Archive for the 'Preview' Category

The full game of Nations is an excellent civilsation game which uses euro-style game mechanics and focuses more on building civilisations and indirect interaction plus has no landscape board.  It’s an excellent, tight and unforgiving game which I have enjoyed (and hope to review soon).

This year sees Nations: The Dice Game being released which looks very promising from reading the rules.  The dice game contains simplified and streamlined version of the core elements of the main game but, as the name suggests, it uses a dice mechanic.

Each player has their own board with limited spaces for tiles representing buildings, advisors, and wonders (colony tiles can be unlimited).  Each of these items can be built for a cost which then gives its owner a benefit.

Over 4 rounds (ages), players take turns taking actions.  At the start of a round, you roll the dice shown on your tiles (players start with basic buildings) and the results display the resources each dice is worth.  One action is to buy a tile from the common pool by spending resources (those shown on your dice as well as resource counters already earned).  Dice spent this way are ‘used’ so are unavailable until the next round. Read the rest of this entry »

Spiel in Essen is almost here.  Like previous years, I will be tweeting about the games I get to play so tune in to @Metagames for that.

In the run up to Spiel this year, I have read the rules to 70 games (!) and posted 40 previews.  However, there are still many games being released which I didn’t have time to preview.  So, here are some of the other highlights on my list in no particular order:

• Amerigo (Queen) – Excellent looking game by Stefan Feld
• 1775 Rebellion (Academy Games) – Looks like a good strategy game without being too complex
• Yunnan (Argentum Verlag) – Excellent looking eurogame with quite a lot going on
• Archon (Artipia) – Worker placement game with interesting method using multiple workers (or big ones) for increased benefits
• Damage Report (Break From Reality) – Real-time sci-fi co-op
• Kings and Assassins (Galakta) – Asymetric 2-player game of assassins trying to kill king before he can reach destination
• Nauticus (Kosmos) – Another Kramer and Kiesling game with ship-building theme
• Nations (Lautapelit) – A civilised civilisation game with worker placement
• A Study in Emerald (Treefrog) – Great looking Martin Wallace game with strong theme and secret identities
• Karnickel (Lookout Games) – Push-your-luck game with rabbits collecting carrots and trying not to get hit by the train
• Pelican Bay (Three Hares in Evening the Sun) – Charming-looking tile placement game
• Cheaty Mages (AEG) – A card game with few cards by the same designer as R and Love Letter
• Malacca (Loris Games) – Players are ship captains in this short group game
• Concordia (PD-Verlag) – Mac Gedts’ new game
• Longhorn (Blue Orange) – Short and simple Bruno Cathala game
• Bankraub (Spieltrieb) – Players jostle until one of them launches a bank robbery, then all other player try and stop it
• Space Cadets: Dice Duel (Stronghold) – Looks smaller and quicker than Space Cadets with interesting game mechanics
• Corto (Matagot) – Game of token placement based on French comic strip with very strong artwork style
• Twin Tin Bots (Flatlined Games) – Cute looking game that has a lot in common with RoboRally but faster.

As I seem to say more and more these days: “So many games, so little time.”

James.

Carnival Zombie is a co-operative survival horror game where players are trying to flee Venice to escape the Leviathan, a dark evil creature lurking in the lagoon, whilst its minions of the infected walk the streets at night.

In Carnival Zombie, 1-6 players have the choice of defeating the Leviathan or, doing the slightly more sane and less heroic thing, of fleeing Venice completely.  Neither option looks easy though.  The game is split into day and night phases.  During the day, the players move through the city using the map in the corner of the board showing the network of streets between the different locations.  Some routes are harder than others (taking more time) and some locations become sunken during the game (players lose if situated there at night).  Various specific locations, which are far from the start of course, are where the different finales can take place.  So, players need to decide where they want to head to as each finale has its own set of rules.

When night falls, the players must defend the  location they are at which means being surrounded by hordes of different minions of the infected, as well as some boss monsters too, working their way towards their makeshift defences.  If they survive until dawn, they get to move through the city again and repeat this until they win or fail.

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Leelawadee is a very cute looking game of butterflies and flowers; however, whilst it’s a simple game I think there is some interesting gameplay decisions within.  Players take turns taking flowers from the random selection available for that round and placing them on their garden.  Players pick 1 flower going clockwise and then pick another going in reverse order.

If a player’s garden has a particular mix of flowers, they attract the relevant butterfly; for example, single colour butterflies are attracted to any garden which as the most (or equal-most) contiguous group of flowers that match their colour.  There are two-colour butterflies that are like single-colour but are attracted to groups of flowers comprised of both of their colour.  The five-colour butterfly goes to the connected area of flowers that have the most variety of colours.

At the end of a round, players score points for any butterflies they have at their garden (though they get fewer if the butterfly was there the round before).  Players lose quite a lot of points for every colour that is not present in their garden at the end of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Blueprints is an intriguing abstract game where players build buildings out of dice that follow the blueprint plans they have in front of them.

Each player starts with a blueprint which shows where the dice must be placed (floorplan and how high each stack should be).  The blueprint shows a plan view (where players physically place their dice as they ‘build’ their building, as well as a 3-D view so it’s nice and clear.

