Black Market is a stock market game so, as you would expect, players buy and sell the 5 different colour shares to make as much money as possible. However, the way the prices change is the key game mechanic that makes this game fun.

THE GAME
At the end of the game, the player who has bought the most silver bars wins.  Why not just base the winner on cash?  Well, the silver bar price increases throughout the game.  The ever rising silver bar price also works as the game’s timer – as soon as it hits 100 (per bar), the game ends.

Player Actions
On their turn, a player can either: buy shares, sell shares, or buy silver bars.  A marker for each of the 5 shares on the price grid shows the price at which shares of the matching colour can be bought or sold.  Shares are represented by little wooden, coloured briefcases.  The shares available for purchase (the ‘market’) are represented by a pile of briefcases next to the board.  Read the rest of this entry »

Water Lily is a very simple game and short enough be a filler but there’s a lot more fun to this than you may expect due to the clever scoring system.

The goal is to move your colour frogs so they score the most victory points (VPs).  There are 4 frogs in each of the 5 colours and each player is secretly allocated a colour so they don’t know which colours the other players are.

Players take turns moving the top-most frog on a space (there can be up to 4 on any space) in a straight line.  The frog can be moved a number of spaces equal to or less than the number of the frogs on the space it moves from.  So, if there are 3 frogs on a space, you can move the top-most frog up to 3 spaces. Read the rest of this entry »

Troyes was in the top games on the Spiel Fairplay rankings throughout the show.  Fortunately, I pre-ordered my copy as it sold out quickly.

Troyes is a mixture of worker placement and dice allocation.  The goal is to earn the most victory points (VPs).  Players start with a few workers and one use for these is to place them in one of the 3 principal buildings: town hall (yellow), palace (red) and bishopric (white).  At the start of each round, players receive 1 coloured dice for each of their workers in these buildings (yellow dice for workers in the yellow building, etc).  Players roll their dice and place them in their area of the town square.

Before the main actions, 2 event cards are drawn which threaten the city and cause negative effects (like a loss of cash).  The first player (and maybe players after them if required) will need to discard dice to combat the immediate effects although this doesn’t remove the events from the board. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of pirate-themed games in the past but not many have covered the full pirate experience.  To make it worse, the Sid Meyer’s Pirates boardgame never made it to completion.  So, when I read the rules to Merchants & Marauders, I was very pleased that a big Pirate game was coming.

THE GAME
The goal of Merchants & Marauders is glory – the first player to score 10 glory points wins.  Each time a player gains a glory point, they also receive a glory card too which is a special ability or item, so your captain becomes more accomplished throughout the game.  Glory is gained through impressive feats such as defeating a ship in combat, trading large amounts of goods, completing missions, gaining wealth, and more.

The board shows the Caribbean split into sea zones – each zone contains a port, plus has a special rule too making every zone different.  Read the rest of this entry »

When I first read about Isla Dorada I knew it would be something to check out because it sounded different to other games.  The players have crash landed on a desert island and aim to collect the most valuable treasure to win.  That’s not too different, but the way the players move is.  Rather than each player moving separately, the players are a single expedition party which never splits up.  So, players bid to decide who will choose the path along which they will next travel.  The island has various named locations on it and these are joined by different types of paths.  Players take turns bidding (stating which path they will move the expedition along if they win) and the highest bidder gets their way.  Players need to pay for a successful bid using adventure cards from their hand and the cards must match the type of path being used, i.e. kayak cards to move along rivers, yak cards to travel mountain paths, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

Several people have asked for the full run down of the games I played and the games I bought at Spiel so the lists are below.   I shall be reviewing these games as well as others which friends bought (such as Civilization) over the coming weeks.

GAMES PLAYED

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

• Fairy Tale (What’s Your Game version)
• Space Hulk: Death Angel

THURSDAY

• Fürstenfeld
• Navegador
• Musketeers
• Read the rest of this entry »

In Mille Grazie, players take turns as Italian noblemen travelling between cities trying to avoid being robbed whilst all the other players play the role of the robbers.  The board shows cities connected by 24 roads, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet.  The noblemen are trying to fulfil route cards they hold which show where the nobleman holding that card has to reach and how many points they will receive if they do so.  Four cities have route cards on them at any one time and these can be picked up by any nobleman passing through that city.

First, the robbers select on which road that they will each lay in wait by selecting the road’s letter on their selection wheel.  Then, the nobleman player moves along 4 or 5 roads.  If the noblemen moves along a road that a robber selected, the robber scores 3 points and the nobleman player loses 1 to 3 of the routes they have in their hand (depending upon the colour of road on which they were robbed).  Read the rest of this entry »

Spiel seemed different this year compared to previous years – not good or bad different – just different.  We went for 3 days of the show as usual, stayed in the same hotel as usual, ate steak in our favourite restaurant multiple times as usual.  However, when asked what was my favourite game so far, I wasn’t able to point at one specific game which outranked the others; instead, there were lots that were very good indeed but too close to pick a single leader.

However, Spiel was the usual gaming marathon and didn’t disappoint as there were many superb games.  Whilst I can’t pick my favourite game of the show, I think think the following (in no particular order) were great.

• Merchants & Marauders
• Black Friday
• Isla Dorada
• Mille Graize
• Mord im Arosa
• Era of Inventions
• Tikal II
• Dakota
• 7 Wonders

Read the rest of this entry »

I bought League of Six with its expansion at Spiel 2009 so I’m pleased that I have managed to finally play it just before going to Spiel this year.  (We played the game with 6 players – which requires the expansion – but did not use the other part of the expansion that adds different tax tiles.)

In League of Six, players are tax collectors going from town to town.  No, wait, don’t give up on it just yet…  Okay, it may not sound the most evocative theme but League of Six delivers an interesting medieval-themed Euro game which has its own identity.  The game lasts 6 turns and each player tries to collect goods, guards and horses so they can deliver goods to the king and to the civic leaders in order to gain influence.  The player with the greatest number of influence points at the end wins. Read the rest of this entry »

In Tammany Hall, players place their ward bosses to try to win the support of the migrant nation entering New York so that they will be voted in as mayor.  There are 4 different migrant nations – each represented by different colour cubes (different to the player colours).  In essence, Tammany Hall is an area control game but has some interesting elements that take it a bit further with hidden voting and role allocation.

Each turn, a player either places two of their ward bosses in New York’s regions, or they place one of their ward bosses plus place one of the migrants (cubes) who want to enter New York.  If a player places a migrant from those currently queuing, they also receive a political favour cube of that nationality.  A game lasts 16 turns (16 years) and there is an election (scoring) after every 4 turns.  During an election, each city area is assessed and player’s who have ward bosses in an area compete to win that area.  Each ward boss is worth 1 vote and players can also (secretly) add any of their favour cubes which match any migrant nations represented in that area too.  Winning an area scores 1 VP; also, plus the players who have the most migrant cubes of each nation present in the areas they control get 3 extra political favour tokens. Read the rest of this entry »