Archive for the 'Board Game Review' Category

I’m always on the lookout for good 2 player games.  Kingpin sounded great from the description and the Flash demo is a superb example of how to use the web to showcase and explain a game.

The game involves moving your gangsters (tiles) on a board in order to either control the centre area, get one of your gangsters off the other side of the board, or to totally eliminate your opponent.  Moving your tiles and changing their facing is simple but very strategic, as each tile’s side has a different mix of attack and defence icons.  Some tiles can support others, fire over spaces and charge in to a fight (called a raid and shown by car icons). So, Kingpin offers interesting tactical play.

It took a while to understand how to be effective.  Read the rest of this entry »

[Below is my initial review of Stronghold.  A three-part report covering the game in a lot more detail is available too:  Part One – Part Two – Part Three]

Please note that the Valley Games version of Stronghold (released March 2011) has massively updated rules to make them clear as the original rules were very confusing and had many conflicts.

Stronghold not only has a great setting but it also had a great pre-launch.  The designer released over ten posts about how he came up with ideas and developed the game.  This brilliant bit of marketing explained the game perfectly but was also very evocative.  As a result, I pre-ordered it.

The game is about the seige of a castle.  With two players, one player defends and one invades.   (With more than two players, players share in the invasion or defense.)  Resources are tight, especially for the defender but then they have the advantage of being in a giant castle and shooting at anything approaching the walls.  Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since I saw the photo of Tobago, I was looking forwards to it.  When I read the rules, I was even more certain.  Then I played it, and Tobago delivered.   I like games that offer a fresh game mechanic and Tobago was great because it’s beautifully diffferent.

The game focuses on determining where treasures are hiddden, primarily by playing an accumulation of clue cards to discern a treasure’s precise location, like “it’s not next to a palm tree” or “it’s in the biggest jungle”.  When the location of a treasure (there are always four being sought) is reduced down to just one hex/location, it can be picked up.  Instead of adding clues, you can drive your ATV to pick up treasures or amulets.  When grabbed, the treasure inside is revealed and shared between the players who helped find it.

There are two really great mechanics.  Read the rest of this entry »

Writing reviews on games using Twitter during Spiel09 was fun but had a couple of inherent difficulties.  First, giving a fair impression of a game in one tweet is almost impossible.  Getting across all the points in around 120 characters (140, minus #tag, minus game name) is crazily hard.  In fact, it’s much harder than writing a short blog entry.  Rather than quick to write, every tweet becomes a mad challenge of summarisation – I even had to throw in a couple of deliberate typos to save precious characters (deliberate, honest).  Second, the time it takes to do the ultra condensed writing meant it was hard to write them between games.  As a reult, many tweets were written in a batch rather than ‘live’.  I think in future, I’d post short blog entries and use Twitter to notify people of the new item (all possible from the iPhone).

As a result, I shall be writing longer reviews on the games I played to give the full view on each.  Plus, I can add reviews of other games I play, general entries about gaming, as well as my journey to create my own board game (wish me luck on that) which I am aiming to have ready for Spiel 2010. 

So, whilst Essen may be finished, my thoughts and discussions about the games played, plus all the games still to be played over the coming weeks, are still to be aired.

If you have any specific items you’d like covered, post a comment and let me know.  Also, if you have any feedback on my tweets from Spiel09, let me know too.