To celebrate reaching 500 Twitter followers, Metagames is giving away a copy of Pegasus Spiele’s SdJ-nominated Strasbourg this week.  I reviewed the game a few week ago and really enjoyed it.  You can read the Strasbourg rules here.

HOW TO WIN
The winner will be randomly selected from one of 4 finalists.  Each finalist will be selected by a different method giving you 4 ways to earn a chance to win:

TWITTER
Anyone who is following @Metagames twitter account and has re-tweeted the competition phrase that I tweeted (which says I would like to win a copy of Pegasus Spiele’s SdJ-nominated Strasbourg).

– It’s important you re-tweet the @Metagames tweet so that I can see your entry.

BDG.MS
Anyone who shortens a board gaming link using bdg.ms from Monday 20^th June to Midnight PST Sunday 26^th June 2011 (you will need to register which is free and takes 20 seconds – simply click on ‘Register’)

– What’s bdg.ms?  It’s like bit.ly and tinyurl.com but just for boardgames with a list of all the latest links
– Only board game related links will be allowed
– Shorten a link to your site, a recent article you saw or your favourite board game (please don’t just shorten the link to Strasbourg on BGG)

METAGAMES BLOG
Anyone who posts a comment on the Metagames review of Strasbourg saying, “I want to win a copy of Stefan Feld’s Strasbourg”.

BGG
Anyone who has entered the competition using the competition page on BGG (being made live in the next 30 minutes)

To maximise your chances of winning, you can enter using all 4 methods described above.  The finalists will be announced on Monday 27^th June and the winner selected at random on the same day.  Note that multiple entries using the same method (i.e. re-tweeting multiple times, adding multiple comments) will not count.

My thanks to Pegasus Spiele for providing the prize for this competition.

Good luck,

James.

Alien Frontiers is a dice-placement and area-control game with a space colonisation theme for 2-4 players.  Players score victory points (VPs) by placing colonies on the planet (as well as for dominating planet areas and a few alien tech cards).  When any player has placed their 9th and final colony on the planet, the game ends and the player with the most VPs wins.

During the game, players take turns rolling their dice (spaceships) and allocating them to different locations (orbital facilities).  Each orbital facility lets you do different things such as gain resources (energy and ore), build spaceships, gain alien tech (special abilities), raid other players, etc.  Each facility requires dice to use it and most require a specific mixture of dice, i.e. doubles, a total of 8 or higher, a 3-dice straight.  However, the extra twist is that there are a limited amount of spaces for dice at each area and a player only gets their dice back at the start of their turn; therefore, opponents’ dice can block spaces so that other players are unable to use them. Read the rest of this entry »

I just noticed a new game on the Fantasy Flight Games site called ‘Elder Sign’.  It’s an Arkham Horror Files game (like Mansions of Madness) so uses the same setting but this time it’s a co-operative, dice-based game for 1-8 players.

The investigators are at a museu hunting for Elder Signs with which to block the Ancient Ones arrival.  From the info on the site, it sounds a bit like Arkham Horror: The Card Game (which certainly isn’t a bad thing) as there is no board but still features Ancient Ones with doom tracks, stamina and sanity stats, and the other usual Arkham elements.

Players try to complete adventure cards in order to search the museum for the elder signs but they will suffer ill effects if they do not complete cards fully.  Each time the clock strikes midnight, a Mythos card is drawn which has a negative effect representing the strengthening of the Ancient One’s evil.

Check out the preview and the site for more details (link below).  Not a lot of details about it yet but it looks very interesting indeed – especially if you’re an Arkham Horror and Cthulhu fan as I am.

Link to preview on FFG site (and there’s a link to the game’s site there too): http://bdg.ms/ae9v

Pantheon is by the same designer as Stone Age which is one of my favourite boardgames.  I read through the rules recently and it’s definitely one I want to try out.  As the name suggests, the theme involves the Gods.

The game’s played over 6 turns (epochs) and each turn one of the nations on the board is activated which means loot tiles are placed on hexes with that nation’s symbol, that nation’s special effect is executed and some god tiles are revealed.

During their turns, a player can either:

1. Move – Spend cards to place their coloured pieces on the board; thereby, claiming hexes in chains across the board which in turn can gain loot tiles.
2. Buy – Purchase sacrifice tiles & more pieces to place on the board
3. Gain a god tile – Gained by having enough sacrifice tiles and cards (although, unlike tiles, cards are single-use)
4. Draw 3 cards Read the rest of this entry »

REVIEWS
The Spiel des Jahres nominees were revealed last week.  Below is a list of the nominees with easy links to reviews of most of them.

