Author: MrTimewalk

Gamer, Programmer, All around Bad Guy

The Game is a foot (possibly black)

yoke

I’ve been accused of being too obscure with my game reference photos, the above should be easy…

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a clever whodunnit which is damnable close to role playing without actually being role playing.  I say clever so it obviously didn’t suit our group who were half asleep when the game kicked off.

IMG_1228

The game comes with a map of London with a hundred odd locations and ten case books for a variety of murders, robberies and so on.  It’s very thematic, each adventure comes with it’s own newspaper which may contain clues to the current mystery.

There’s no GM, just someone who’s going to read the mystery out and each person takes it in turn to direct the group to a location to gain clues as to what’s going on.

Now, here’s the clever bit. It’s only semi cooperative, the idea is that everyone goes along for the ride and at some stage each of them jumps ship and secretly writes down their answers to a set of questions on the back of the case when they feel they have enough clues gained.

The more places you visit the more of the mystery becomes revealed but the lower you’re score will be at the end.

IMG_1229

That’s it.  That’s the game.  There’s no dice, no tokens, just you, your trusty investigator’s notepad and your brain.

It’s INTERESTING, it’s very interesting, it’s a bit like a murder mystery night but a lot more lavish.  The atmosphere is very good and it plays out in an hour plus depending on how dopey your investigators are.

The only limitation I can see with it is there are only ten missions and once you complete them, that’s it. That said ten plays of any game is quite a lot and I’m sure more mysteries will come along as add ons or fan fiction.

All in all I’m not sure about this game, it’s definitely interesting, it’s definitely different it just didn’t really suit the group, but I think it requires a second outing to be sure

Until then I believe our ignorance will be as amazing as our knowledge

Huzzah!

Vic

0

Always quit when you’re ahead

headandshoulders

Giants is a worker placement game set in the Easter islands where your tribe are racing to complete as many heads (Moaïs) and erect them (yes all the appropriate jokes were made) on the best scoring spots (ahus)(Gesundheit) before anyone else can. Furiously rushing to a conclusion where everyone dies of starvation but you get to look at some really keen heads with snappy hats before your painful expiration

1

It’s fairly standard stuff. There’s a bit of bidding. There’s worker placement. There’s a certain amount of cock blockery. What it does though it does in style. The game is beautifully presented. The map is well made, the pieces are nicely rendered. The whole thing reeks of quality. I particularly liked that everyone’s models look different. So everyone has a unique looking chief, witch doctor and workers. What nailed it for me was I picked this up for a song in a game shop last summer so win win. I only got around to playing it recently though I had played it a few years back with someone elses copy and was intrigued by it

There’s a number of mechanics at work in the game as you would expect from a worker placement game

First up is bidding where you all bid workers and tribal markers to grab the finite set of stone blocks and build statues. The more markers you bid the more likely you are to grab blocks ahead of your opponents and the more workers you bring to the party the bigger the heads you can carve. There is of course a catch. Workers used to carve cannot be used later on this turn to transport the heads to their final destinations.

2

Once decided you place your tribe around the map to form chains you can pass the heads along to their final destinations like crowd surfers at a rock concert. The further you transport them from the starting quarry spot and the bigger they are (they come in three sizes) the more points you’ll get at the end. This is where cock blockery reins supreme as you (just like a German tourist with sunbeds) try and reserve spots to stop others from raising their statue there.

While your normal mooks can only pass stuff over along the witch doctor is the one with special abilities. He can recruit more workers, build natty point scoring hats for the heads, cut down trees to make rolling logs, and a few other bits that help your growing economy. Your chief who’s super strong at lifting stuff acts as a sort of minor witch doctor and can do witchey stuff when he’s broken a few tablets, possibly in anger.

I’m not going to go into all the rules but the jist is you build heads. Transport them and erect them and score points. Like all worker games it’s a juggling act between building your economy and scoring points.

There’s a lovely warm fuzzy feeling about this game (like peeing in a dark suit). every bit of it feels complete and integrated. There’s no bits bolted on. It functions beautifully as a whole

It’s an unusual theme as well which is no harm and the theme is also not bolted onto the mechanics, it all feels just right. All in all I really like this game. It’s simple. It plays out in about two hours. I’d rate it up there with Catan and Puerto Rico. If you see it cheap it’s a worthy edition to your collection. If you don’t then it’s still a worthy addition to your expensive collection.

Now that we’ve ironed out the rules it’ll make a proper appearance at the next Knavecon

Huzzah!

Vic

3

0

Coup de’grass

Image Ref. No. 2158/065I reckon I’m being a bit more obscure with this picture reference, will take people seconds to figure it out.

Coup, which I never reviewed before is the base game for the expansion I mentioned.  Coup is a winner.  it comes in a natty silver box and just like Love Letter it’s following the trend of low card games. There’s around 20 or so cards in Coup.  all multiple copies of five possible roles

  • Captain – Thieving bastick
  • Duke – Money Machine
  • Assassin – Death for hire
  • Contessa – Blocks Assasins
  • Ambassador – Allows you to swap your hand

Each player up to eight (I think) starts with two random cards face down, known to their player.  Each turn they SAY they have a particular dude and can take the appropriate action.  e.g. on their turn a player claims they have the Duke and takes 3 coins from the bank.

NOW. other players can call them on it with statements like “I’m sorry but I find that hard to believe” or realistically something a little bit more robust.  At this point the player has to reveal the role or lose a card.  Lost two cards and it’s game over

So Coup is a knockout game, you have to kill off everyone elses two characters while not knowing whom they are.  Some characters have reactions to others

So for example someone says they have the captain and their going to use him to steal from a target player.  That target player says they have a captain themselves and they’re going to block it.  Each of which can be called out by the other player.  Since there’s a finite amount of roles and as players die the actual roles they had get revealed it’s possibly to make an educated guess as to what people may or may not have.

This is a SUPERB game, it’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s portable and it’s as good as the players you have.  It’s a real mind game of bluff and counter bluff.  If you have a gaming group THIS is one of the essential games to have.  It’s the perfect warm up warm down game.  I have spoken

Huzzah!

Vic

cop

ps. the dude down the right hand side there doesn’t come with the base game.

1

Official Knifey Spooney

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

inq

0

Introducing Ginger Games

GingerSML_1

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…

arle

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

1

Diplomacy 2014 – Now over to our raving reporter….

As promised our Diplomacy Expert* Handsome Bob has his say about what’s been happing so far in Diplomacy ….

Ferrero_Rocher

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!!

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