Archive for the 'Content Type' Category

[Note: After posting this review, someone let me know that Hasbro issued some errata and the reinforcement points should have been twice as many, i.e. 10 + 4 per island.  That would have made a big difference as we could have bought a lot more reinforcements.  Hasbro’s web site says you can play it either way (with double reinforcement points or without) so this is a review of the game without that ammended rule as we played it using the rules as stated in the box.  Please keep this in mind when you read the review and I’ll comment more on it at the end.]

Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal is one of the three 2-player Axis & Allies games – the others being D-Day and Battle of the Bulge.  Each game has completely different rules to the others and all have different rules compared to the main Axis & Allies game too.  Earlier this year, my friend Matt and I decided to start playing some games that are connected to their anniversaries so we played A&A: D-Day on June 6th.  As I like A&A: D-Day and Battle of the Bulge, I picked up a second-hand copy of Guadalcanal to play in August (anniversary of the start of the Guadalcanal conflict).

The Guadalcanal conflict was a series of battles during World War II which lasted many months where both sides fought over a group of tactically important islands in the Pacific.  So, the board shows 6 main islands (land zones) and the sea around them is segmented into zones, plus players have a home base zone each too.  Both players have land forces (infantry, artillery, anti-air), air forces (fighters, bombers) and sea forces (transports, destroyers, cruisers, submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships).  The islands have spaces on them where one or two airfields can be built. Read the rest of this entry »

Campaign Manager 2008 is a card-driven game recreating the Presidential Election between Obama and McCain.  The designers of the game are well-known for Twilight Struggle and 1960: Making of the President – both are card driven strategy games and Twilight Struggle is ranked the number 3 best board game of all – so the game was highly anticipated.

The game primarily consists of 45 cards for each player, a deck of Breaking News cards, a mini-board for each state.  Players aim to win the electoral votes of each state and be the first player to gain 270+ votes.  During the game, 4 states boards are laid between the players which are the ones the players are currently campaigning (fighting) over to win.  Each state has a track showing whether economy or defence is currently the important issue to its voters, and each state has two demographic groups printed on them with a marker showing which is currently the most influential group in that state. Read the rest of this entry »

Fifty-seven days to Spiel in Essen and my list of games to check out (ranging from take a look to definitely pre-order) is already up to 44 games.  Two more games definitely stirring my interest are Dakota and Olympus.

Dakota is a game of settlers and natives in the American West.  It caught my attention because players can be settlers or natives in any mix and the the two sides play differently on the same board.  Also, players on the same side may be allied but not a team.  Bruno Faidutti’s write-up was very complimentary and being called the tensest nastiest game just intrigues me more.  The image of the game from Spiel 2009 makes it look quite complex but I’m hoping the 60-90 minutes playing time means it’s not too fiddly as that would limit the people I could play it with.

Olympus is designed by the same guys that created Kingsburg so, for me, that definitely makes it worth a look.  I own the board game of Kingsburg and I played the PC version against the AI a lot so I know it well and like the balance and choices the game offered.  Rather than dice-rolling, Olympus is priest (worker) placement game with difficult choices each turn and no luck involved.  Sounds good, and as it’s from these designers, I’ll definitely check it out.

James.

This post reviews “The Lurker at the Threshold”, an expansion for Arkham Horror, and not the full game.  If you don’t know Arkham Horror, it’s an excellent horror game based on H P Lovecraft’s 1920’s setting where the players travel around the town of Arkham (and often into weird dimensions too), having unusual encounters as they work together to stop the Great Old One awaking from its slumber (which will likely spell doom for mankind).  During the game, players try to increase their abilities to keep the menacing goings-on in check and their bodies and their sanity intact.

Lurker in the Threshold is a small expansion so consists of new cards, tokens and game mechanics and no new board.  We played with just the basic game and the Lurker expansion.  I always like to play new expansions on their own with the basic game the first time so it’s possible to really see what they’re like.

Dark Pacts with the Lurker – One of the three new game mechanics in this expansion is ‘The Lurker’ itself who is a Herald.  Heralds are powerful supernatural entities preparing the way for the Great Old One – they are monster characters who affect the gameplay and makes things harder for the players while the Great Old One slumbers.

The Lurker itself awaits the players in between the dimensions and tempts them with deals (called ‘Dark Pacts’) that will give them power.  Of course, there’s always going to be a price to pay at a later stage.  A player can choose to take a Dark Pact at the start of their turn or they can take one to make a spell succeed without sanity cost.  Read the rest of this entry »

JAB is a real-time card-game coming from Tasty Minstrel Games (Homesteaders, Terra Prime). I saw the rules were online to read so I took a look as I read most new board game rules that are made available. I have to confess I was slightly wary of the boxing theme as sports games just aren’t my thing and there have been many average hand-to-hand combat card games. However, as I read the rules, the more I liked the idea of the game. Real-time games can be a bit chaotic but can be light fun – I remember playing Falling (players falling through the sky with no parachute and trying to be the last to hit the ground) and it was chaotic, messy, short-lived but hysterically funny.
Read the rest of this entry »

For $ale is a fast and light auction game for 3 to 6 players with an excellent difference.

