Rialto is yet another of this year’s game by Stefan Feld (which is a good thing as I like most of his games).

Set in Venice, Rialto is played over 6 rounds – one for each of the Venetian islands on the board.  Players are aiming to score the most victory points (VPs) which are  primarily earned by having councilors on the islands at the end of the game.  Players each have a marker on the Doge track and this splits all ties and determines some order of play.

Each island has 1 connection to each of its 4 neighbouring  islands.  During the game, these 12 connections each get filled with either a bridge or a gondola token.  Each bridge and gondola token has two values on it (one on each end) – bridges have values between 3-6 VPs; whereas, both values on gondolas are always value 1.  This is important because the final VPs gained by players with councilmen on each island are based on the total of each island’s 4 connections’ values.

At the start of each round, several (number of players + 1) rows of cards are laid out each consisting of 6 face-up and 2 face-down cards.  In Doge track order, players select one row of cards, add any extra cards they may have (such as from the previous round), and discard down to 7 cards.  The player may own some buildings which allow them to have more cards to select from, or keep more than 7 cards) but players must pay 1 gold for each building used.  Read the rest of this entry »

Stefan Feld’s games are known for having an interesting mechanic at their heart, which is one of the reasons I look forwards to his games.  Bora Bora is no different and has a dice-placement-action system in the centre of a game that isn’t complicated but it does have a lot of other game mechanics and bits surrounding it.  No specific aspect is complicated, but there is a lot going on, so I’m going to try to discuss each main part one-by-one.

OVERVIEW
The game is set on a Pacific island and players place huts, gain tribe members, build buildings, make offerings to the gods, and so on.  The game lasts 6 rounds and the winner is the player who finishes with the most  victory points (VPs).  Many VPs are earned during the game, but there are also lots of bonus VPs that can be awarded at the end of the game (although, as you’ll read later, these are quite tough to achieve).

Each round players first roll their 3 dice and then take turns placing one at a time on one of the action tiles allowing them to perform the appropriate action.  Next, players use the ability of one of their man tiles and the ability of one of their woman tiles.  Then, the status track (scoring VPs and determining  turn order), temple track (scoring VPs and a bonus for one player) and jewelry purchases are all resolved.  Finally, players must complete or discard one of their 3 objective tiles before taking a new one.  (All unclaimed man and woman tiles, objectives and jewelry are cleared from the board and new ones added for the next round.) Read the rest of this entry »

The Achtung! Cthulhu Keepers and Investigators Kickstarter project smashed its £8,000 target in just 26 hours.

The Kickstarter project is for the Achtung! Cthulhu Keeper’s and Investigator’s handbooks which can be played with the Basic Role-Playing system as well as the Savage Worlds system too.  It has already reached a lot of stretch goals which means the two books will be full-colour hardbacks; however, other stretch goals already reached mean many backers will also be receiving loads of extra supplements in PDF form (with an option to upgrade to physical versions).

One supplement is the superbly named campaign ‘Assault on the Mountains of Madness’.  A piece of concept art for the campaign is shown here.  The first two parts of this campaign have been unlocked already and the third (and final) part is within reach.  Some other stretch goals already reached are another campaign (Shadows of Atlantis) and some sourcebooks too. Read the rest of this entry »

Frustratingly, I haven’t been able to post new reviews recently as I have been moving house.  It was made all the more frustrating as I played Bora Bora two week’s ago and have had a half-written review sat i my drafts ever since.  I expect to post that on Monday or Tuesday, and be back to adding reviews more regularly after that.  Before that though, I’ll be adding a post about a Kickstarter project that looks very interesting.

Le Havre: The Inland Port is a 2-player only game linked to the larger, original Le Havre game.  I haven’t played the original Le Havre so will be reviewing this game on its own merits without comparisons.  It’s a simple game with depth, but it’s also unusual so I shall explain how it plays.

The Inland Port is played over 12 rounds and the winner is the player with the highest total value of cash and buildings (which each have an end-game value).  Each round consists of a fixed number of actions (3 actions to start increasing to 9 actions by game’s end) and players take turns taking 1 action to either buy or use 1 building.  At the start of each round, some buildings are added to the market.

Players each have two boards in front of them.  One is their warehouse – a grid with 4 resource markers (clay, wood, grain, fish) where the total of each resource is the marker’s row number (multiples of three) plus the marker’s column number.  When a player gains or loses resources, they move the markers in specific grid directions – this may sound unnecessary but is a clever system and I’ll explain why later.