Spiel des Jahres
Asara
Qwirkle
Forbidden Island

Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees
Strasbourg
7 Wonders
Lancaster

Luna was also on the list of recommended titles.

THOUGHTS
As far as my thoughts go, Read the rest of this entry »

Letters From Whitechapel is a game about Jack The Ripper.  If you’ve played Scotland Yard, then you’ll get a good idea about it if I say it’s like an advanced Scotland Yard; however, in case you haven’t, I’ll review this assuming no previous knowledge of Scotland Yard.

One player is Jack the Ripper who needs to perform a series of murders and the other players are the police trying to catch him before he has completed his grizzly activities and escaped.  Jack takes turns moving invisibly around the board (which shows many connected, numbered spaces) whilst the other players take turns working together as the police to move around and catch him.  The police do have some clues though – first, they know where the murder takes place so they know Jack’s starting point; second, Jack must say if he’s moving normally or using one of his special moves each turn; and, third, the police can detect if Jack has been through a space they investigate (next to their current position) so they can detect his trail.  Each night, Jack must get back to his hideout – the location of which is unknown to the police – before each night ends. Read the rest of this entry »

As with several games at the moment, Pergamon caught my interest because of the simple but potentially interesting game mechanics (as I mentioned in my On the Radar post).  During the game, players gather funds so they can excavate artifacts to then display in a museum to score victory points (VPs).

Each round, players first jostle for a share of the limited funding and players only know the rough total that will be available as the backs of the 2 funding cards each show their potential ranges (1-4 or 5-8).  Players place their meeple on the amount they want to receive and that also determines how deep they will be able to dig too.  When all players have set their requests, the funding is revealed and allocated to those who ask for smaller amounts first.  So, it’s possible to end up with nothing, although the last player gets everything that remains so can end up with more than they asked for. Read the rest of this entry »

Yggdrasil is a co-operative game where the players are Norse gods trying to stop the evil ones causing the end of the world.  The first thing that strikes you is the artwork which is colour-rich, polished and seems almost backlit – which will be familiar to you if you’ve played or seen Ghost Stories as it’s by the same artist.  The board shows the great cosmic tree that supports the nine worlds.

THE GAME
During the game, the 6 evil ones advance across the 8 spaces towards Asgard.  Each turn, the current player draws an evil one card and then takes 3 actions.  Each evil one card shows which evil one advances 1 space towards Asgard and each evil one has a power too which get stronger as they advance.  The players lose if 5 evil ones go past the 3rd space, 3 evil ones go past the 5th space, or 1 evil one reaches the final 8th space (Asgard).  The players win if they can exhaust the evil one deck without losing, so they need to force the evil ones back and this is done through combat and the Norse gods will need the support of Viking spirits to stand a chance of beating them. Read the rest of this entry »

The game’s full name is ‘Artus and the Knights of the Round Table’ and the reason this game has caught my attention is that it is by the same designers who created El Grande which is one of my favourite games (as wel as many others like Tikal I, Tikal II and Asara).

During the game, players play cards from their hand (they each have identical decks) to move their Knights (usually clockwise) around the table.  Each chair has a number next to it ranging from -15 to +10.  When a knight moves, the player scores points equal to the number of the chair they leave.  If a knight moves to a chair already occupied by a knight then that knight gets displaced to the first empty chair anti-clockwise.  Players also have cards that move the princes, make a prince into a new king, and trigger scoring situations (i.e. score all your knights on the carpet chairs, etc.)

The gameplay sounds clean, simple and tactical, but the extra twist is that when the King moves (or a prince becomes the new King) the whole table is rotated so the King is at the crown position which can shift the numbers (and, therefore, the potential for scoring) a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Pirates (2^nd Edition): The Governor’s Daughter’ (which I’ll call Pirates from now on) was launched at Essen last year at the same time as ‘Merchants & Marauders’.  From reading the rules, Merchants & Marauders seemed like it would be the detailed game and Pirates would be a more simple Eurogame so they both interested me.

The Goal – In Pirates, players are racing to be the first to rescue the Governor’s Daughter who has been kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts.  To save her, a player needs to obtain both parts of the map to Roberts’ island, then go there and either pay him 50 doubloons or intimidate him (with 30+ reputation).  Each player has their own character with a unique ability and, during the game, players can upgrade their ship’s battle strength and cargo capacity.  Also, players have a hand of up to 5 cards which can be battle cards (altering battle strength), missions cards (giving personal goals usually involving sailing to a space and fighting) and crew cards (such as +1 battle strength for the next round). Read the rest of this entry »