On their turn, a player can pick one of the dice from the pool of already rolled dice, and a new dice is added after each player’s turn to replace the used one.  To place a dice on top of another dice, the dice on top must be of the same or great value than the one below it.  As well as their values, the colour of the dice makes a difference to the players too as each material is scored differently.

The game is made more interesting because the player’s blueprint are placed behind their player screen, so other players know what they took but have no idea what shape it is taking.

After drawing 6 dice each, players reveal and score how their buildings compare to their blueprint.  Orange (wood) dice each score 2 points for each dice adjacent (faces touching) to them; Green (recycled) dice score points based on the total green dice in the building; Grey (stone) dice each score based on their height within the building; and, Clear (glass) dice each score based on the value on their top face.

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Vikings: Warriors of the North is a game of looting and pillaging as, from the name along, you would hope it would be.  Each turn players play cards to move their ship around the various islands and carry out actions, etc.  The first player to end their turn with 3 daughters of other thanes at their war camp wins.

At the start of their turn, a player draws 2 cards and has the opportunity to play add 1 hero card to their longship’s crew (maximum 3) which each add an on-going special ability.  Then, the player can use 1 of the 5 standard actions and play as many cards as they wish.

Wind cards allow players to move their ship (the cards specify the movement’s direction); and, Event cards carry out special actions which can also be used as wind cards instead.  The standard actions include attacking other players, attacking the sea monster, looting villages (taking thanes’ daughters), and sacrificing pairs of cards to draw new ones.

However, when a player plays an action card (on themself or another player) or uses a standard action, all players have the opportunity in turn order to play a card in response and these create a stack of cards.  When every player has passed in succession, the stack of cards is resolved from top to bottom.

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Kampen om Norge is a military game recreating the Norwegian defense against the Germans during WWII.  The Norwegians and Allies are handled separately so playing with 3 players is straightforwards, and one player plays both Norwegians and Allies individually in a 2-player games.

Players take turns moving any of their units, resolving any combat where opposing units are in the same space, adding reinforcements, and then gaining new cards.  The goal for the Germans is to control all the cities before the game ends when their card deck runs out (although destroying all enemy units will work as well).

Combat is resolved by both sides rolling 1 dice for each unit involved and comparing the totals.  However, unlike what you may expect, the loser must withdraw and it is only natural results of 6 on a dice that destroy enemy units.  This seems like an interesting system as it makes area control the focus of the game which fits with the invasion setting, plus it makes weight of numbers a key factor.

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Triassic Terror is by the designer of Francis Drake as well as the very good War of the Roses.  It is an area control game with some interesting game mechanics.

During the game, players place dinosaurs (meeple) of their colour in different areas on the board.  A group of dinos of one colour is called a ‘herd’.  Players with the largest (and second largest) herds in each of the 12 areas during the 2 or 3 scoring rounds score points, and the player with the most points at the end of a fixed number of rounds wins.

Each area contains 3 spaces called ‘habitats’.  The biggest herd in an area occupies the primary habitat (scoring the most points), the next largest herd occupies the secondary habitat (scoring fewer points than the primary), and the next largest herd occupies the tertiary habitat (which scores no points but, hey, it’s better than being any smaller as herds not in the 3 largest instantly die).  Whenever herds grow or shrink, the habitats are re-assessed; for example, if there’s a herd of 3 blue dinosaurs in the primary habitat and a herd of 2 red in the secondary habitat grows to 4, then the red herd would move into the primary habitat and the blue herd would move down to the secondary. Read the rest of this entry »

Luchador Mexican Wrestling Dice is a game by Mark Rivera who write the Boardgames in Blighty blog.  I was fortunate to get to try out Luchador a few months ago.  The game can be played one-on-one or played as a 2-v-2 tag team.

Both wrestlers roll their dice simultaneously and compare.  Some results reduce their opponent’s energy, some block incoming blows, some counter (reverse incoming blows), and some results are attempts to pin the opponent.  If a player does enough hits  they can choose to roll the Luchador dice and perform one of their signature moves (unique to each wrestler) for a more impressive and damaging result; however, using the Luchador dice  is a risk and could go wrong.

If an opponent has lost enough energy, pin results let you roll the special pin dice.  If this is successful, the pinned opponent has 3 rolls of their dice (a count of three) with which to escape the pin.  If they fail, they lose the match and it’s game over. Read the rest of this entry »

Mount Everest is a new game by the designer of K2 which is a great game and you can read my review of K2 for more details.

The rules of Mount Everest are very similar to K2 with some additions.  Rather than moving your 2 mountaineers up and down the mountain, you move 2 guides who are taking mountaineers and tourists up and down the mountain.

Your guides can carry equipment with them like a camp and/or oxygen, but this comes at the cost of taking more mountaineers and tourists with them (and it’s those that can earn you points).  Players score points for the clients (mountaineers and tourists) they manage to get to the top (but lose points if they die anywhere on the way up or down).  The tourists are worth more points, if they make it to the summit, but are less acclimatised so are more difficult to get there.  The player with most points after 18 days wins.

As in K2, players have a hand of 6 cards and they get to select 3 cards to use each round.  Players simultaneously reveal their cards and the player who is moving furthest must take one of the 3 face-up risk tokens (which can reduce what you can do in a round).

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