The other player board is the main game mechanic which shows a circle divided into 6 sectors where buildings are placed once they have been bought.  The circle has an arm like a clock’s minute-hand with 6 values around the part at the circle’s centre (0, 2, 3, 4, 4+1 and !) – these 6 values each match up to the circle’s 6 sectors.  At the end of a round, players both advance their clock hand by one sector so the values  in the centre now point at the next adjacent sector – as a result a building that was next to the zero will now be next to the 2; a building that was next to the 2 will now be next to the 3, and so on.  Any building now next to the ! symbol is immediately sold for half of its value. Read the rest of this entry »

As you would expect, K2 is a game about climbing the mountain K2.  Players each have two climber meeples and score points based on how high their climbers reach; however, any climbers that perish only score 1 point no matter how they had ascended.

Each player has an identical set of 18 cards and each turn they pick 3 of the 6 cards from their hand.  Cards can be climbing cards (values range from 1 to 3) or acclimatisation cards (used to increase your climbers’ health).

Once selected, all players reveal their 3 cards simultaneously.  The player with the highest climbing total must take one of the 3 face-up risk tokens.  These tokens range in value from 0 to 2 and the player must pay that cost with movement points, acclimatisation points, or their climbers’ health.   A new token is revealed to make a total of 3 for the next round.

On their turn, players allocate each of their 3 cards to either of their climbers to move them, pitch a tent, or increase their health.  If a climber’s health goes above 6, it always goes down to 6 at the end of each turn, which adds a nice limit so climbers are never too far from the chance of perishing.

Read the rest of this entry »

A long time has passed since my last review.  My apologies for such a prolonged gap which has sadly been due to some unavoidable stuff which has been very frustrating and made all the worse as there are so many games I’ve wanted to tell you about and have not had a chance.

However, I shall be adding new reviews once again starting today with K2.  I’ll be adding reviews of the other main games I played at Spiel back in October as well as many others including X-Wing Miniatures Game, Archipelago, Rattus: Card Game, and Le Havre: The Inland Port.

Apologies for the lack of reviews this last week, I’ve had a lot of work to do (this time designing a freemium game which is very interesting).

I had the opportunity to download and play the iPhone version of Stone Age just before it hit the iPhone store.

I’m really pleased to say it seems excellent. I’ll write a proper review of it soon but the initial impression is that it’s an exact copy of the board game’s gameplay, plus the implementation is very clever.

Fitting everything on a tiny screen is a big challenge in Stone Age as there are lots of different board areas, but this has been achieved very well by displaying the main village areas on one screen and having the resource areas as overlays that slide on- and off- screen very quickly. Also, information about the other players like number of resources and cards held, as well as info on your own position are well handled with info tabs sliding out at a single tap. It’s very slick. Proper review to follow soon.

James.

Oddville is a eurogame with a city building theme and a very compact game design.  By that, I don’t mean its physical playing-size on the table; instead, I mean that the game mechanics are neatly compressed.  As a result, Oddville contains a clever, inventive design with more game than you may expect from a relatively short game.

During the game player’s gain resources, money and characters as well as construct buildings  so they can score the most victory points (VPs).  The game ends as soon as any player places their 6th worker in the city.

Each player has their own deck of 4 action cards.  On their turn, a player can play 1 action card which allows them to either gain the cash shown, or gain 1 of the resources shown, or gain 1 building from the 6 building cards on display (the card affects the price).  The cards range from strong to weak and the player gets these cards back once they have used all 4, or they can spend cash to get all used ones back (but the more cards still hand, the greater the cost).

When a player chooses to gain one of the resources on their action card, they place one of their workers on the lowest market price for that resource (which are limited in number) and pays the price.  The worker on the board shows the player has that resource until they spend it when building.  The game scales with 2 players as there are fewer cheap resources available. Read the rest of this entry »

The Stone Age game app for iPhone has been submitted to Apple and should be released in December.  It’s been developed by Campfire Creations and, from the screen shots so far, it looks very promising.  Stone Age is one of my favourite games (definitely top 10) so I’m looking forwards to seeing how it plays.

Their press release says, “Stone Age: The Board Game will include Pass-n-Play multi-player, three AI opponents, and asynchronous or synchronous online multi-player through Game Center” which sounds great.

The press release also says, “The app will also feature a ranked League Play option for the truly competitive Stone Age players. Campfire is already developing new language support, additional AI opponents, iPhone 5 support, a universal iPad upgrade, and a variety of other features and enhancements.”

Below are some screenshots. Read the rest of this entry »