The game primarily consists of two decks of cards: One deck of properties and the other of cheques.  Each property card has a value ranging from 1 to 30 and the higher the value the nicer the property pictured on the card, i.e. the value 1 card shows a cardboard box, value 10 shows a basic log cabin, value 29 is a castle.  Each cheque card has a value ranging from zero to $15,000.  In addition, there are some cardboard tokens which are cash and each player starts with $18,00.

The game is made up of two halves.  First, the players bid for the properties using their cash.  Each round a number of cards equal to the number of players cards are laid out face-up in the middle of the table.  Going clockwise, players bid by either increasing the previous bid or passing.  If a player passes, they take the lowest value property card and pay half of their bid to the bank.  The last player left in each round wins the highest value card but must pay the full amount of their bid to the bank. Read the rest of this entry »

Liberté was released in 2001 and Valley Games are publishing a new version of the game in 2010.   This review is of the 2001 version by Warfrog Games and not of the new version by Valley Games – I’m not sure what differences there may be (if any) but I know the boards look very similar.  I bought Liberté about 8 years ago and had never played it until a week of two ago.  When I bought it, it seemed too complex for the main gaming group I had at that time and other games always took priority.  However, the news of its re-release made me re-visit the game and it wasn’t seem as complex to me now having played so many other games.

Set during the French Revolution, players play cards to place blocks on a map of France.  The coloured blocks represent the support for the three political groups in the area where they are located – the nicely-thematic red, white and blue blocks represent the radicals, the royalists and the moderates respectively.  The map is divided into 6 coloured regions each containing several areas.

Each turn, a player can either play a card from their hand, or take a card from the 3 face-up or a face-down card from the draw pile.  Players don’t represent any one party – instead, the card played determines which colour block(s) can be placed into which region’s areas.  When a player places blocks, they put a  marker on the top of the stack showing they added them.  Read the rest of this entry »

Update: A review has now been added.

Cadwallon: City of Thieves has been on my radar for a while now – since just before FFG took over the publishing and their usual planned previews have raised its profile a lot more.  Set in a fantasy setting, players allocate action points to move their thieves around the city to steal as much as possible from locations and from each other.  Players can block each other’s paths and even influence the militia men to slow opponents down.  Sounds like it’s a light-to-medium weight game but with enough to it to be good fun and plenty of racing against other players and scope for annoying opponents too.

There are adventure cards which set specific objectives, set-up, rules and events for each game, plus there are mission cards too which deliver bonus money if fulfilled.  So, each game should have its own flavour.

Read the rest of this entry »

Traders of Carthage is essentially a card game but does include a board.  Each of the cards shows one of 4 different commodities (red, blue, yellow and green) and has a coin value from 1 to 5 on it.  Next to the board are two rows of face-up cards – one is the Market (these cards can be bought or taken) and one is the Field (which are cards that will soon be moved to the Market).  The board depicts a trade route passing through 6 Mediterranean cities along which 4 ships – one for each commodity – will travel.

On their turn a player can carry out one action:

Get coins: The player can add any 1 card from the Market to their hand (excluding any card with another player’s reserved marker on it).
Reserve a card: Each player can place their reserve marker on any unreserved card in the Market or the Field.  It can only be retrieved by taking the reserved card (Get coins), or by buying the cards (Buy goods).
Buy goods: A player can spend coins (the cards in their hand) to buy the cards in the market; however, the player must buy ALL of the goods cards in the market or none at all.  Purchases must include any good in the Market that the player has reserved, but exclude any goods reserved by other players.  Any goods bought are placed face-up in front of the player – these are the player’s shipment.  After a purchase, the ships matching the colours of the cards bought are moved along the trade route (1 space if one card of that colour was bought, 2 spaces if more than one was bought).

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of forthcoming games have caught my attention recently:

TROYES is designed by Xavier Georges who created Royal Palace and Carson City – both of which I like a lot, especially the latter. Troyes is a city building game using dice – it sounds like players use a central pool of dice but can also buy them off of each other too.  Players have secret agendas too.  Definitely one I have to try and/or buy.

STRONGHOLD: UNDEAD is an expansion for Stronghold and itsounds like there is an undead army storming the walls of the castle instead of the goblins, orcs and trolls.  One big difference sounds like there is no glory points this time – purely the task of breaking into the stronghold before 8 game turns are up.  The glory points of the original game were an interesting system but people I have played with (and myself) found the amounts of them required to win meant it was very difficult for the invader to win after turn 6 (out of 10).  So, a straight break-in or not  with a new type of army sounds great.

I’m really looking forwards to trying these at Essen and I may even pre-order them.

James.

(Note to publishers out there: I’m much more likely to pre-order and buy a game without trying it first if the rules are available to read beforehand.  Sure, reading a few rules can make me realise a game is not for me, but not having rules to read means I’m much less likely to pre-order it).