‘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 »

Khan was released at Essen in October 2010 and I finally got my chance last night and it was worth the wait.  The setting is 1244 and each player is chasing out the existing 8 Mongol leaders in order to conquer more territory than their opponents.  Each player their own coloured set of counters representing their yurts (which are like large tents) and starts with some special action cards and a hand of 4 random cards.

The board shows various terrain areas with a river passing through some and the 8 Mongol leaders start on the board.  Next to the board are various Tetris-ish shaped tiles.  The goal is to place and own these to score points. Read the rest of this entry »

Prrrt is a game by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc – the same team that brought us the superb Mow (also by the same publisher and artist).  Prrrt definitely has a unique theme as players are aiming to take the least shame for farting in an enclosed space.  Yes, you read that right.

The game consists of 3 types of cards – shame, smell and location.  Each incident, a location is drawn which determines the direction of play and the starting number of shame cards.  The game ends when there has been at least 1 incident in each location (so from 5 to 9 incidents) and the player with the highest total value on their shame cards loses.

The game mechanics are quite unique so I need to explain them.  In each incident someone has farted and players take turns asking each other who did it.  To start, players are dealt 5 smell cards which make up their hand.  On a player’s turn (let’s say Player A), they turn to their neighbour (Player B) and ask if they farted.  If B says yes, then B takes the shame for the fart right away and receives all the current shame cards and that incident ends. Read the rest of this entry »

For some time, I’ve wanted Fantasy Flight to do more Arkham Horror but not just expanding the already huge game.  So, the announcement of Mansions of Madness was great news.  If you’ve played ‘Betrayal at House on the Hill’ then think of ‘Mansions of Madness’ as ‘Betrayal at Arkham Horror on the Hill’ – which isn’t a bad thing at all.

Mansions of Madness pits one player (the Keeper) against up to 4 other players who are investigating strange goings on at the mansion (crypt, chapel, etc.)  The board is made up of room pieces whose layout is determined by the story (defined in the rules) that is being played.  The players don’t know the reason behind the weird happenings and it’s their job to uncover enough clues so that they understand how to defeat the evil that is at work.  The Keeper plays the role of the evil side – causing weird happenings, controlling the monsters, etc. – and their goal is to defeat the investigators. Read the rest of this entry »

New reviews will be online next week.  I’m about to launch the new boardgames community site I’ve been working on – hopefully tomorrow – so that will give me an opportunity to write-up some new reviews.

I had a day off from coding yesterday to attend the games day at Eclectic Games shop in Reading (UK) yesterday which featured games from Z-Man Games.  It was a day tournament where you get assigned to random games against random mixtures of players. I played Grimoire, Bridge Troll, Troyes and Skyline 3000.

I shall add reviews of Grimoire, Cave Troll and Skyline 3000 soon. I really enjoyed Skyline as it felt like Manhattan (one of my favourite games with 4 players) but with different challenges.  Bridge Troll was very interesting and I liked it although it took a while to get my head around how to get what I wanted.  Read the rest of this entry »

Below are links to reviews of games that will be released in shops next week (in the UK):

Principato is a forthcoming game that is another game that looks to offer interesting game play but focused on a central core mechanic so isn’t too complex.  During the game, players generate resources (food and money) for their city and use them to increase their military strength (recruiting militia and condotierre forces as well as building catapults).  Players score victory points based on their comparative military strengths during the game (after each of the 3 game years plus 2 at random) plus bonus VPs for secret objectives and building cultural items.  However, militia and condotierre forces only add to your total strength if they are allocated resources too (food and gold respectively) – and count against your strength without these resources.  So, you need to balance how you use your resources.

The main game mechanic is the action card system which looks nice and simple but with some tough choices.  When activated, the action cards let you gather resources, convert resources into items like more banks, catapults, militia, etc. Players get 2 actions each turn which can be used to activate a card in their hand, swap a card in their hand with one of the cards on display, or take a favour cube (which counts as gold or food).  When played, some action cards let the player swap the card with one on display too.  Also, the oldest card on display is discarded each turn and a new one added.  So, there’s an interesting element of drafting.

Principato looks like it will be simple, fast and force players to make tough choices.  Players can not attack or trade with each other so the player interaction seems to come from denying them cards.  I’m looking forwards to trying this one.

View Eggertspiele’s Principato page and rules.

Neuroshima Hex on iPhone is a quick-playing well-executed game on iPhone  So, it’s great to see that the same developer (Big Daddy’s Creations) is releasing a puzzle version of the game in March 2011.

Neuroshima Hex Puzzle will contain 100 different puzzles to solve.  I think it sounds like a great idea as it’ll add a new way to play and I do like a good puzzle game especially if it uses a board game.  The iPhone Carcassonne solitaire mode was like a puzzle-mode and worked really well.  So, I’m looking forwards to this.  See the official site for more details.

Vinhos is one of the several games with a wine-making theme that were released last year.  The game lasts 6 game years and the winner is the player with the most victory points (VPs) at the end of the game.  Each year, players take 2 actions and turn order is re-assessed after each round of actions.  In one action, a player can:

• Buy one or more vineyard (which produce wine)
• Buy 1 or 2 wineries (which increase wine value)
• Hire 1 or 2 enologists (which increase wine value but cost money each year)
• Buy a cellar (increases the time you can keep wine which makes it more valuable)
• Sell wine for cash
• Export wine for VPs (some immediately and some later if you dominate that area)
• Bank (cash in/out and make/sell investments)
• Hire 1 or 2 wine experts (giving various extra powers and increasing chances at wine fair)
• Press release (announce your wine fair entry and maybe influence a manager) or Pass

As you can see there’s a lot choice, especially as a player will only take 12 actions in the whole game.   I won’t explain all the rules as that’s too much to cover but will mention a few core gameplay areas. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you may have noticed that I like interesting game mechanics, especially those that are simple, make you agonise over your decisions and allow you to annoy other players too.  From reading the rules, Pergamon sounds like it has such a game mechanic at its heart.

In the game’s excavation of artefacts for displaying at the museum, one of the core mechanics is to select how much funding you will request.  Each player must ask for different amounts and all players only know the rough total of funding that will be available.  When all players have made their request, the actual funds available are revealed and the players that asked for the least funding will get their cash first.  Players that asked for the larger amounts could end up receiving nothing at all if all the funds have been given out by the time it’s their turn to be paid.  However, asking for larger amounts of funding means you get to dig up the more valuable artefacts.  This reminds of my favourite part of Fresco where you choose what time your artists will get out of bed as each player must pick a unique time and the time sets turn order, your purchase costs and more.

Pergamon has some other clever mechanics too like placing tiles (that show two halves of different artefacts) together to make a whole artefact, and making existing museum displays less valuable by adding even better displays.  As a result, Pergamon is definitely a game I’m looking forwards to.

View Eggertspiele’s Pergamon page and rules.