Boardgames, Card Games, Gaming
This is turning into a very different game of Diplomacy
Turn 4 Moves
Retreats
Final Positions
Builds
Austria: Supp 5 Unit 5 Build 0
England: Supp 6 Unit 3 Build 3
France: Supp 5 Unit 5 Build 0
Germany: Supp 1 Unit 3 Remove 2
Italy: Supp 6 Unit 5 Build 1
Russia: Supp 7 Unit 6 Build 1
Turkey: Supp 4 Unit 4 Build 0
We’ve been playing the expansion for Coup for some months or knifey spoony as its better know in these parts. Being short of the requisite cards we used either knives or spoons to represent the two warring factions
We didn’t do too bad. We only missed one rule. The one about not being a duke to steal the bribes.
Now don’t make the mistake I made. If you already have a copy of coup and have played it for a while buy another copy of it. The new shiny reformation cards will stick out like a sore thumb at a wake (I know).
The new game plays similarly to the original accept the ambassador has replaced by the inquisitor who is like a mini ambassador (she only exchanges one card rather than two) but with the additional power to look at someone’s hand and force them to exchange it with the court deck.
If this is all making no sense by the way have a look at my earlier review of coup. WHICH it turns out I never did so I’ll do a review on that then
Anyhoe. All in all Reformation is more of a patch to the original game than an add on. It makes the game better for sure but it’s in no way essential as the original was a cracker of a game. Would i buy it ? Yes. Would I rush out and buy it? No
The Inquisitor adds a few more tactical options. The new character I can’t say I’m fond of. Her ability is a little so so. It’s definitely better than the ambassador but I’m happier to get a couple of other roles in my hand rather than her. That said its early days yet and only two or three games with a game like coup is no measure of how good or bad it is.
It’s a cheap expansion so it’s a no brainier to pick up. If you get it let me know what you think of it. Our group doesn’t play without it now but then again you’re either knifey spooney or your little people
Huzzah
Vic
Ginger Games are a new Online Boardgame Shop based in Northern Ireland started fairly recently by husband and wife team Alan and Lindsay. I’ve been chatting to them a little over the last while and they’re certainly big boardgame fans. I’m hoping to get them down for the next Knavecon either in a professional or playing capacity (or a bit of both like most traders that come).
In my chats with them they revealed their love for amongst other things for Worker Placement and 2 player games. Lindsay was good enough to do a guest review for me of Fields of Arle. A game I have to admit I knew nothing about. Here’s that she had to say…
Like all Uwe Rosenburg fans I was excited by the upcoming Essen release of Fields of Arle (and the upcoming Patchwork). Would there be room for yet another Uwe Rosenburg game in my collection? Would it be as good or differ enough from Agricola or Caverna? Would it be too similar? I was hoping that it would live up to my expectations.
As most of our game time is spent as a couple I was interested in picking up this 2-player only game. The rule book clearly defines this game as being autobiographical and is set in Uwe’s home region of East Frisia. The game is a very typical worker placement style game played over nine and a half rounds each representing a year with alternating summer and winter seasons. Each season allows specific actions that are relevant to the season meaning you can only fish in the summer and shear sheep after the winter. Along with the usual worker placement spots with gain you resources there is also an interesting simplified tech tree where you can increase your ability to gain specific resources. Additionally there is an element of trading to neighbouring towns and villages to gain food or convert resources needed to build or expand.
As with all first plays the game ran longer than the 120 minutes on the box cover. On first impressions the amount of available actions are overwhelming but with playtime the strategies begun to emerge. While the farming theme is a well-trodden path with Agricola and Caverna this is a vastly different game. In Agricola you are confined to one main path to victory but Arle has various paths to victory. Caverna has more flexibility in the route to victory and Arle expands on this by introducing vehicles, trading and tech trees.
It is true there are influences from Agricola, Caverna, Ora et Labora and Glass Road but Arle has refined these mechanics further. In my head it is a completely different enjoyable puzzle than its predecessors.
