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.
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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.

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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).

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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).

In my blog and Tweets I’ve mentioned I have some new (and exciting features) that I shall be adding.  The first are described below, but I also have two bigger items to announce in the next couple of weeks.

LESS GAME DESCRIPTION
Since I started posting boardgame reviews in October 2010, I’ve noticed I describe the game and how it is played more and more – I think this is the game explainer in me which is one of my natural roles at games events.  To comment on a game, it’s important that the comments are in context for readers, but I’m thinking of cutting down the amount of game description I include in new reviews.  One reason is that describing a game in detail takes longer than the writing my appraisal of the game.  Also, less detailed game descriptions will make it easier for me to review more games, still convey the same assessment and comments, and make it easier for readers to consume.  If you have any opinion on this, let me know.

MORE SHORT THOUGHTS
Writing a full review is great and I certainly won’t be stopping that at all; however, there are times when I just want to give some thoughts on a game, so some posts will purely be Shorter Thoughts.  I had thought of using Twitter but it’s so hard to fit fair and balanced comments into 150 characters.

NEW POST TYPE: ON THE RADAR
When new games get announced some really catch my eye and I want to highlight them.  So, I shall be trying out adding posts which are purely games that I think look promising.

That’s it for now.  Thanks for reading my blog and Tweets on @Metagames if you follow that too.

Egizia was a game on my list to check out at Essen in 2009.  I would even have taken a punt and bought it without playing it first but the text on the cards was in German.  So, I played it soon as I had a chance a couple of weeks ago when the English language version was released.

Set in Ancient Egypt, players try to gain as many victory points (VPs) as possible over 5 rounds.  Each player has 8 ships and, in turn order (the player with fewest VPs goes first), players place their ships one at a time on spaces along the Nile following two important rules: first, only one ship can be placed on each space and, second, a player can not place a new ship upstream of any of their ships that they have already placed.

There are two main types of spaces along the Nile.  On one side are fixed spaces that offer the same benefits every round (improving construction crews, changing the weather and improving the player’s stone/grain markets – all explained later) plus there are 3 sets of building spaces where the player needs to have a ship if they want an opportunity to build monuments later in the round.  On the other side of the Nile, there are spaces whose benefits are determined by cards placed on each space at the start of each round (which increase as the game progresses).  The cards offer benefits that can be permanent, immediate use, or held for later use.  These benefits range from the simple (extra quarries or fields, one-off food bonuses, temporary construction crew strength boosts, bonus VPs, etc.) to more unusual abilities (place a ship on a space already occupied by another player, place two ships in a row, keep 2 Sphinx cards (explained later), take an unclaimed card at the end of the round, etc.) Read the rest of this entry »