As promised, this year’s 5th Annual Game Giveaway is a competition where you could win a copy of Funforge’s new game Quantum and it has now started!

See the competition page for details.  Competition ends at 5.00pm on Monday 28th October (UK time).

Good luck,

James.

Blueprints is an intriguing abstract game where players build buildings out of dice that follow the blueprint plans they have in front of them.

Each player starts with a blueprint which shows where the dice must be placed (floorplan and how high each stack should be).  The blueprint shows a plan view (where players physically place their dice as they ‘build’ their building, as well as a 3-D view so it’s nice and clear.

On their turn, a player can pick one of the dice from the pool of already rolled dice, and a new dice is added after each player’s turn to replace the used one.  To place a dice on top of another dice, the dice on top must be of the same or great value than the one below it.  As well as their values, the colour of the dice makes a difference to the players too as each material is scored differently.

The game is made more interesting because the player’s blueprint are placed behind their player screen, so other players know what they took but have no idea what shape it is taking.

After drawing 6 dice each, players reveal and score how their buildings compare to their blueprint.  Orange (wood) dice each score 2 points for each dice adjacent (faces touching) to them; Green (recycled) dice score points based on the total green dice in the building; Grey (stone) dice each score based on their height within the building; and, Clear (glass) dice each score based on the value on their top face.

Read the rest of this entry »

Strike is a game about Lech Wałęsa – a Polish electrician who became a trade-union activist, co-founded Solidarity (the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union) and even became President of Poland.  The game focuses on the Polish strikes of 1980 and the agreement reached between the workers and the government.

The game is by the designer of Kolejka (Queue) which is one of my favourite games and which also has a historical Polish theme.  The game itself has a deck-building game mechanic at its centre but the game has a difference.

On their turn, a player uses their cards to move Lech Wałęsa around the board and gain better cards by using cards in their hand.  The first player to gain 2 agreement cards wins (in the real events, 21 demands were made of the government by the workers and these cards represent agreement to these demands).

The reason this seems a bit different is because there is only one Lech Wałęsa on the board and each player continues moving them from wherever they have been left by the previous player.

Read the rest of this entry »

Vikings: Warriors of the North is a game of looting and pillaging as, from the name along, you would hope it would be.  Each turn players play cards to move their ship around the various islands and carry out actions, etc.  The first player to end their turn with 3 daughters of other thanes at their war camp wins.

At the start of their turn, a player draws 2 cards and has the opportunity to play add 1 hero card to their longship’s crew (maximum 3) which each add an on-going special ability.  Then, the player can use 1 of the 5 standard actions and play as many cards as they wish.

Wind cards allow players to move their ship (the cards specify the movement’s direction); and, Event cards carry out special actions which can also be used as wind cards instead.  The standard actions include attacking other players, attacking the sea monster, looting villages (taking thanes’ daughters), and sacrificing pairs of cards to draw new ones.

However, when a player plays an action card (on themself or another player) or uses a standard action, all players have the opportunity in turn order to play a card in response and these create a stack of cards.  When every player has passed in succession, the stack of cards is resolved from top to bottom.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kampen om Norge is a military game recreating the Norwegian defense against the Germans during WWII.  The Norwegians and Allies are handled separately so playing with 3 players is straightforwards, and one player plays both Norwegians and Allies individually in a 2-player games.

Players take turns moving any of their units, resolving any combat where opposing units are in the same space, adding reinforcements, and then gaining new cards.  The goal for the Germans is to control all the cities before the game ends when their card deck runs out (although destroying all enemy units will work as well).

Combat is resolved by both sides rolling 1 dice for each unit involved and comparing the totals.  However, unlike what you may expect, the loser must withdraw and it is only natural results of 6 on a dice that destroy enemy units.  This seems like an interesting system as it makes area control the focus of the game which fits with the invasion setting, plus it makes weight of numbers a key factor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Triassic Terror is by the designer of Francis Drake as well as the very good War of the Roses.  It is an area control game with some interesting game mechanics.

During the game, players place dinosaurs (meeple) of their colour in different areas on the board.  A group of dinos of one colour is called a ‘herd’.  Players with the largest (and second largest) herds in each of the 12 areas during the 2 or 3 scoring rounds score points, and the player with the most points at the end of a fixed number of rounds wins.