Those looking for high player interaction should probably avoid this one as it is pretty much zero, there is even a space to mimic blocked actions. Arle is a big physical game but it doesn’t feel that much larger than Caverna it just has a different layout.
So if you like your heavy worker placement games and play mostly two player games you will get plenty of hours of enjoyment out of Arle.
Lindsay
As promised our Diplomacy Expert* Handsome Bob has his say about what’s been happing so far in Diplomacy ….
They came, they saw, they confused the hell out of everybody.
Apologies for the delay in writing a commentary on this game, I was intercepted on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan and was waylaid temporarily.
In the interests of full disclosure, I haven’t been privy to any of the correspondence between the players so any assumptions I make (however illogical, captain) are based on what I see on the board.
That having been said, after Turn 1 I was confident I could call the game: Turkey had bottled it; Russia and Austria would make significant inroads; Italy would meander around the Med while keeping a close eye on Austria just in case he got naughty and any two of England, France and Germany would work together to screw over the third.
Turn 2 brought a quick and surprising revision: Turkey and Russia played Austria like a Stradivarius; Italy meandered into Munich to celebrate Oktoberfest; France plundered all and sundry and Germany and England seemed to stalemate with neither making any significant gains. And Germany had some Eyetie spear-brandishing in his southern heartland.
After Turn 3 I just went to bed with a wet towel wrapped around my head, weeping profusely and wondering how the game had gotten so schizophrenic and screwed up.
Let’s summarise:
England: now has two units on mainland Europe at the expense of handing Norway over to the Tsar as a kind of a Christmas freebie. Unfortunately, one is a fleet so can only wander up and down the coast. The one in Holland will have Kaiser Drax looking over one of his shoulders while he contorts himself into knots while simultaneously looking over the other shoulder at the Italian unit in Berlin. The fleet in the North Sea is ideally positioned to support and convoy with little or no interference.
France: showed all the instincts (actually paranoia) of the typical Diplomacy player by not trusting England not to do the dirty, duly convoying his army in Spain back to Brest ‘just in case’. The move into the Med would suggest that Italy might need to develop a taste for Brie and Escargot before too much longer.
Italy: Ballsy, ballsy, ballsy. Not happy with just sashaying into Munich, he then advances to Berlin when the nasty Hun descended upon him, thus getting a valuable build and forcing Drax to investigate a career as a circus contortionist (cf England above). Can Germany kick him out? More to the point, can he do it before Austria decides to join in the fun to be had at Oktoberfest?
Austria: having seemingly been shafted by the Turkey/Russia juggernaut, he took his hiding like a man and, sensing weakness, decided to take out his frustration on the now-vulnerable Hun. As to whether he can do anything before the forces massing on his Eastern borders decide to invade is another matter. However there may be a story yet to be told there (see Turkey below).
Germany – ahem (stifles giggles): trussed up like a submissive and waiting for the whip to crack, can Kaiser Drax rescue his once proud nation or will his people be force to live on a diet of pasta and Verdi? One thing’s for sure, he needs help – and it looks like his only hope, one Obi Wan Kenobi, is busy elsewhere. But if anyone can rescue the situation, smooth-talking, I’ll-sell-you-my-firstborn-in-return-for-support-into-Berlin Drax is your man. We’ll be watching the German space (while it’s still in existence) with interest.
Turkey: looked doomed after Turn 1 due to indecisiveness, ended Turn 2 with a build (after crawling into the Tsar’s boudoir in Moscow) and now looks like he could be mounting an interesting offensive on his former friend (or is he? It could all be smoke and mirrors and judicious use of sneaky convoys).
Russia: currently the bookies favourite. Two builds, control of Scandinavia (pretty much unopposed) a fleet in the Baltic and moving West with a vengeance. Maybe he too wants a slice of the German schnitzel or the Austrian whatever they eat there. Or has he spread himself too thinly? Tsar Paul is too canny a player to get caught out like that.
