Some years ago a friend of mine who is a teacher told me about a co-operative exercise he’d created for his students where they organised search-and-rescue operations.  It sounded great and we discussed how it had potential for a board game as he plays some Eurogames.  So, I was very interested when Meltdown 2020 was announced.

In Meltdown 2020, players are trying to evacuate their meeple from the area where reactors are starting to meltdown.  Each player starts with 3 vehicles which each have a speed (spaces it can move) and a capacity (max number of meeple it can carry simultaneously).  The vehicles are a bus (spd:2 cap:4), car (spd:3 cap:3) and a helicopter (spd:4 cap 2). Read the rest of this entry »

Tschak! is a small card game where players are trying to gain treasure and avoid monsters but the gameplay offers something rather clever.

The 40 cards consist of wizards, warriors and dwarves with different values on them.  Each player is dealt 3 of each, plus one artefact card making a hand of 10 cards.  Players will assault 4 towers (one per round) and the player with most victory points (VPs) at the end wins.

Each tower has 3 levels played in order and each level has a random treasure and monster placed on it.  For each level, players play a total of 3 cards and the player with the highest combined value of cards gets the treasure (VPs) and the player with the lowest gets the monster (negative VPs).   A couple of the cards have special abilities: one wizard’s value is only the same as the most powerful wizard played by another player, and the artefact card doubles your weakest card.

Each level is played slightly differently.  On level 1, players simultaneously play 1 card at a time from their hands three times to make their total.  On level 2, players simultaneously play 2 cards and then 1 card.  On level 3, players play all 3 cards simultaneously.  This leaves each player with 1 card and these earn their owners 3, 2 and 1 gold based on the highest card values (gold being worth 1 VP each too). Read the rest of this entry »

Initially, Trajan looks like a complicated game but it isn’t really – it just offers choices all built around a clever, but not over-powering, central mechanic.

GAMEPLAY
Players are trying to score victory points (VPs) by fulfilling the people’s demands and furthering Roman power.  Each turn, a player gets to perform one of the 6 actions: building, shipping, forum, senate, military, and Trajan.  So, the overview is simple, but the mechanics and choices are what really deliver a great game.

Determining the Action to Take
On their turn, players can not simply choose any action they wish.  Instead, each player’s player board shows 6 pots each relating to one specific action.  In these pots are 12 coloured pieces (6 coloured pairs).  On their turn, a player takes all of the pieces from any one pot and distributes them one at a time into the next pots going clockwise from where they took the pieces from.  (This distribution game mechanic is widely known from the game Mancala – a traditional game in Africa and some parts of Asia dating back as far as 600 AD). Read the rest of this entry »

Last Will is a game where players must be the first to spend some money left to them by their uncle.  The first to prove they can enjoy such riches the most (fastest) will then be the sole heir to the rest of the massive inheritance.  In essence, the game is an interesting mix of worker placement with elements of efficiency engine too, but there are lots of things to balance.

Each round consists of several steps.  First, players take turns selecting their place on the actions chart – a player’s position on the chart determines the number of workers (errand boys) they will place (1 or 2), the number of actions they will spend (playing cards and spending money) and the number of cards they will take from the decks (giving them options on how to spend money or other abilities), plus it determines the order of play for that turn too.  This multi-dimensional choice is an excruciatingly interesting decision to make, especially as only one player can select each of the mixture of options.  (It’s a bit like the initial choice of what time to get up in Fresco but even harder to select.) Read the rest of this entry »

Elder Sign is a game set in the Arkham Horror (H. P. Lovecraft) setting  by Fantasy Flight Games.  This time it’s a co-operative dice game where players are investigators inside a museum trying to find enough elder signs to ensure the Great Old One doesn’t enter this world, or (and much more unlikely) to defeat it if it does awaken.

On their turn, a player can choose to attempt to accomplish one of the 6 situations in the museum currently available.  The player rolls 6 special dice (showing results like investigations, peril, etc.) and tries to get enough results that match any of the tasks on the card.  For example, one situation card may show 2 tasks: one requiring 2 lore scrolls, and another requiring 1 peril plus 2 investigations plus 1 terror.  If a player completes one of the tasks, they set the dice needed to do so aside and can roll the remaining dice again to try to complete more tasks on the situation card.  If the player doesn’t complete any of the remaining tasks on a roll, they discard a dice and re-roll their remaining dice again until they complete all tasks or fail.  Players can use special items, spells, allies, etc. that they’ve gained along the way to roll a few better dice, plus the player may use clue tokens to re-roll any of their dice before seeing if they have completed a task. Read the rest of this entry »

Each year, I have run a competition to win a copy of one of the latest games released at Spiel in Essen. As always the competition will be open to anyone so you don’t need to be at Spiel itself.

