Takamatsu is a new game by Martin Schlegel – the designer of Aqua Romana (an SdJ nominee released by Queen in 2005 – the first Spiel I attended).  I really like Aqua Romana (even though I think one of the game mechanics could be improved) so I’m very interested in this new game.

In Takamatsu, players move their samurai meeple around the rooms in a building trying to gain cards and prevent others from doing so.  Most cards give players victory points (some are secret until revealed) and the first player to 20 victory points wins.

On your turn, you can move samurai from any room where at least one of your samurai is located; however, there are some restrictions.  You must move at least one of your own samurai, plus at least one opponent’s samurai (if there are any opponents in the room).  Also, if there are more than 2 samurai in a room, you must leave at least 1 behind.  The samurai get moved clockwise around the building’s rooms and they are moved forwards a number of rooms equal to the number of samurai moved.  Whilst the rooms are arranged in a loop, it’s not completely linear as there are some branches. Read the rest of this entry »

The full game of Nations is an excellent civilsation game which uses euro-style game mechanics and focuses more on building civilisations and indirect interaction plus has no landscape board.  It’s an excellent, tight and unforgiving game which I have enjoyed (and hope to review soon).

This year sees Nations: The Dice Game being released which looks very promising from reading the rules.  The dice game contains simplified and streamlined version of the core elements of the main game but, as the name suggests, it uses a dice mechanic.

Each player has their own board with limited spaces for tiles representing buildings, advisors, and wonders (colony tiles can be unlimited).  Each of these items can be built for a cost which then gives its owner a benefit.

Over 4 rounds (ages), players take turns taking actions.  At the start of a round, you roll the dice shown on your tiles (players start with basic buildings) and the results display the resources each dice is worth.  One action is to buy a tile from the common pool by spending resources (those shown on your dice as well as resource counters already earned).  Dice spent this way are ‘used’ so are unavailable until the next round. Read the rest of this entry »