THE GAME
Kingdoms is a tile-placement game by Reiner Knizia which has some similarities to his game Robot Master.  In Kingdoms, players place tiles and their own castles in order to sc0re victory points (VPs).  The player with the most VPs after 3 rounds wins.

Next to the board, there’s a stack of land tiles too which each have values from -6 up to +6, as well as a few special tiles.  Each player starts the game with a set of castle tiles (value 1 to 4) and 1 land tile.

Players take turns placing tiles onto a 6 x 5 grid and a player can either place one of their castle tiles or a land tile.  When placing a land tile from the stack, players commit to drawing it before they see what it is. Read the rest of this entry »

In 20th Century, players try to make the largest and best nation by the end of the century to score the most victory points (VPs).  The game lasts 6 rounds and uses 2 main currencies: money and science.

Each round starts with the players bidding for landscape tiles which each show a number of cities and railway lines.  Each city has icons showing what they produce (money, science, VPs and recycling) but cities will only produce these resources if they are populated.  Regardless of how many cities are on a tile, a player only receives 1 population marker for each tile they buy. Read the rest of this entry »

Travel Blog challenges players to travel around the USA or Europe and be the one to have the most money remaining at the end.  The game primarily consists of two decks of location cards (US states and European countries) and a board which has 7 spaces for location cards.

In each round, 7 location cards are dealt out onto the 7 board spaces and players place their marker(s) next to location cards.  In round 1, a location card is placed in the middle of the board and players must place one of their two markers next to one of the 7 location cards (or next to the space marked ’40’).  Players place their markers simultaneously and there’s a small penalty for picking the same location after another player. Read the rest of this entry »

In Navegador, players are Portuguese explorers discovering new lands and making money from trading or processing the resources from the new colonies.

The core game mechanic is the rondel – if you’ve played any of Mac Gerdts’ other rondel games (Antike, Imperial, Hamburgum) then you’ll know the deal.  If you’ve yet to play a rondel game, the rondel is a circle split into 8 sections.  On their turn, a player moves their piece 1 to 3 spaces clockwise around the rondel.  The space that they land on determines what action they can perform that turn.  A player can move more than 3 spaces but, in Navegador, each extra space costs 1 ship (which isn’t cheap but can be invaluable). Read the rest of this entry »

In Fürstenfeld, players are trying to build their palace.  To do this, they build buildings so they can harvest hops, barley and water to sell to the breweries for cash.  Each round players draw buildings cards, produce goods, sell goods, build buildings, and discard cards.  It sounds, and is, simple but there are several interesting game mechanics at work.

First, each player has a board with spaces for 6 buildings and, once they have built 6 buildings, any new buildings must be built over an existing one.  Second, each player has their own deck of building cards and they draw a few cards each turn; however, they can only keep one card (sometimes more with certain buildings) into the next round.  Any discarded cards get placed under their draw pile so may appear again later in the game.  Read the rest of this entry »

The original Tikal is a classic game of archaeological discover where players spend action points to send their explorers into the jungle to excavate temples and collect treasure.  Tikal II has a similar premise but this time the players explore a single temple revealing its rooms and grab treasures using coloured keys and secret passages.

Each turn, a player moves their boat around the temple and picks up one of the remaining action tiles.  The action tiles dictate what a player does that turn – adding a new room to the temple, gaining a coloured key, gaining treasure (to sell later), taking a card (special abilities or end of game points), secret passages (to use later), and so on.  Each time a player’s boat starts a new lap of the temple, they must discard a key (or lose points).  Read the rest of this entry »

Mord im Arosa is a very unusual game.  If you like pure tactics with zero luck then I doubt this is a game for you; however, if you just want a fun game that anyone can play then this will be of interest.  Two murders have occurred in the Hotel Arosa and the player with the least evidence against them will win the game.

During the game, players drop wooden cubes (evidence) into the pyramid of card boxes that make up the hotel.  There is a hole in each floor so the cubes may end up on any floor and players need to listen to them as they fall as they will need to predict which colour cubes are on which floors.  At the start of the game, two  red cubes get discovered showing the floors where the murders took place.  These are placed on the board (showing the hotel’s floors) which will also be used to record where any evidence is found.

On a player’s turn, a player can try to incriminate other players by announcing which colours they think are on a specific floor.  When revealed, any players guessed correctly place cubes from their supply equal to those revealed onto the corresponding floor of the board.  Read the rest of this entry »

I played Merchants and Marauders again yesterday and, once again, we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  As I mentioned in my review, it contains all the cool pirate actions you could want as well as lots of variety.  The naval vessels and non-player pirate ships (NPCs) moved a lot more than our last game which also added more variety and action, especially for me as I had bounties on my head so I spent time avoiding the stronger ships.

Merchants & Marauders really is a first-class game and one I’m really pleased I bought.  I know we will play it a lot more too.  Below are some further thoughts:

Battles at Sea
The players were still quite pleasant to each other so there were very few player-versus-player combats.  I tried but just couldn’t succeed at my scouting roll when it mattered so my “easy prey” human opponent managed to slip by me; however, we did have a couple of fights.  First, one player totally destroyed my already very badly damaged ship as I’d just completed a couple of merchant raids.  Their seamanship skill of 3 versus my 1 made it an easy win (I couldn’t use my seamanship of 2 because they had a bounty on them).  Read the rest of this entry »

THE GAME
I get the impression that Viva Il Re isn’t that well-known, although it got a Spiel des Jahres recommendation in 2004 and it’s recent re-release as King Me is sure to have increased awareness more recently.

Viva Il Re is about selecting a new king and having your candidates in the best positions when one is chosen.  The board is split into numbered levels (from the bottom upwards: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 10).  The candidates to be king are placed on the different levels. Each player ‘owns’ several candidates but, apart from their own, players do not know which opponents own which candidates.  Multiple players can own the same candidate too.

Players take turns moving any one candidate (not just their own) to the next level up so long as no more than 4 candidates occupy any one level.  The top level is slightly different – when a candidate is moved there, the players simultaneously vote using their vote cards showing Yes or No.  If at least one No vote is cast, the candidate is executed and the game continues.  Read the rest of this entry »

THE GAME
Ra is one of Reiner Knizia’s classic games.  In this case, it’s an Egyptian themed auction game.  Players take turns either adding a random tile to those to be auctioned, or they can start an auction for the already drawn tiles.  If a Ra tile is drawn an auction is automatically initiated.  Three times during the game, the players score points (depending upon the type of tiles) for the tiles they have won, but the heart of the game is the clever, yet simple, bidding system.

During an auction, players get one opportunity each (going clockwise) to outbid any previous bid using one of their sun stones which each have unique values between 1 to 16.  Players start the game with a pre-defined group of 3 sun stones (4 in a 2-player game) ensuring each player has a fair mixture, plus 1 sun stone is placed in the centre of the table. Read the rest of this entry »