I am very pleased to announce that this year, I shall be doing the same.  However, I am also very excited to announce that I am running the competition in association with Z-Man Games who will be providing a copy of Dark Minions as the prize (which they are releasing at Spiel).

This competition has now closed.  You can still read my preview of Dark Minions for details on the game.

James.

I read the rules to Dark Minion recently and it sounds really promising.  The players are all dark hordes descending upon towns to attack and loot them, which I already liked the sound of, but it contains some interesting game mechanics delivering a mix of meeple allocation, area control and dice.

On their turn, a player rolls 3 dice which they use to either attack towns, respawn minions from the graveyard, or capture towers.  Attacking towns is the core of the game where a player can allocates dice to the towns (a maximum of one dice per town) allowing them to place that many minions next to the town.  When there are enough total minions from all players next to a town to exceed its defense number, the town falls and the player who allocated the most minions gets the tile, the victory points (VPs) and the skulls printed on the tile.  Also, the player who allocated the second most minions gets 2 VPs, and the player triggering the event gets 1 VP.

One aspect I really like the sound of is that the 1’s on the dice are actually +1’s which can be added other dice results.  I like this because rolling low in games usually penalises a player through sheer bad luck but, in this case, rolling +1 allows a player to make other dice stronger.  This sounds like a subtle but clever mechanic to balance up the luck of the roll.  Also, this idea is taken further by the white dice – a player can choose to roll a white dice instead of their usual dice which can add +1 or +2 (or a skull) which is also a nice idea. Read the rest of this entry »

BURDIGALA
I was interested to read that a new (at least to me) publisher is releasing a game by Bruno Cathala at Spiel this year.  The game is Burdigala and plays 2-4 players.

The setting is Bordeaux in 56BC and players are constructing the port town.  The winner is the one with the most prestige points (PPs) which are earned by involvement in building construction, completing a building, merchandise and plot cards,  So, fairly standard sounding stuff so far.  However, the game sounds like it has  some neat game mechanics.

First, each turn players roll 2 dice and use one of the results to move one of their meeple to an unoccupied space on the board which have to one or two building sites next to them.  The player places a cube on the building site and scores a number of points equal to the spaces still left.  If the player places the final cube to complete a building they score PPs equal to the building’s value (and any players next to the district get a plot card which give their owners special abilities).  Not only do I like the sound of the simple but strategic movement system, but I also like how this system encourages players to get building. Read the rest of this entry »

Looting London is a game that seems so simple you might think it doesn’t have much to offer as a game when the rules are explained; however, it contains a simple but clever little filler game.  This is not too surprising when you know the game is designed by Renier Knizia and this game is quite typical of his designs.

The players are investigating the theft of London’s 5 biggest treasures (although the theme is inconsequential in this game).  The goal is to score as many victory points (VPs) which are scored by collecting tiles.

The game consists of various tiles and cards.  Each tile is one of 5 colours (each matching a treasure) and has a number between 1 to 5 and a character (boy, detective, policeman and lady) on it.

The tiles are laid out randomly in a 5 x 5 grid.  Each turn you can either take a card (one of 4 face-up cards, or one off the top of the deck unseen) or claim a tile that is at the bottom of a column.  To claim a tile, you must discard a number of cards equal to the number on the tile AND the cards must show the character that is on the tile you’re claiming too.  You can play any pair of matching cards to count as any character. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been very impressed by GameWorks’ games as they’re always so beautifully produced with real attention to detail.  The box inner for Tikal II not only had specially moulded sections for all game parts but each section was numbered and these matched the numbers in the rules.  Last year they released: Tikal II, Water Lily and Sobek.  This year GameWorks have two new games:

	Tschak   Tshcak is a trick taking game where players go through 3 levels in each of 4 dungeons. The images of the cards released show various adventurers, monsters, spells and so on.  One of the green adventurers looks to be inspired by a certain laser disc videogame adventurer which is cool. The info on the game revealed so far doesn’t give much away but the goal  is to get all the treasures and no monsters.  However, Tschak is designed by Dominique Ehrhard who designed the superb, and superbly simple, Water Lily and Lascaux, so I will definitely give this one a try. Plays 2-4 players in 30-40 minutes.
	Bonbons  This is a memory game to get candy but with a twist because it seems you can also steal back some of the candies other players have won.  I don’t know much more than that. Plays 2-6 players in 10-20 minutes.