Archive for the 'Board Game Review' Category

At first glance, Claustrophobia looks like it could be a fantasy-themed Space Hulk – in fact, I often call it Dungeon Hulk when trying to describe it.  As a big fan of Space Hulk, this is no bad thing at all; however, Claustrophobia is more than just a re-theme of Space Hulk as it has it’s own unique gameplay too.

Set in the tunnels beneath New Jerusalem, Claustrophobia is a game for two players – one playing the demons invading from below and the other playing the humans trying to defeat the demons once and for all.  A Holy man leads a team of condemned thieves and murderers ‘enlisted’ to fight the demons – weak but numerous troglodytes and a few, powerful demons.

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Savannah Tails is a game of Ostrich racing.  The designers’ previous game was dog sled racing (Snow Tails) and this is a lighter and very different game.

Each player has a deck of cards which each show one of four colours and a number from 2 to 6.  The track along which the ostriches race is made up of sections – straights and curves – which can be arranged in lots of different way.  Each track section shows 4 trails (red, blue, yellow and black) and each has a tree at one side of the track. 

At the start of each round, the playing order is determined by the player whose ostrich is furthest forwards, and ties are split by whoever is closest to the tree on that section of track.  On their turn, a player plays one card from their hand of 4 (sometimes 5) cards, moves their ostrich along the track and then draws another card from their deck.  When each player has taken a turn, a new rounds starts. Read the rest of this entry »

No Thanks is a push-your-luck game for 3 to 5 players.  The game consists purely of a deck of 33 cards and 55 plastic chips and is pleasantly, and appropriately, low in price.

To start the game, each player is given 11 plastic chips.  The cards (numbered from 3 to 35) are shuffled and 9 cards are randomly removed from the game (without anyone seeing which ones).  A card is from the deck turned over (face-up) and the current player chooses whether to take the card or leave it.  If they want to leave the card, they must place one of their chips on the card; but, if the player has no chips, they have no choice and must take the card.  When a player takes a card, they get any chips that are on top of the card too – then, a new card is turned over and the player who took the previous card gets first choice on taking or leaving the new card. Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled across this game and when I read the rules decided to buy it via Amazon.de (as it’s not easily available in the UK) which proved pretty cheap as it consists of just a deck of cards.  As you may know from my list of top 10 very portable 2-player games, I like having games that are easy to carry around.  Palastgeflüster is definitely easy to carry and plays 3 to 5 players.

The goal of the game is to reach 6 points with 3 players (5 points with 4 players or 4 points with 5 players).  The cards display one of the 7 different characters on them as well as a colour around the edge – the colours are either one of the player’s colours or brown.  Plus, there are some King cards which are kept separately. Read the rest of this entry »

 Mow (pronounced Moo as it’s the noise cows make in France) is a simple but active card game with good player interaction as each tries to obstruct the other players. 

The game consists of two decks of cards – one deck is used for 2 to 5 players and the other deck is added for 6 to 10 players.  Each card shows a cartoon cow and has a number on between 0 to 16, plus each has a number of flies on it from 0 to 5.  Flies are bad and the players want to avoid collecting them.

Each player starts with 5 cards.  On their turn, a player plays a card to the centre of the table so that a single row of cards builds up and these will be in numerical order.  Read the rest of this entry »

Alea Iacta Est is a dice rolling and allocation game.  For any gamer who rejects games where dice are central, please read on as you may miss a really enjoyable game.

The game consists of several rounds where players are trying to score as many points as possible.  Players start each round with 8 dice of their colour and provinces.  Players take turns rolling their remaining dice and allocating some (or all) of them to one of the areas on the table for which they may get a reward at the end of the round depending upon what other players place in the areas too. Read the rest of this entry »

People seem to have been very interested in Keltis the tile game (Way of the Stones) so I thought I’d review another tile version of a Renier Knizia game.  This time Ingenious gets the tile treatment.

The original Ingenious game is a superb abstract game where players place double-ended tiles (like dominoes consisting of 2 hexagons with coloured symbols on each end) on a board.  When you lay a tile, you score points for the rows of matching symbols created.  It’s incredibly simple, very tactical (almost cut-throat at times when blocking others) and plays well with 2, 3 or 4 players.  Also, the scoring system is very neat – players score points for each of the 6 symbol types separately and a player’s final score is equal to their single lowest score.  So, it’s important to develop all of your scores equally plus delivers tactical play as players try to score symbols they are weak in (or block their opponents). Read the rest of this entry »

Keltis won the Spiel des Jahres 2008 but it seems to have had a luke warm response.  So, it would be easy to dismiss “Keltis: Der Weg der Steine” (Way of the Stones); however, this smaller, simple but different Keltis game is actually a really good filler game and should not be dismissed just because of its larger and older relative.

Keltis: Way of the Stones purely comprises of 55 tiles which are stones with numbers from 0 to 10 in 5 different colours on their fronts.  In addition to the colour and number, a few stones have a celtic symbol, a few have bonus points, and a few have wish stones on them too.  At the start, all the stones are placed face-down and mixed together.  Players then take turns when they can either (a) reveal a stone and keep it, (b) reveal a stone and leave it face-up where it is, or (c) take a face-up stone that was already revealed but not taken.  If a player takes a tile with a celtic symbol on it, they immediately take another turn. Read the rest of this entry »

In Vasco Da Gama, players are each preparing ships and setting sail for the New World to earn victory points.  In essence, Vasco Da Gama is a worker placement game played over 5 rounds.  Each round players place their 4 (sometimes 5) action disks on one of the 4 areas so they can perform the relevant actions, and then they resolve these actions.  However, the system that determines the order in which the actions actually occur is very clever and is the central and unique feature of Vasco Da Gama.

I recommend reading the rules for the full details but I’ll give an outline of the game.  There are 4 main actions to take: Recruiting crew and captains, Attaining projects, Setting sail, and using the special characters. Read the rest of this entry »

In Bunny Bunny Moose Moose, players use their hands to make deer antler or bunny ear shapes to score points.  Each turn, one player takes the role of the hunter who reads out a poem and reveals a card at the end of each line.  Only 6 cards are in play at any one time, so the 7th card replaces the 1st card, and so on.  All the other players sit in a row facing the hunter so they can see the cards.  On the table there is a score track and each player has a moose and bunny piece.

The cards show either a moose or a bunny: a moose card can show a mixture of antlers up or down, wide or narrow, and on the left or right or both; a bunny card can show ears straight or floppy, at the side or on top of their heads, and on the left or right or both.  Read the rest of this entry »