of play and the starting number of shame cards.  The game ends when there has been at least 1 incident in each location (so from 5 to 9 incidents) and the player with the highest total value on their shame cards loses.

The game mechanics are quite unique so I need to explain them.  In each incident someone has farted and players take turns asking each other who did it.  To start, players are dealt 5 smell cards which make up their hand.  On a player’s turn (let’s say Player A), they turn to their neighbour (Player B) and ask if they farted.  If B says yes, then B takes the shame for the fart right away and receives all the current shame cards and that incident ends. Read the rest of this entry »