I am hugely looking forward to Turn 4 but am making no predictions as to what will happen. After three turns, I’m not getting caught out again.
Have at it gents!!
You know where you stand with a heavy weapon. Usually out in the open with a manic grin on your face, Spent bullet casings cascading in slow motion while your gun kicks and howls like a banshee. Enemies running in front of you and tripping the dance macabre. I played the Heavy weapons guy again, we may be slow but we deliver.
I played Level 7 Omega Protocol for the second time last Thur. It’s s fun Heroquest/Descent type game with one group of players squaring off against one evil overlord (unusually not me this time). The setting is an xcom / futuristic swat versus an alien experiment out of control sort of thing. Perfect. I’m all in
Players can choose from a variety of trooper types.
The game plays out as you would expect with the evil player laying traps in various rooms and making it downright awkward for you to complete your mission. By you I mean your team. Don’t worry it’s semi co-operative, but it’s no sesame street. A number of times we we’re reminded that only half the team have to survive to win.
The missions are fairly standard stuff and advance the story arc. In this case it was get in. Rescue a scientist and get out with him alive. For a clever bunch those scientist are constantly getting themselves in trouble.
Now what makes omega different is the use of adrenaline. Adrenaline points are action points. Move a dude it takes adrenaline points. Fire. Open a door. Activate something and so on all take adrenaline points and each of your dudes have a limit of how many they can use per turn depending on their stance.
Stances are picked at the start of a round so it might be cautious advance, normal move or iggy pop it. These stances vary from character type to character type so there’s a nice bit of variety in there. Snipers get to lay prone but are more open to attack. Heavy weapons dudes get to plant their feet and let rip with extra firepower.
At the start each character gets a certain amount of build points to buy extra war gear. Cue military music as you snap on grenade launchers and better armor. Certain types have access to different equipment. This is pure video game stuff.
All set to go you kick open the door and stomp into the first area saying things like “this looks easy” and “reckon we have this beat”. Now. That’s a mistake. You don’t and in the case of last Thur all five of us armed to the proverbials didn’t do it. We got close, but no cigar.
In our defense we were acting the maggot and not really listening to our commander during the briefing concentrating more on quoting lines from Aliens and generally looking out for ourselves. More Medipacs and not saying things like “they can’t harm me over here” would have helped too.
So about three thirds of the game in we were in some real pretty shit now and it was game over man
It didn’t matter we had a lot of fun
The game takes a bit of setting up not as much as say Mansions of Madness but while the evil overlord setsup the scenario our crack team had time to enjoy a swift game of Age of War
The adrenaline mechanic is clever. every point used by the “goodies” at the end of the turn gets handed over to the evil overlord and they get to spend it on various actions that will ruin your day. Activate clones. Summon more. Commission a new bad guy logo that sort of thing.
This mechanic allows the game to scale nicely with however many good guys are on the mission. Furthermore the actions open to the bad guy (Bg) vary from scenario to scenario.
It’s a neat game. The whole dungeon bashing game has been done time and time again but this is different enough to be worth a look
The only reservation I’d have is I’ve become spoiled by the build quality of fantasy flight games and this isn’t a FF game. The models are fine but not Descent good. The board is good but it’s not as good as say Space Hulk. It’s also a little pricey but it’s suitably different to be exotic.
Definitely worth a try and I was so taken by the last game I offered to paint some of the models.
Definitely up for another game so all good
Huzzah!
Vic
Holy Monkeys! Depending on whom you are… this has Gotta hurt!
Move 3
Results
More soon
Racing games are always fun. Well pretty much always. I like a good racing game I do. I rarely win a racing game but then again I rarely win lots of games
We played an old classic at Gael con. The original Formula De. Every time I play this game there’s a shout of “we’ll only do one lap”, this was no different.