Each area contains 3 spaces called ‘habitats’.  The biggest herd in an area occupies the primary habitat (scoring the most points), the next largest herd occupies the secondary habitat (scoring fewer points than the primary), and the next largest herd occupies the tertiary habitat (which scores no points but, hey, it’s better than being any smaller as herds not in the 3 largest instantly die).  Whenever herds grow or shrink, the habitats are re-assessed; for example, if there’s a herd of 3 blue dinosaurs in the primary habitat and a herd of 2 red in the secondary habitat grows to 4, then the red herd would move into the primary habitat and the blue herd would move down to the secondary. Read the rest of this entry »

Luchador Mexican Wrestling Dice is a game by Mark Rivera who write the Boardgames in Blighty blog.  I was fortunate to get to try out Luchador a few months ago.  The game can be played one-on-one or played as a 2-v-2 tag team.

Both wrestlers roll their dice simultaneously and compare.  Some results reduce their opponent’s energy, some block incoming blows, some counter (reverse incoming blows), and some results are attempts to pin the opponent.  If a player does enough hits  they can choose to roll the Luchador dice and perform one of their signature moves (unique to each wrestler) for a more impressive and damaging result; however, using the Luchador dice  is a risk and could go wrong.

If an opponent has lost enough energy, pin results let you roll the special pin dice.  If this is successful, the pinned opponent has 3 rolls of their dice (a count of three) with which to escape the pin.  If they fail, they lose the match and it’s game over. Read the rest of this entry »

Mount Everest is a new game by the designer of K2 which is a great game and you can read my review of K2 for more details.

The rules of Mount Everest are very similar to K2 with some additions.  Rather than moving your 2 mountaineers up and down the mountain, you move 2 guides who are taking mountaineers and tourists up and down the mountain.

Your guides can carry equipment with them like a camp and/or oxygen, but this comes at the cost of taking more mountaineers and tourists with them (and it’s those that can earn you points).  Players score points for the clients (mountaineers and tourists) they manage to get to the top (but lose points if they die anywhere on the way up or down).  The tourists are worth more points, if they make it to the summit, but are less acclimatised so are more difficult to get there.  The player with most points after 18 days wins.

As in K2, players have a hand of 6 cards and they get to select 3 cards to use each round.  Players simultaneously reveal their cards and the player who is moving furthest must take one of the 3 face-up risk tokens (which can reduce what you can do in a round).

Read the rest of this entry »

21 Mutinies is an intriguing, pirate-themed game.  Each turn, one player is the captain and they declare which of the various actions they are going to carry out.  Then, in order, players choose whether to do the action the captain is doing or they can perform the cabin action or mutiny.

The actions the captain can pick from are:

• Boarding (trade routes) – Buy one of the jewels currently on display in this area with doubloons and rum
• Boarding (non-trade routes) – As trade routes above but jewels are drawn randomly after choosing the action
• Shipwrecks – Take one unseen treasure token (various benefits) if you roll dice high-enough. (Chances reduce after each player.)
• Tavern – Receive a share of rum but the amount to be shared is randomised after picking the action – first-come, first-served.
• Black market – Sell combinations of jewels for doubloons and prestige points.
• Town – Gain one of various benefits like gain rum, buy prestige points, etc.

Many of the actions have slightly different effects and/or pay-offs depending upon which space within that action that the player places their action disc. So, whilst some actions are what you want to do, the remaining options when it is your turn to choose your action, may not be very useful or as good as others. Read the rest of this entry »

During Russian Railroads, players compete to construct the best railroads in Russia.  Whilst there is no map to build across like many railway games, Russian Railroads is a meaty, worker-placement eurogame.

Each round, players take turns allocating their workers (cool-looking meeple with Russian hats) to various actions on the main game board.   For example, a player can lay track along their 3 different rail routes which advances the relevant matching colour marker along any route(s).  There are 5 colours of track marker in the game (each route requiring a different mixture of track marker colours) but these colour markers are not allowed to pass one another or occupy the same space, so this means you’ll need to consider the order in which you advance the track markers too.

Players can also use workers to build and upgrade locomotives that are placed on the rail routes.  At the end of each round, players score the track spaces their locomotives can reach, plus there are some other bonuses when locomotives reach certain spaces too.  Players usually have to take the lowest numbered locomotive available so the timing of building these is important.

Read the rest of this entry »