There’s a real charm to Formula De. It’s simple, it’s German. I’m not sure how well it simulates a formula one race and I’ve never played the advanced rules but I’ve always enjoyed myself with it
It’s best played with six or more (as long as you don’t have slow players) and if you have time do play the full two laps. It’s a much more tactical game and doing a pit stop is pretty much essential. If you have five or fewer players take two cars each and it’s dynamite.
The game is essentially about getting your gears right. There we six dice from a lowly two sides to the mighty footballesque one that sports over twenty plus sides.
The trick is the higher dice have a Range of numbers. So for example fourth gear goes from 8 to 16. Fifth goes from 14 to 20 and so on so your guaranteed to be in a particular range of numbers when you roll it.
The track is laid out as a long grid and you move your car the number of squares indicated on the dice roll. So far so simple. To make it more interesting the track has a number of corners with a clump of squares you have to stop in as you pass through so it’s a gamble. Do I drop a gear and for sure make it into this corner or do I roar ahead and hope I get the dice roll I’m after? A limited amount of Brakes and Tyre points allow you to adjust the dice roll but mess up too much and you’ll spin out and have to restart in first gear.
So it’s a push your luck game and if you take It nice and handy you will make it very neatly around the track. Of course since everyone else is breathing down your neck it becomes just like real racing a white knuckle ride.
It’s a fun game, not to be taken too seriously and there is a reasonable chunk of random in there.
There’s a newer version of the game out since the one we played and it does play a bit different. I only played that one once so I couldn’t gauge if it was better or worse, my feeling was worse but it needs a replay.
There’s a number of race games out there but this one really is a classic and well worth a spin. It comes with two tracks but there’s a bunch of add ons for it and a big set of both official and unofficial rules for Grand Prix season, weather, car design and so on.
Certainly worth considering as it’s suitably different.
Huzzah!
Vic
“What’s the last thing you’d like to see on a restaurant menu?”
Depending on your gaming group this could be quite the range.
When one of the lads whipped out say anything I was quite dubious. It looks like a cheap knock off charades game you’d pick up in TK Maxx but I was more than pleasantly surprised and wound up ordering a copy soon after
It’s a game not a million miles from cards against humanity. If you haven’t played that I heartily recommend you do. Top tip. Maybe don’t include your mother in law in the game as I did last xmas .
The idea is very simple. One player draws a question card and reads one of the six questions aloud. “What’s your favourite hobby” for example. I just made that one up btw. My copy of the game hasn’t arrived yet.
Everyone then on their shiny answer “slates” write their answer in felt tip pen and they’re all revealed at the same time.
The inquisitor secretly picks their favourite answer (each slate is a different colour) and everyone bids their two coins on what they think the answer most likely to be picked will be.
The picked answer is revealed and people score points for picking the right one and the inquisitor gets a portion of the matching picks from people.
It’s simple and it’s gets around the classic problem of that may be the best answer but I’m not saying so because he’s winning
How’s it play? Wonderfully. For several legal reasons I cannot even hint at some of the answers people wrote down at our gaming session. Cards against humanity was mild compared to this. Yes even that card with the… Yeah that one
Super game. Super simple. Scales well with age and gutter mind levels
Highly recommend this as the game of choice for Xmas. I mean it’s that or Monopoly really so easy choice
Huzzah
Vic
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I’ve had a copy of Iron Sky gathering dust at home since Knavecon 4, it’s about time I whipped it out and played a test game. Can’t say I’ve watched the movie but it looks good enough to warrant my attention. Huzzah etc.
I’m big enough to admit that occasionally I get the odd rule wrong (waits for shocked muttering to stop) when playing a new game. Occasionally.
When a game has a about five rules and you’ve missed about four of them that’s gross negligence. In the case of Art of War these proper rules make an OK game into a very nice game indeed.
On the plus side when you get a rule wrong and then correct it you get value for money because you’ve gotten to play two different games! So… I’ll leave it there *cough*….
Age of War. Great game. Read the rules. Stay in school
Huzzah!
Vic
Victor Gannon Games 